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.
[1]https://neu.org.uk/latest/library/what-real-risk-asbestos-sc...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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[0] - Subject to the typical rules about age of adulthood, to not overcomplicate this.
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.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DIYUK/comments/133jq4r/the_is_this_...
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?
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.
Thinking before swinging your drill will get most people safe enough not to worry about it.
> More than 1,000 tons of asbestos are thought to have been released into the air following the buildings' destruction.
It's hardly the stupidest thing British people have voted for in the last two decades, probably not even in the top 5.
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?".
How many is plenty and what are the sources to back this?
Asbestos is not kryptonite. One time exposure is not going to have short term or long term impact to your health.
There is a lot of FUD around asbestos, check out all of the panicked posts on reddit.
I’ve also just posted his great article on British Summer Time, I would have that would have been more popular;
Now, asbestosis is more common in long term exposure so it might be fine, but the idiocy of not bothering to tell me to wear a respirator and 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
"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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos_Mountains
It predictably wasn't consequence-free at that end either, see the later parts of article. And many other sources, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/sep/15/weekend...
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.
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).
XorNot•2h ago
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.
CheeseFromLidl•2h ago
Aldipower•2h ago
jabl•1h ago
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.
bregma•1h ago
anovikov•1h ago
CheeseFromLidl•24m ago
bfkwlfkjf•44m ago
emmelaich•2h ago
Not saying you should ignore it but don't dig it up without knowing what you're in for.