> They worked without masks or other protection, the dangers of asbestos either unknown or not thought worth bothering about.
No, they did know. Already in the 19th century it was discovered an high rate of mortality amongst asbestos workers.
In France, 1893, we had the first laws about factory dusts levels.
1906, everyone knew.
Here is a rough translation of a France sénat Report :
> It was in 1906 that the first cases of fibrosis were discovered among spinning mill workers.
> The 1906 Labor Inspection Bulletin published a document entitled "Note on the Hygiene and Safety of Workers in Asbestos Spinning and Weaving Mills," by Mr. Auribault, departmental labor inspector in Caen 11 ( * ).
> Denis Auribault noted: "In 1890, an asbestos spinning and weaving factory was established near Condé-sur-Noireau (Calvados). During the first five years of operation, there was no artificial ventilation to directly evacuate the siliceous dust produced by the various looms; this total failure to comply with hygiene rules 12 ( * ) resulted in numerous deaths among the staff: around fifty workers died during the aforementioned period."
> Thus, as early as 1906, the link between exposure to asbestos fibres and the occurrence of occupational deaths was clearly established.
I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, but my parents and my whole extended family are from an area in eastern Michigan, about 2 hours north of Detroit.
Especially back then, the local economy was heavily dependent on Dow Chemical, who has a massive facility in the area. My grandfather worked there. He was one of the first people to ever handle Saran wrap. He also recalls hilarious stories, like a time when someone pranked the foreman by dumping some stuff in the soap dispenser that turned into a sticky, snotty goo when exposed to water. He also worked in an area that used lots of iodine for a couple years. His whole body was sunflower yellow when he came home from work, but he says he never got a cold!
Some stories are more harrowing. There were air raid sirens to warn people when Dow was venting something into the atmosphere. If you heard the sirens, you went inside ASAP.
And then there was the dioxin plant (aka agent orange). He says men in their 40s who worked in the dioxin plant looked like they were in their 80s. Many hard-working people died young there.
Luckily, he was never in the Dioxin plant on a daily basis - he was a diesel mechanic and a welder. Had he been in the dioxin plant, he probably wouldn't be alive today to share those stories. I fear that, as this generation leaves us, so will the cautionary tales.
We spent some time this summer in the Saginaw and Midland area. The "mark" that the Dow family made is very visible, insofar as charities, buildings, etc. I would imagine that's the tip of a very scary industrial contamination iceberg.
> I fear that, as this generation leaves us, so will the cautionary tales.
Cautionary tales that are not being learned where the similarly dreadful silicosis is concerned; there is an incredible increase in the number of cases of silicosis among kitchen fitters working on granite worktops.
(I fear we may also find this issue among people working near 3D printers using glass and carbon-fibre-filled filaments.)
I (in Australia) was looking at weatherboards on the weekend for some work i’m doing and came across the James Hardie ‘Linea’ weatherboards - they’re fibro-cement boards. A couple of things struck me:
1) I’ve noticed the James Hardie ‘brand’ being used openly a lot in the past 5 years. I guess the stigma from their evil handling of asbestosis claims is gone.
2) In the installation manual it had an extensive list of things you have to do to not get silicosis.
No thanks Satan, regular pine weatherboards for me!
In college, some times a kid would go pass out in his car rather than drive, and people would Saran Wrap the car so they couldn’t open the doors to get out.
> My Dad lost his Dad at the age of 34, which is no age at all in the grand scheme of things. By contrast I still have my Dad at the age of 60, which has meant an extra quarter century of guidance, support, advice, love and always being there. How lucky am I?
I lost my father when I was 30. I thought I’d been lucky because I’d had him through my “adult” life. Now I’m 40 and have a 2-year-old son, and over these past ten years I think it’s when I would have most liked to have him — when more questions came up about what he was really like as a person, beyond his role as a father. He died at 72 from lung cancer; he had been smoking since he was 13 and never went to the doctor. I guess I was lucky after all…
I lost my Dad when I was 27, he had just turned 60. Also lung cancer, also smoking since a child, also had never visited the doctor.
In the 5 years since then, I've met the love of my life, gotten engaged, and planning a family. All of this without my Dad, without his advice, without his support. It hurts, a lot. Whenever big moments in my life happen, my first instinct is always to give him a call.
Dad lost to smoking too at 60, but heart disease. As I grew through life I could relate to my memories of him at those ages, but as I come up to 60 myself I’m daunted not to have my memories of him at later ages as a guide.
My dad decided to go scorched earth when I had the opportunity to move to the USA. He was always bitter, but he turned poisonous. He made it about himself.
You gotta do what you can do - take the best of what you remember from your parents and grandparents, and pass it on. I don't feel like they're really dead as long as I'm alive. I hear their voices and their jokes and I see their smiles. Sometimes when I laugh I hear how my grandpa laughed, and I think, shit, I must sound old now. Kids make you realize how temporary we all are.
32 for me, and I agree wholeheartedly. Life was relatively simple and uncomplicated for me at that age, and quickly became the opposite of that as the years wore on. His wisdom, experience, and humor while navigating a world that has gone mad is sorely missed, but practical things, too. I’m fixing up my money pit of a house (aren’t they all, though?) and the whole time I am wishing he was here so we could just work on projects together.
Overall we're having kids later and later myself included. This is one of the natural consequences I will face. Sometimes I wish it had kids in my twenties but for now I'm glad I didn't. We'll see.
The best age for having kids biologically, in terms of health is... Close to 18. I had my first child when I was 27 and I was already very tired in the nights, we agreed with wife that it would have been better to start earlier. Some people have kids when 35-40 and I cannot imagine it at all. I'm too tired right now. Much wiser, but my health would not allow me to stay up nights
> Close to 18. I had my first child when I was 27 and I was already very tired in the nights, we agreed with wife that it would have been better to start earlier
I have some extended family who had some unexpected kids around that 18 age and I firmly disagree that it’s better. We had so many more advantages by having kids when older, from better emotional regulation to better time management practices.
I had kids when older than you. Although some of the early years being up late weren’t easy, it also wasn’t devastatingly tiresome. My wife and I split duties and staggered our schedules.
The low sleep years were also over very quickly. It’s not like you’re up all night with kids until they’re 10 years old. Optimizing the entirety of raising kids based on being as young as possible to stay up late during the first year of life isn’t a good idea, IMO. You have to look at the big picture.
I’m sorry you’re struggling and I don’t mean to downplay your personal struggles, but at the same time I have to agree with other comments that are puzzled at someone in their 20s being so crushingly tired when parents in their 30s routinely handle child raising. If you have some unmentioned condition then I don’t mean to belittle that, but I don’t want others reading these comments to assume your description is typical.
For some families the women start having children at eighten, and it is the business of the extended family to provide the "better emotional regulation to better time management practices"
Other families have different arrangements and the women and men are far more on their own
There are advantages and disadvantages to both ways of doing things
I had my first at 42, second at 45, and about to have my third at 48. Honestly it’s been fine - thinking that people might find this unimaginable is so far from my reality. It really feels like I’ve had the same experience as those in their 30s.
Part of this might be that 40s life is a bit more chill anyhow - I no longer go and get smashed every weekend, or even have the FOMO that I’m not doing that. And work life, whilst more junior, was ultimately more extreme in my 20s and 30s. So any physical drop is probably balanced by a slight drop in general burning the candle at both ends.
But yeah, don’t think 40s parenting is a no go. Go for it!
My parents had me at 40. I wish they had me sooner. They were old and tired for all my life and at 40 my last parent is already near the end. I have only known one of my grandparents. My parents were the equivalent of other kids grandparents. You do you but i think it's selfish.
I think consider that simonsquiff may not have been in a position (stable relationship, reliable personal situation, partner's career, etc) until their 40s. If not now, they may not have had children at all, leaving no one to know any grandparents.
I think there are advantages either way. I have three kids, born when I was 35-41; when my wife was 31-37. The children met great-grandparents, get lots of experience with their grandparents, and I think time for us to get more established has made for a stronger and more interesting parenting environment. I might've regretted giving up chances to travel/etc before having kids. That said, I am conscious that I would be 80+ before my youngest hit 40.
It might be that consecutive generations of late-parenting are where the impact is felt. My parents had their three children at 24-29.
Fully agreed on this, the generational stuff is where having children late is just brutal. When I was young, I actually often hung out my grand grandmother's place, drinking real buttermilk and eating the tasty goodies it can produce. I took it all for granted, but it was a wonderful upbringing and undoubtedly took a major load of my parent. I'm not actually entirely sure why she decided to move to the city at which point that entire network disappeared and things became much more difficult for both of us. And I don't think I really want to ask why either.
On the other hand here I am today living half way around the world from where I was born, so maybe this urge to expand outward is some sort of genetic thing. Could explain a lot about humanity - Africa was pretty much a utopia especially relative to the damnable freezing wastelands the 'Northern Lands.' Gotta be something a bit wrong with some of us! Hey who's up for going to Mars? I am!
Like I'm sure you can see yourself already, a lot depends on the individuals in question. I'm approaching my mid 40s and am still a gym rat - and at my peak lifetime strength + endurance levels. On the other hand I also have peers that have already muddled their minds and broken their bodies, often through years of indulgence, sometimes well before their 40s.
This [1] is RFK Jr at friggin 71 years old, amongst other athletic feats you can find videos of. He's on testosterone replacement therapy, but on the other hand I don't think that's really some big asterisk. Testosterone is absolutely critical for men and it declines as we age. When I reach the point where my testosterone has meaningfully diminished, I'll also likely do the same. And TRT alone doesn't give you results like that - that's the result of endless dedication to maintaining your health and fitness.
You mean his habit of nailing anything that moves? I can't judge him there. You never know what's happening (or not) in somebody's private life. And for a man with all the opportunity in the world - I can only say that I'd look with suspicion at whoever was to cast stones there.
He's an eccentric man in a hyper-polarized world yet has raised 6 children that, at least publicly, have remained neutral to supportive of him. He's gotta be doing a lot right there IMO. And having a 70 year old father that's still in phenomenal shape and health is something our GP would certainly have liked to have had.
At 18, I had no business even being responsible for a kid for a day. I hope the stability (both mentally and financially) that I'm able to offer my kid in their development years far outweighs the fact I won't be around as long.
Might this not be a consequence of how "we" were raised? In the past there were 18 year olds who were successful and responsible leaders of nations. Marcus Aurelius became emperor at 16! My parent just wanted me to go to college and earn money so I grew up with a rather 1-dimensional and hedonistic perspective on life.
I'll be encouraging my children to have children as early as reasonably possible. In part it's because of greed - I want to see those grandkids, and maybe even remotely possibly great grandkids before I die, but it's also because it's what I wish I had done in hindsight. Having children has not only been the joy and pride of my life, but it also gave my life much more meaning and direction. In any case, I also think it's completely appropriate for grandparents to play a significant role in the raising of children.
If you want to spend time with your kids as adults, and have any grandkids remember you, younger is better. I was 30 when I had my first child; my parents might have been a little older than that when they had me. My dad died 20 years ago, my oldest son barely remembers him. My younger children technically met him but hav no memories of him. My mother died over 10 years ago.
My wife's mother had her when she was 20. She's still around, got to see her grandchildren reach adulthood, and have a long relationship with her daughter as an adult.
That's an environmental factor, though, specifically a function of our modern life style.
We had our first child at ~30, so we track this trend, too. However, I sometimes think, what if we gave in to the biological trend and[0] had kids at 18-20? If that were the common trend, then... by the time i got 36, my kids would be on their way to starting their own families. I.e. my child-rearing day would've been over, right here, today. As it is, I'm about to turn 37, and am looking forward to some 15 more years of parenting.
No, I really am looking forward to this. But the point is, the life after parenting doesn't sound so appealing anymore, not when it starts at 50 instead of 36.
--
[0] - Subject to the typical rules about age of adulthood, to not overcomplicate this.
> the life after parenting doesn't sound so appealing anymore, not when it starts at 50 instead of 36.
Even if you have kids at 18 you won’t be done with parenting at 36. Maybe they leave the home, maybe not, you will still have to do a lot of parenting for a while more. You’ll be well in your 40s before you can even think “I’m finally mostly done”.
At that age it depends on each person what they want to do with the life. A lot of my friends who had kids really early started focusing on career later in life. Exactly what they “missed”. Those who focused on career and travel when young, focused on kids later in life. I haven’t heard anyone really regretting the choice beyond “my back can’t really take it anymore”[0] because you can never know what you’re missing. You’ll never know how your life would have been otherwise and what you would have liked more or less.
[0] Me, after starting parenthood in my 40s and being lazy so my back isn’t what it could be.
We had our first when I was 37 and our second when I was 43. It wasn't so bad - it's tiring but I'm also a lot more emotionally mature than I was in my 20s and early 30s. And I have an absolute ton more money and stability (which also helps pay for things like nannies and school).
The thing I'm a little sad about is that I'm unlikely to be there for too long when my kids have kids.
My dad’s dad died when he was 13, and this dropped his family from upper middle class to basically in poverty except for owning a fully paid off house. It radically colored his outlook on life and left him risk averse and frugal, even to the expense of his quality of life. What’s the point of saving up an 8 figure nest egg and working into your 70s if you spend less than 100k/year?
I’m lucky to have him still at the age of 30 but it’s clear how traumatic losing a parent young is.
100k USD per year for a family is poverty in the USA? I had to look that up [1].
> Real wages averaged $67,521 in 2022, and average household incomes averaged to $87,864.
Further down it says:
> In every country, there are levels of the middle class, with low middle-class earners and high middle-class earners. In America, the states all have their own middle-class medians as well. For example, in Alabama, low-middle-class families start at $38,582 while higher middle-class ranges can end at $161,524.
So without knowing where you're from, we don't know.
I think the median is better than the average because high salaries (outliers) will skew the average upwards. So now I am wondering what is the median salary and how it compares to the average.
I know some people like that: the insane nest egg and that security _is_ their quality of life and the blanket they sleep well under. Their current consumption doesn't matter too much to them.
Cigarettes are not too unlike Asbestos: they've been known to be deadly for ages, but a powerful industrial lobby fought ferociously to defend their financial interests, leading to millions of preventable death.
One thing I think most Western people don't realize, especially with how terrified we are of asbestos, is that it is still used and being mined today!
Russia still extensively uses Abestos, the name literally comes from the Russian town of Asbest which is known for exporting, you guessed it, asbestos, to countries like China, India, and Brazil. Of course being Russian they also say it's a Western lie that Asbestos causes lung issues. (I shouldn't have to say this but I'm noting this, and not advocating it's true, asbestos is serious business and I wouldn't want to live in a building with it, it's just interesting that BRICS nations still use it).
Isn't asbestos used pretty much everywhere in the world (except rich countries)?
So yes, it's dangerous. But it's very cheap, and poverty is far more dangerous than asbestos. It's simply a fact: residents of most countries simply can't afford a 200k dollars asbestos-free house, like Americans or Europeans can.
If Americans had less affordable homes like the rest of the world have, they would still be building them out of asbestos.
Not using asbestos is not the reason why homes in the Western world are expensive.
https://aiobs.org/how-healthy-and-costly-are-the-most-used-i... shows insulation cost for a (typical?) 1500sqft (~140m^2 for the rest of the world) home. The most common, and also the cheapest, type of insulation being fiberglass bats at $560. So if this home would cost $200k, that's 3% of the total price. So even if asbestos would be free, it would barely move the needle in total cost.
Edit: That $560 looks suspiciously low. Googling around some more shows an insulation (incl. installation) cost for a "typical" home at around $3500-$4500. In any case, a small fraction of the total cost of a house project.
A gentle note to anyone reading, fiberglass insulation requires wearing air filters, for the same reasons noted else in this thread. Wear them expecially to cut it, but also just putting it up or working in a crawlspace with it.
That’s not what the manufacturers of modern glass fiber insulation would have you believe. Plenty of people cutting and handling it with no PPE at all in their promotional literature.
Fiberglass is at least pretty easy one to figure out. Don't have to get that stuff in your skin more than once to realize it's probably really, really bad to breathe.
My understanding is that fiberglass and mineral wool [1] are classified as skin (yes, it itches), eye, and lung irritants (coughing), but they're not carcinogenic. Considering how extremely widely they have been used for a long time, if they were we'd most likely have seen it by now.
Sure it's not good for you, so using PPE is certainly warranted, but it's on a whole different level of badness compared to asbestos.
[1] Per wikipedia, there are some varieties of mineral wool used for high temperatures (think insulating industrial furnaces and such) which are carcinogens.
Trump’s EPA had a plan to reconsider a 2024 ban on chrysotile asbestos, but that was pulled back in July and the EPA will indeed preserve and defend the ban.
From Old French abestos, from Latin asbestos, itself from Ancient Greek ἄσβεστος (ásbestos, “unquenchable, inextinguishable”), from ᾰ̓- (ă-, “not”) + σβέννῡμῐ (sbénnūmĭ, “I quench, quell”).
More likely the town is named after the material, there's an Asbestos in Canada as well. I always get a kick out of cities named like that: Cobalt Ontario, Uranium City, for example.
> name literally comes from the Russian town of Asbest
The other way around, since it's pretty much the reason the town exists, they named it after asbestos.
It's not too unusual in the largest country in the world rich with mineral deposits. Other names might be Slantsy (oil shales), Apatity (apatites) and of course, Nikel
Well, as I gather from information all over, the only danger is if you start to mess with it, like cutting, breaking and such. As then you put the nasty dust airborne.
I have not tried, although I was tempted just out of curiosity -- would it make it through customs and get delivered to me in the US ? The rope and fabric style products should not be that dangerous because they are long fibers that should not break off and float in the air, and the cylinder head gasket material is probably chopped short fibers but it's embedded in a matrix of other stuff.
We probably over regulate the long fiber stuff. The short felt-like fibers we used to mix into plaster, cement, anything needing strength and texture, are probably correctly banned; the risk to reward seems not worth it. Many of those products could use glass fiber just as well.
However, I think the general experience of people exposed to rock or cement dust, basically anything silica based that gets into the lungs, is that is really bad. Handling short chopped mineral fiber of any type seems like something that has to have a huge payoff, like part of a rocket for satillite launches, to be worth it.
This is good to keep in mind because there are some really interesting alternative mineral fiber products out there. Basalt fiber in particular, is sold in a chopped mix for adding to concrete, seems potentially bad. There are some interesting ceramic fibers available too.
When I was nine years old, we moved to an asbestos-mining town for about a year and a half. Sometimes dust settled on our house when they were blasting up at the mine site. It’s closed now and the road into town was decommissioned. It’s a remote place to begin with but I still hear of people making the trek to get in there.
It is but you're mostly thinking of white asbestos, not blue or brown. If you go read about the history of asbestos and links to cancer you will find that while white asbestos isn't good, it's much much less likely to kill you as quickly as brown or blue.
Have a read about Wittenoom in Western Australia. It was a town on the outskirts of a blue asbestos mine, it's absolutely tragic what went on there, kids would be playing in mounds of blue asbestos, many of them tragically died.
This is false actually. asbestos is banned in Russia in residential flat construction (unless it is fully isolated so that it doesn't get inside the space) exactly because it is bad for your lungs. There's limits on how much asbestos can be in the air safely and thry are pretty low
Eternit (асбестоцементный шифер) is absolutely everywhere in Russia, even if banned in residential construction, so the exposure chance is still pretty high.
It is a fact that that type of asbestos is less bad (though still bad). But yes it's true it is common in roofs in russia and probably shouldn't be.
But if roofing material is exposed in your room you're doing something wrong. Also legal limit for asbest dust in air also apply to asbest used in "шифер" (according to wikipedia)
My father just retired as a lab analyst looking at builder samples for both modern and historical construction, specifically for asbestos.
The day I moved into the college dorms he looked at me and said "Don't move the floor tiles, ceilings tiles or the touch the large ventilation pipe outside my door in the hallway." A lot of the buildings at my university were built with asbestos, so much so that the university had a 30 year contract with the lab he worked at to analyze samples.
And it isn't only historical buildings that have asbestos. A very well known mall that was built in the 2000s had incurred some severe hail damage and while the repairs were ongoing samples were taken and found to be hot. Someone had introduced asbestos contaminated materials into the original build and rather than extensive repairs the mall had to do extensive remediation first, before continuing repairs.
Apparently there is still a large stock of "hot" building material that are sitting in warehouses and every once in a while they make it into the supply chain.
> Apparently there is still a large stock of "hot" building material that are sitting in warehouses and every once in a while they make it into the supply chain.
Not working in the industry, what do they actually do with asbestos that has been removed? I presume it can't be 'destroyed', so it needs to be stored indefinitely somewhere where it doesn't cause harm? Dump it in an unused mine shaft and seal the entrance?
Few months ago I called local company that specializes in utilizing asbestos. He explained me on the phone that there are concrete bunkers/boxes in the ground and they just store it there. At least that's how I understood what he was telling me. Eastern Europe.
> Apparently there is still a large stock of "hot" building material that are sitting in warehouses and every once in a while they make it into the supply chain.
I wonder how much of this is because folks in the supply chain might not be aware of what asbestos looks like.
I'm currently working as a PCM analyst looking at samples to identify asbestos. There is a lot out there still, we are busy every week. (technically PCM doesn't identify asbestos, just the number of fibers during abatement, PLM will identify asbestos but that takes a lot longer to process).
Hey, good thread and some really important points here. Lung fibrosis is tough stuff—there’s no magic bullet yet, honestly. What most docs use these days are drugs like nintedanib and pirfenidone—they help slow things down, but yeah, still no cure. Just recently, a new one, nerandomilast got the FDA thumbs-up and people are saying it looks promising for slowing the disease and maybe it’s easier for folks to tolerate. So, couple new options on the table, which is encouraging (finally!).
A lot of people ask about stem cell therapy. It’s a hot topic for sure. The hype is kinda huge, but, well, it’s still experimental for lung fibrosis. There’s early research suggesting stem cells might help repair or regenerate some lung tissue, but big lung organizations say be careful—most of what’s out there for sale isn’t proven and can actually be risky if you’re not in a real clinical trial. Like, it’s cool science, but def not ready for prime time (yet).
New stuff is happening too—like targeted immunotherapies and more advanced cellular therapies. There’s a lot of studies in the works, some in mice, some actually moving into people. So, fingers crossed for more breakthroughs soon.
I was very young, but I remember my grandfather was very afraid to retire from the steel mill where he worked most of his life because those who retired tended to get cancer shortly after and die. Sure enough, a little over a year after his retirement, he got a cold that wouldn't go away, and was diagnosed with cancer and died not too long afterwards.
I've wondered for a long time (based entirely on anecdotal observations) whether some forms of cancer and other illnesses arise more quickly from sudden shifts in daily habit. Sometimes it actually does seem to me like the episode in the Simpsons where Mr. Burns thinks he is invincible.
> I've wondered for a long time (based entirely on anecdotal observations) whether some forms of cancer and other illnesses arise more quickly from sudden shifts in daily habit.
My suspicion here is that a lot of your grandfather's colleagues "felt the need it was time to slow down and enjoy life" could actually have been the beginning stages of some chronic illness. But that's just a guess.
There has been proven a link between smoking cessation and an increased risk of autoimmune diseases [1].
Maybe something related is going on when you quit working with something like asbestos, and once you "settle down", your body is no longer under constant attack, so cancers happen ?
> I've wondered for a long time (based entirely on anecdotal observations) whether some forms of cancer and other illnesses arise more quickly from sudden shifts in daily habit.
Wrt to retirement, it's probably more due to cancer rates in general shooting up in people of retirement age. The body gets less adept at dealing with crap that eventually develops into cancer.
I would love to have known. I would imagine the steel mill would have a larger turnover rate than other places.
The idea of an impact to the body that significantly disrupts the ability to keep it in homeostasis has intrigued me. It’s likely meaningless and my observations are anecdotal, but I keep my eye out for research on it.
My father was a University teacher, and he would get a cold regularly between terms - as if the body knew that it couldn’t ’give in’ until the work period was over.
My mother died from pancreatic cancer 5 months ago when she was 55 years old, 9 months after she started noticing pain and doctors started investigating it.
The worst thing is that she never worked in any hazardous environments, never smoked, never drank alcohol, avoided fried cuisine, avoided GMO-food, she was always eating as much as possible from her own garden, did not use any chemicals, she wasn't obese, she didn't have diabetes, she didn't have any problems with pancreas or any other significant health issues. None of her close relatives had cancer. For the last 30 years she lived in a very clean region that doesn't have any industrial factories/manufactures.
The only possible hazard she had - she worked for 15 years near busy road, where there was a lot of diesel/gas engine exhaust, but I doubt this is related to her pancreatic cancer, as I found normally this affects lungs/respiratory paths. Maybe she was exposed to some agricultural chemicals in her childhood, because she was living near agricultural fields in the Soviet Union, but I doubt she was significantly exposed to it.
I even joked with her that she was living probably the most cancer-cautious life, and still got cancer. So the worst thing for her is that nobody could tell what she did incorrectly to get this illness. It felt very unfair for her.
My sympathies for what must be just an awful time for you —- sporadic pancreatic cancer is just a lurking evil.
My mother died of an unusual form of it, just a little older than yours, when I was in my early twenties. It was terrible.
The only unusual thing was some prior surgery near her pancreas, from twenty years earlier, had apparently had severe scarring that was noticed during surgery to fit a stent.
The thing is that as awful as it was, maybe I personally got through it initially without doing all the grieving, because I thought so much of my grieving had happened after she was diagnosed with such an awful, bleak thing.
In reality I was still dealing with it ten, fifteen years later. Because pre-death grief and post-death grief are different things.
This only really came home to me three and a half years ago when my (elderly) father died after years of moderate dementia; this hit me so hard and continues to weigh on me, and I realised I'd tried to avoid grief when my mother died. I miss my father in a way I never allowed myself to miss my mother, and he had the good long life.
Grief is there whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
It's not blocked in the UK, nor is it because of the OSA.
They decided to withdraw from the UK market as the ICO (not OFCOM, who handle OSA) fined them for mishandling the PII of children, not under the OSA, but under UK’s Children’s Code[1] which is part of the DPA (UK implementation of GDPR into law)
It's ironic that even when the subject is resistance you are looking for a master to tell you what to do. If you want to be free there must be a choice and for there to be a choice there must alternatives.
How *could* we have resisted? What were our options?
This is not just a theorethical complaint. I think there were in practice many different things you (in the plural sense) could have done that could have worked adequately. Too many things to list here, you can look up how other people protested in the past.
Don't tell me what I'm doing, it's very annoying and arrogant. I'm not looking for a master to tell me what to do, I'm asking OP to justify their slight.
As for the many, many things which could have worked in your opinion, people have been resisting the introduction of such laws for years. A common, and correct, refrain on HN is that the people resisting have to win every battle; the people trying to introduce such legislation only need to win one.
All parties supported the OSA (and it's surprisingly popular too) because "something must be done [about the internet], this is something, so this must be done".
It's hardly the stupidest thing British people have voted for in the last two decades, probably not even in the top 5.
Well, we didn't exactly vote for the Online Safety Act. It was introduced by the Tories in 2023 and despite them being voted out in 2024, Labour (Tory-lite) decided to push ahead with the implementation of the draconian law.
However, I don't doubt that a lot of the UK would vote for such a law as most people have a knee-jerk reaction to "won't anyone think of the children?".
The ending is in praise of dads. Wonderful. I lost my dad when I was 8. I still miss him every day. It’s hard to know beforehand how cool it is to watch your kids grow and change. I hope I get to see how cool my kids are in their old age.
I don't really think asbestos is something that needs balance to the conversation. It's like radioactive material, you will most likely not even know that you've had too much exposure until your health is already permanently affected. The illness may manifest a considerable time later so you might not even know what it was. It's very easy to unknowingly be exposed when e.g. renovating a house or other similar arrangements because there is no easy visual way to identify materials containing asbestos.
It absolutely does need balance. Many, if not most older pre 1980 houses in (Norway where I live) have some form of Asbestos in some form, e.g. Eternit, window putty, jointing putty, AIB around fireplaces, or textured paint. Usually these materials are fine if left in place, and it is tricky to avoid these materials when looking for housing since older homes make up a large fraction of our housing stock, especially in my kommune up north.
My own house probably contains some Asbestos, but getting an asbestos survey is very expensive, prohibitively so for people earning the average salary. Not to mention if asbestos is found, it is a further expense to get it removed and cleaned up. The best I can do is send a sample in for testing if I find something risky while renovating myself. Most contractors up here do no care at all if something looks like it may be ACM.
The best thing we can do for people is to provide balanced guidance on where asbestos may be and how much risk does it pose. AIB like Asbestolux is way more dangerous than Eternit is and depending on the location Eternit can remain in place.
Unfortunately if we were to take a zero tolerance approach it would cause more harm than good. How do people pay for remediation? do we all abandon our homes? what happens to the farmers who cannot move? I have no perfect answer here. Asbestos is a hazard no question, but what can we do other than common sense and balance?
> Usually these materials are fine if left in place
Maybe in Norway you need to tell people to chill over it. But the current attitude to asbestos in DIY spaces in the US/UK is far away from that, and a lot closer to “yea go on just tear it out yourself, you’ll be fine if you put on an n95 and spray some water first”.
I think the dominant attitude in the US is to stick your head in the sand. Tons of older homes have asbestos yet almost zero of them report it in their listing or their disclosure report. If you test it and find it you have to report it. If the buyer tests it and finds it, the seller doesn't want to know because then they'd have to report it. Somehow knowing the house has asbestos lowers it's value significantly more than willfully not knowing + almost certainly having it anyways.
Happened to me. Bought a house with wood floors in the basement. We had some flooding which ruined the wood and when we ripped it out to replace, turns out the wood floors were installed over the original asbestos tiles. From what I can tell, the asbestos tiles themselves were of no particular danger to us, but once they got wet and started cracking they had to be removed which cost an additional couple thousand dollars on top of replacing he floors.
Yes because proper asbestos removal is very costly and people don't want to deal with it, your house is going to look like the government coming for ET. Very tempting for a singular homeowner to just read up and rent some ventilation equipment and rip it out themselves on the down low even if dangers are very real. There are some old mental asylums in my hometown, beautiful stone buildings on massive property, they have been sitting vacant and decaying for years because they are full of asbestos and no one wants to deal with it.
The problem with not taking a "zero tolerance" approach is that the problem isn't going to go away. As you say, the asbestos including materials are often best left untouched rather than being removed by a DIYer which may well release the fibres into the air. However, that's just kicking the can down the road as at some point the house will need renovating or rebuilding and that's when the asbestos fibres will be released.
As always, it ends up cheaper to just chuck dangerous materials into the wider environment rather than dealing with them in a responsible manner. It's a shame that we can't retroactively penalise the builders that used so much asbestos.
In Germany, regulations around asbestos are quite strict: You're not allowed to "seal it in" by e.g. putting floor leveling compounds on top of old asbestos-containing flooring. If there's asbestos found during renovations, it needs to be removed professionally.
When we re-did our kitchen we found asbestos-containing glue under a new-ish layer of tiles one of the previous owners of the apartment just laid on top. I wish regulations would already have been stricter back then (and that they would have been followed - another story...) as this surprise find caused massive delays to the construction and forced us to temporarily move out during the removal and decontamination.
One of the best ways to make DIY-ing in buildings built before 1994 (when asbestos was banned for construction in Germany) safe has been to buy a H-filtration class shop vac. It can filter out asbestos fibers and many other fine dust particles that aren't healthy to inhale and was barely more expensive than a comparably good vac.
You can’t punish retroactively, Lex retro non agit.
It’s the lawmakers that create the environment we all work inside of to maximize our profits. There’s probably at least 3 as dangerous as asbestos materials used in current day and we are yet to find out.
Zero tolerance means paralysis, it’s a naive ideal. Look at the recent medical technologies where zero tolerance for unwanted side effects has to be balanced with benefits.
With asbestos, it's not so much a trade-off as it will continue to be a possible hazard unless it's disposed of correctly. I can relate to a homeowner not wanting to pay for testing/removing asbestos ceiling tiles etc. but if they don't then any disruption to those tiles can release potentially lethal fibres into the air (asbestos doesn't have a "safe" dose, so it's not like it can be rationalised with "I only made a small hole in that tile").
Comparison with medical technologies isn't particularly valid as people can choose whether to have that treatment or not, but people can't easily choose whether their house was built with asbestos or not. If a house was already built, then the potential danger is already there and we can either deal with it sensibly or not care about the deadly consequences of releasing it into the environment.
I don't see the logic of not punishing retroactively as companies may have made a lot of profit and then pay nothing towards the clean-up costs - privatise the profit and socialise the costs. The homeowners/tenants are effectively being punished retroactively when they may suspect/discover that their house contains asbestos, so why should the builders (if they are still around) not have to pay?
Maybe there should be extra taxes imposed on industries with a history of environmental abuse to reclaim some of the costs to society.
The EPA’s own documentation states that Asbestos is primarily an occupational hazard. If the fibers are not embedded in a friable material you will not get any significant exposure. Occupational hazards are those encountered routinely by someone engaging in an occupation. So harvey the homeowner isn’t at much increased risk if he removes asbestos himself as long as he takes precautions and cleans up afterward. It’s a fiber and a dust not some magic material that soaks in through your skin. And obviously don’t start a business removing asbestos for people without doing the licensing.
Fiberglass batts are really bad to handle too, and same with gypsum dust and saw dust from cutting manufactured stone countertops. If you do anything indoors you should definitely wear a respirator and full sleeves.
> It’s a fiber and a dust not some magic material that soaks in through your skin
I feel you're being a bit flippant with the known danger of disturbing asbestos containing materials. The dust and fibres are typically too fine to be controlled by a household vacuum cleaner and will require specialist handling to minimise the risk. Yes, the dust isn't absorbed through the skin, but instead is breathed in and enters the lungs where it causes problems.
You're right about using respirators/masks when dealing with dust, but special care needs to be taken with asbestos dust and not all dust masks will protect your lungs from the dust/fibres.
Whether or not specific regulations exist for a particular danger, if a company or individual can be found to be aware of the negative consequences of their use of certain compounds and they don't publicly document those dangers they can (in the US anyway) and should absolutely be held legally accountable for failure to warn.
History is rife with companies/industries who were well aware of the dangers they were creating to people for decades while actively suppressing the evidence of such that they themselves discovered.
Which companies this applies to for Asbestos in particular, I couldn't tell you, but it would be shocking if there weren't lots of bad actors who knew they were bad actors considering there has been research on the dangers of Asbestos since 1927 -- nearly a full century ago.
> retroactively penalise the builders that used so much asbestos
It is not the builders fault, they did not know, but the manufacturers of ACM did for decades! and they were penalized. Most were forced to set up trusts to cover certain expenses in the US, but I am not sure what their scope is.
Yes, that is why when you test positive for asbestos you add a little "a" sticker to the material to notify anyone in the future.
I think you are missing the point. Many people like myself want to take care of it, and would hire a proper crew to take care of it, but we are not wealthy enough to just call in a crew without some financial planning. This is not just an annoying expense, quite a bit more than that.
Unlike radiation, there's no safe asbestos exposure, if you're really unlucky a single strand can screw you up. On the other hand, of all people having worked at asbestos facilities with early 20th century approach to PPE only 20% developed mesothelioma and 10% died from it.
Thinking before swinging your drill will get most people safe enough not to worry about it.
I don't really buy the comparison. If you're really unlucky, you can get cancer from a "safe dose" of radiation.
Low exposures of both things are statistically less likely to hurt you than large doses. We pick a line to call "safe", but completely safety in either case is not guaranteed.
There is a natural level of radioactivity which the body is used to compensate. Small additional doses of radioactivity can therefor be neglected. This is not true for stuff like abestos.
I remember when I was living in Melbourne I read a story about the Wunderlich factory which operated in the suburb of sunshine. Supposedly they left their wast just sitting in the yard (which was very centrally located so people would commonly cut through it). The local kids loved playing in the dusty stuff and on windy days it was apparently like a snowstorm. The factory operated up until the 80s, it is hard to believe.
My partner 10+ years ago used to be very OCD about Asbestos when we had toddlers, and said that she would see tiny white fibers of it in the bark chips at a bunch of parks that the kids were playing at.
Turns out she was correct, its since been found in loads of mulch around Sydney.
We also came across a huge pile of it illegally dumped a bunch of years ago in the sand dunes at Kurnell beach, kids were happily playing in it.
It must be mentioned that this is about blue asbestos, or crocidolite, which is the most dangerous form of asbestos, but was relatively rarely used and the first to be banned. White asbestos (chrysotile) has a much lower risk[1], far more widespread use, and there are still active chrysotile mines in Russia and China.
I overheard a TFL worker talking about the Bakerloo line (here in London) apparently having vast sections of the tunnels covered in asbestos and it would be too expensive and too dangerous to ever remove so every few years they spray the inside of the line with basically glue to stop it from breaking up. I try to avoid taking the Bakerloo line these days...
When I was 18, I demolished an asbestos cement wall - too bad the asbestos aspect was unclear until the work was already finished.
I was only wearing a simple mask and was otherwise unprotected.
Since this event, I have developed an excruciating health anxiety/health OCD disorder that focuses around this event. Realistically I do know that while my risk is non zero, it is exceedingly low. But this non zero chance is what is so evil about OCD and this topic. It is debilitating.
At this point, I know way more about asbestos and related diseases than anyone outside the medical and construction industry should know.
I'm also inclined to overthink this stuff, but please try not to worry so much. You were outdoors, wearing a mask, for one day. This is very different from occupational exposure with no protection over decades.
There are a thousand things that can increase your risk of cancer by 0.001%. Heart disease kills >20X more people than asbestos related illnesses in the US. Focus on being healthy and happy.
I played with pelleted cattle feed as a child in the early 90ies. I still remeber the smell. Not sure if this contained meat and bone meal but it's in the back of my head ever since.
I know its not fashionable, but things like asbestos is the point of regulation.
If you ignore the health effects, asbestos is a fucking brilliant material, strong(if used with a binder) exceptionally fireproof, UV stable and fairly inert.
Why _wouldn't_ you use it? To use modern parlance; only melts wouldn't use it, thats who (this message brought to you by your friendly corporate sponsor...)
The problem is that it still kills now[1]. Because its a time bomb, with a dwell time of well over 10-20 years, its very lard to pin point the cause.
The only way that its _stopped_ being put into building materials is through regulation. The problem now for us, especailly in the UK is the power of regulation is being ablated through incompetence, funding cuts and a concerted effort by those who stand to benefit from a weakened regulatory system.
Most regulation is formed from the blood of victims. We may not _like_ what the regulation is, and lord knows it needs improving. But to not have it, or worst, have it and not be enforced, is a terrible state of affairs.
Luckily thanks to regulation the use of asbestos in new builds has almost completely been eliminated (I'm sure there are some uses somewhere where it's indispensable?), but there's of course a huge number of places where it turns up in all kinds of renovation projects.
In addition to buildings, e.g. ships. Think about a steamship, what material that is fireproof and doesn't rot do you think they used for insulating boilers and steam pipes? One museum ship I'm somewhat familiar with ripped out all the asbestos insulation and replaced it with IIRC mostly mineral or glass wool during a major renovation some years back, just to make it safer for the mostly volunteers who dedicate their time to keep the ship functioning.
Our business leaders have successfully painted shortsightedness, greed, and nihilism as beneficial business traits embraced by adults willing to accept life’s difficult realities.
In reality, only personal and group morality protected our society from such forces, and letting ethics retard profit and growth became seriously uncool in the 80s hippie backlash.
Would you buy a product with asbestos in if it wasn't regulated against? (Assuming we removed all similar regulation so the lack of regulation does not its self imply safety.)
Of course you wouldn't.
We have journalists to uncover dangers like this; they are clearly financially incentivised to do so. We have courts to assess damages. We don't need government regulation.
Such a common trope that "the heartless capitalist doesn't care about harming customers so we need the government to save us". Of course the capitalist cares about harming customers, she needs to sell to them (and their competitors product will be much more successful if it is not harmful!).
And, in either case, regulation or free market will only save us if there are viable alternatives. Fossil fuels still kill people, but we don't regulate against it because there is currently no viable alternative.
I don't know if this comment is one of ignorance, or juvenile "well actually", but it is tragically misinformed. From an Australian perspective all of the big players, CSR, John Mansviille, & James Hardy, knew asbestos was a significant hazard by _at least_ the 40s. There were early epidemiological studies of cancers around asbestos work sites, and workers, in the 50s here in NSW. Unions and gov health departments start to push back on exposure and seek meaningful damages in the 60s and 70s. There were _public_ campaigns about the dangers in the 70s and 80s. It wasnt meaningfully restricted, _and continued to be commonly used_, through the 80s. A complete ban, primarily workplaces IIRC, wasnt introduced until 2003. The randian wank fantasy of "the informed consumer knows best" has been repudiated innumerable times.
And, as others have pointed out, this is not an individual choice. The families who got asbestosis from washing their fathers work clothes didnt make a choice. The bloom of cancers for residential suburbs miles around james hardy in camellia didnt have a choice. There is no expiration date on the dangers of friable asbestos. It remains hidden in the common environment forever, until someone else stumbles on it.
Would you buy a product with asbestos in it if its presence wasn't disclosed? You might, if it provided value vs alternatives.
Manufacturers are successuful when they sell. If their product is found dangerous they a) deny and muddy the waters, b) settle lawsuits and if that doesn't work c) close up shop and open a new business. Customer unwelfare is a cost of business.
Asbestos is hard to hide, certainly competitors of the Asbestos-using company would know they were using Asbestos. They, at least, would have an incentive to advertise how bad their competitors product is because it uses Asbestos.
Equally, once it has been established that Asbestos is harmful any company using it would be so sued that they would quickly cease to exist.
Yes the free market doesn't stop health risks immediately but neither does regulation (see: asbestos!)
Both regulation and an actually healthy free market are important.
Both have pros and cons
Regulation sucks at directing productions of goods and setting prices, distributing these tasks to the people generally works better.
The free market is unstable though, its actors ever trying to gain advantage and squash competition. Profit first driven people too often push harm to humans as out of mind and externalized.
This is where regulation is needed. (read as: we the people need rules to protect what we deem important, including our health and having a well-functioning society, profits be damned)
Would you tell people your product has asbestos in it, if it wasn’t regulated that you had to? Of course you wouldn’t. And then, apparently, you would blame your customer for buying it.
No doubt when electric cars become better in every way than fossil fuel cars, the government will create a regulation banning fossil fuel cars. Everyone will rejoice that the government stopped those horrible fossil-fuel burning cars! Of course, the vast majority of people would have switched to the electric cars at this point anyway.
Internal memos from 1970s - 2000s reveal knowledge of asbestos traces. Executives, better known as caring capitalists, resisted disclosure.
In case you think this isn’t a pattern: Purdue and Oxy, General Motors and their ignitions switches, DuPont and “confirmed animal carcinogen” Teflon, Philip Morris’ cigarette campaigns, VWs dieselgate…
Each of them found to be suppressing knowledge knowingly harming consumers.
Yes of course it is in their interest to lie / hide until it becomes public knowledge. But regulation has the exact same problem (hence why Asbestos was not regulated for a long time, same with your other examples).
When it is widely known (and therefore can be regulated) it is already too late as it's now in the producers interest to cease producing it.
Heavy litigation after the fact can disincentivise the lying in the first place. If legislation doesn't not allow for this (e.g. because of time limitations) then it should be amended.
All successful markets in history have been regulated to some degree. A market requires sellers AND buyers and buyers will flock to a market where they're not burdened with the cost and expense of having to do their own research and investigation before even considering a purchase, never mind actually completing a trade.
Completely unregulated markets simply don't scale in terms of successful trading - the regulation replaces the work each buyer would have to do and thus is actually more efficient than having each buyer replicate the work of the regulator. This is why they have been out-competed by regulated markets in the course of history.
I don’t understand your point - there’s no symmetry there.
Regulated venues dominate nearly every sphere of trading in terms of volume.
They have done this by being more attractive to buyers and sellers than unregulated venues - i.e. regulated venues have out-competed unregulated venues.
In the market for trading venues, regulated venues have won.
Attempts to reopen the mine and sell asbestos to the developing world under a new brand caught the attention of the Daily Show leading to some train wreck coverage that ultimately led to them changing the name of the town.
It is fun, that is my hometown. And I know 0 person who died from Asbestosis. My father student job was to stack bags of Asbestos on train and my grand-father worked at the mine his whole life. I guess it's the transformed form that is dangerous not the raw form.
My mom's father died in his early 30's while working as an engineer for Mack Trucks in Hagerstown, Maryland in the '50s and '60s and my mom, to this day, attributes his rapid health decline to mesothelioma/industrial asbestos exposure.
Even if OT, I would take the chance to remember the great sicilian hacker Asbesto, that I never had the honour to know personally, for what represented for the hacker culture in Italy. And for his aweson woodcraft mastery. May R.I.P.
Asbestos is genuinely more terrifying then nuclear radiation.
If something is radioactive then a Geiger counter will tell you at a distance, it'll even triangulate it.
Asbestos? It can be everywhere and the only way to know is to collect samples, pay $100 a piece to a lab to do phase contrast microscopy and wait.
Then do it again the next time you find something suspicious.
And once you've cleaned it out..well hope your handling was good coz who knows if you got it all - without collecting a lot of samples and testing again.
My house has a few asbestos pieces, and in digging up the yard I've pulled a huge amount of asbestos fiber cement from cheap renovations by previous owners - the stuff was about 10 cm below the surface.
Its carcinogenic “modus operandi” is also completely different to anything else. Asbestos is chemically inert, so how does is cause cancer? The tiny crystalline needles puncture cells, sometimes during cell division, and strands of dna will get tangled up and result in messed up genetics.
Yes and I would like to add, it is all about the "dose". It is a common misconception that tangled DNA will automatically lead to spreading cancer.
Per day a normal person develops tangled up dna cells in the hundreds, that is a normal process, but the immune system can handle it without problems and can get rid of it (unfortunately not always). So with Asbestos it is all about the dose too. Although a relative small amount could be already _potential_ harmful.
IIRC, asbestos does not directly cause cells to become cancerous, but it is an irritant that reawakens cancerous cells the body had forced into dormancy.
I'm not a doctor or researcher in that field, but my understanding is that cancer is not 'one disease', but rather a huge number of different diseases which mostly have in common that they develop some kind of tumors.
That's also one reason why progress in cancer research and drug development is so slow. 'Fix' one cancer, and what you've developed likely has little effect on the zillion other cancer variants.
Mesothelioma caused by asbestos is only a single disease. It has a known cause. It has been well researched. The causal links are clear: prevention is the answer. It doesn't matter that other cancers are different diseases, that is irrelevant to mesothelioma caused by asbestos.
Yes, I agree with all of the above. I was just pointing out that cancer from asbestos being different from other cancers isn't so unique since a lot of cancers are different from all other cancers.
I went on this trip too, and while yes asbestos is bad, white asbestos (by far the most common type, mined and used) is way less likely to cause the type of damage you're describing, brown and blue asbestos are more inline with what you describe. But even then, people who lived in Wittenoom, WA are still alive today.
When I was younger, my dad had me help him repair the roof of the shed by getting on top of it, putting these sorts of flexible sheets over the old corrugated ones (that are made of asbestos cement) and driving nails through the top one all the way until it'd hit the wood frame underneath.
Now, asbestosis is more common in long term exposure so it might be fine, but not bothering to tell me to wear a respirator and the ignorance after I brought it up years later makes me disgusted. So now I have to wonder whether decades later I'll have complications without clear ways to address them.
1. driving nails into it won't release as many particles as cutting or similar activities would
2. the fact that there's a flexible sheet on top of the asbestos one means that the only exposure would typically be through the created hole through which the nail is being driven, or the sides of the sheet, so it should be sealed off enough anyways
3. since the activity took place in fresh air instead of indoors, the wind (even though there wasn't much of it) should take care of any particles that are left
I get the reasoning, but at the same time, it's bad that he made that judgement call himself and couldn't be bothered to tell me. Like, at least give me the information and give me the choice on how to proceed, I would have much preferred to wear a mask instead. It's a bit like riding a bike, helmets are there for a good reason, even if the choice whether to wear them is (or should be) yours.
The reasoning does seem... reaaonable. But in this case it's likely not reasoning but rather its guilt-laden doppleganger: rationalization after the fact. Very common in my family, especially the confident/proud ones, including myself.
I try to recognize when I realize I'm doing it, stop, apologize for the deception that it is, and commit to more sincere communication.
Alternatively, regularly informing your family of each infinitesimal danger in this world is a path to neurosis or estrangement. There is a balance, and in some cases non-disclosure does feel the right path (to me).
Yup, agreed. His reasoning is sound except the choice should be yours. I have the feeling that the older generation is a bit more callous with safety and health. The comparison with motorcycles is apt, because I've read about similar generational issues in the motorcyclegear subreddit.
> The company mined asbestos-bearing rock at several sites in South Africa
"In South Africa" is not very specific.
it seems to have been firstly in this remote in the remote Northern Cape where "The mine eventually became the largest crocidolite mine in the world" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koegas_mine
It seems it was mostly to the north all over the Northern Cape, followed by Limpopo and Mpumalanga.
Apparently South Africa was the world's second-largest market-economy producer of asbestos from the 1950s to the 1980s and the largest producer of amosite and crocidolite (I had to google those and it appears among asbestos there are a few different types/lengths of fibers).
The big mines all closed around 1992/98, with a complete cessation of all asbestos mining in 2002/3. I found this scanned document from the University of Cape Town that goes into detail on the discovery, mining and a few epidemics as they called them:
https://vula.uct.ac.za/access/content/group/9c29ba04-b1ee-49...
The numbers are crazy, for example in 1931 mill workers (in a sample of 100) only 14% had more than 5 years of service (the single longest having been there for 9 years). "Yet every worker experienced a cough productive of mucoid sputum, 72% suffered dyspnea on exertion and 47% reported loss of weight".
In less than 1 year 36% showed early signs, 9% advanced signs, 45% any abnormal sign.
In 3 years that went up to 55%, 24% and 79% respectively;
and by 5-9 years 36%, 64% and 100%.
Our house has an asbestos flue in the bathroom. I'm very careful never to go near that thing, and never ever to cut/drill/attempt to remove it myself. But I wonder how many people would never know it was asbestos.
If you leave asbestos alone it's safe, and if you need to drill into it, use shaving cream so that the fibers don't get into the air. It's not a big deal if you are careful. But don't be reckless - you need to know what you are drilling into and do it slowly.
The cancer causing mechanism of asbestos is mechanical. A single strand in the wrong place could cut your DNA up. With any probabilistic process the more exposure the more chances and the greater the likelihood.
No, they did know. Already in the 19th century it was discovered an high rate of mortality amongst asbestos workers.
In France, 1893, we had the first laws about factory dusts levels.
1906, everyone knew.
Here is a rough translation of a France sénat Report :
> It was in 1906 that the first cases of fibrosis were discovered among spinning mill workers.
> The 1906 Labor Inspection Bulletin published a document entitled "Note on the Hygiene and Safety of Workers in Asbestos Spinning and Weaving Mills," by Mr. Auribault, departmental labor inspector in Caen 11 ( * ).
> Denis Auribault noted: "In 1890, an asbestos spinning and weaving factory was established near Condé-sur-Noireau (Calvados). During the first five years of operation, there was no artificial ventilation to directly evacuate the siliceous dust produced by the various looms; this total failure to comply with hygiene rules 12 ( * ) resulted in numerous deaths among the staff: around fifty workers died during the aforementioned period."
> Thus, as early as 1906, the link between exposure to asbestos fibres and the occurrence of occupational deaths was clearly established.
https://www.senat.fr/rap/r05-037-1/r05-037-1_mono.html#toc28
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