5 ms·

"all levels of asbestos exposure studied to date have demonstrated asbestos-related disease ... there is no level of [asbestos] exposure below which clinical ef

"all levels of asbestos exposure studied to date have demonstrated asbestos-related disease ... there is no level of [asbestos] exposure below which clinical effects do not occur" https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/81-103/pdfs/81-103.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/81-103/pdfs/81-103.pdf

xienze 8y ago
> However, in general, people who become ill from inhaling asbestos have been regularly exposed in a job where they worked directly with the material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos > Asbestos can be found naturally in the air outdoors and in some drinkable water, including water from natural sources. Even nonoccupationally exposed members of the human population have tens to hundreds of thousands of asbestos fibers per gram of dry lung tissue, equivalent to millions of fibers in each lung. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos#Environmental_asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos#Envi... OMG we're all gonna get mesothelioma from the asbestos that is normally found outdoors, unrelated to man-made activity! Again, I stand by what I said. The risks of asbestos to ordinary people are way overblown. It has to be loose and you have to be exposed to a lot of it for a long period of time. Regular people are fine. Edit: ya know people, you could respond to the specific claims instead of pressing the "I disagree" button. Is asbestos a dangerous substance? Yes, in certain circumstances. Are those circumstances something normal people need to be concerned about? No, not unless you work with the substance every day and without proper precautions.
- docker_up 8y ago
  People are downvoting because they believe what they've been told for decades from the media and late night lawyers commercials but this is the scientific fact. Non-friable asbestos is not dangerous, and people who don't work with it on a constant basis are not at risk. Those people who work with asbestos over longer periods of time are the ones who are at risk. A handful of exposures to friable asbestos will not give you lung cancer. This is the same belief/religion with high salt or high fat diets. People have grown up for so long with those beliefs because we have been indoctrinated that when new science comes up that disproves the above, they disbelieve the science.
  - pastor_elm 8y ago
    >A handful of exposures to friable asbestos will not give you lung cancer Simply not a claim you can make. The incidence may be very low, but it has been proven that asbestos fibers are directly responsible for the creation of cancerous mesothelioma cells. Any number of fibers in your lungs 'may' cause cancer, even one.
    - docker_up 8y ago
      > it has been proven that asbestos fibers are directly responsible for the creation of cancerous mesothelioma cells. This is also a claim you simply cannot make. Every chemical has a toxicity level. A single x-ray could give you lung cancer if you're unlucky. Just because there's a claim floating around that a single fiber could cause cancer is meaningless. Was this in a test tube or a lab environment? Every day, millions of your own body cells are developing cancer because the DNA is being misreplicated during mitosis. But you have structures in your body that fight against this cancer and destroy those cells. You're saying, without any evidence, that your body can't fight a few microscopic fibers? Remember, any number of x-rays, including dental x-rays, could also cause cancer but you don't see people banning x-rays.
      - shadofx 8y ago
        Radiation has known degrees of safety. https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=10098 https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_tab... >There is no "safe" level of asbestos exposure for any type of asbestos fiber. https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/ https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/
      - thawkins 8y ago
        Chemicals can have levels of dilution, where below a certain level it ceases to be a threat. Diluted in air, or in liquids. You cant dilute a fibre.... This is also the same reason why nanoparticles are such a threat.
        8y ago
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  So your argument is, because people get mesothelioma from living near natural deposits of asbestos, we should put more of the stuff in our homes? "What's a little more cancer?" Your own source material shows just living near asbestos gives you higher risk of cancer. You're trying to argue that we aren't at significant risk without prolonged exposure. Living with asbestos is prolonged exposure. Increasing the amount used in products that we all live around/near will increase the risk and incidence of cancers.
  - gus_massa 8y ago
    Smoke detectors have a radioactive source, and we put them inside our homes, because the radiation level is so low that the increase of the risk is minimal. Walls have a tiny amount of radioactive material, but they protect you from the radiation of the exterior. I don't know if the walls increase or decrease your cancer risk. There are many thinks that may cause cancer. It's important to calculate the risk of each one, because you can't avoid all of them.
    - shadofx 8y ago
      https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/ https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/ The difference between asbestos and radiation is that there is no "safe" amount of asbestos exposure, according to OSHA.
    - falcolas 8y ago
      Nit: most smoke detectors don't use radioactive materials anymore - they are inferior to the infrared sensors that operate on the same principals.
    - peterwwillis 8y ago
      If 55 other developed nations can ban use of asbestos, we can too. There's no need to calculate the risk if we can just avoid it entirely. Why poison yourself if you don't need to?
    - zaarn 8y ago
      Only industrial smoke alarms use radioactive sources and even then only some types (you need different types for different situations). The radioactivity in a smoke alarm is already negligible when you hold it in your hand, never mind when it's mounted on a ceiling. Additionally the americium-241 used in smoke detectors is mainly alpha decay and a sheet of paper will stop it, the remaining radiation that is dangerous is gamma and it's exposure is so far below annual average background that you might not even bother. Flying in a plane will expose you to a thousand times more radiation.
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  Are you here on some kind of political mission? You're not making scientific claims, you're picking single sentences out from a context that backs up the actual scientific claims made the by the actual scientific paper posted by the person you're replying to. Why pretend that we can't click on the same wikipedia link as you and read the paragraphs surrounding the quoted and impressively vague "However, in general..." sentence. At least, I gotta thank you for pointing out a needlessly vague an slanted statement in wikipedia. It should be removed or amended with the figures that follow elsewhere.
  - xienze 8y ago
    > Are you here on some kind of political mission? No, I'm just annoyed that people seem to treat a statement of fact, that asbestos in your floor tiles or walls is a grave risk to people who don't work around it all day is so controversial. > Why pretend that we can't click on the same wikipedia link as you and read the paragraphs surrounding the quoted and impressively vague "However, in general..." sentence. Did you click on it though? Because you would've seen this immediately after: > A paper published in 1998, in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, concurs, and comments that asbestosis has been reported primarily in asbestos workers, and appears to require long-term exposure, high concentration for the development of the clinical disease. Which again, supports my original statement.
    - ilikehurdles 8y ago
      “Primarily” and “generally” means 70-80% here, based on the actual figures, not 99.5% which is what it sounds like you want people to think. That’s a huge amount of people affected not working in construction.
- mtw 8y ago
  In the same wikipedia article >A history of asbestos exposure at work is reported in about 70 percent to 80 percent of all cases. This means in 20 to 30 percent of all cases, health effects occur in subjects who do not have periodic exposure to asbestos at work. 20 to 30 percent is not negligible.
- mikestew 8y ago
  Edit: ya know people, you could respond to the specific claims instead of pressing the "I disagree" button. I pressed the "made a reasonable argument, even if I disagree, and backed it up with some sources" button. More folks would do well to choose that one more often over other choices.
- RobertRoberts 8y ago
  There seems to be group think present even here on HN. I don't downvote comments if that at least attempt to make a coherent argument with supporting facts. But, when I got rid of asbestos insulation around some water pipes I followed every precaution. But many people seem to think chlorine isn't toxic because it's so common. Note: There is _no_ known antidote to chlorine poisoning. (an example of how there is a toxin around us everyday, in our drinking water, in our pools, on our clothes, cleaning products, etc...) Why is there no outrage over this? https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/chlorine/basics/facts.asp https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/chlorine/basics/facts.asp More on asbestos many people may not know that I got from the same wikipedia entry. "Portions of El Dorado County, California are known to contain natural amphibole asbestos formations at the surface. The USGS studied amphiboles in rock and soil in the area in response to an EPA sampling study and subsequent criticism of the EPA study. The EPA study was refuted by its own peer reviewers and never completed or published." "Globally, samples collected from Antarctic ice indicate chrysotile asbestos has been a ubiquitous contaminant of the environment for at least 10,000 years." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos#Environmental_asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos#Envi...
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Does persistent low-level exposure to chlorine cause health problems?
    - RobertRoberts 8y ago
      That's a good question, does it? I know that there was a time when not a single doctor in the world believed there was such a thing as latex allergy. My family is in the chemical business and my father (chemist) won't put chlorine in his pool, he uses a bromide of some kind. But, if something is popular (asbestos was at one point) it must be just fine.
      - CydeWeys 8y ago
        This is argument based on a counter-factual though. Chlorine as used for keeping our water supply safe does appear to be warranted (i.e. the benefits outweigh the costs), whereas the use of asbestos is the other way around; the health effects clearly outweigh the benefits. Public policy should be based around what we know, not what you wish to be true but isn't.
- Kurtz79 8y ago
  Because your arguments are ridiculous, and you are referencing directly to material that points out very clearly that exposure to asbestos carries a risk of health hazard, for the people exposed. "In general" people who become ill from inhaling asbestos have been regularly exposed in a job where they worked directly with the material ??? If there is even the risk that a single person could fall ill because of unintentional exposure, then it should be ground enough for a blanket ban. It's like saying that smoking should be allowed again in public places, since "in general", people that get cancer are first-hand smokers.
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago
  Both of the following statements statements are true: > there is no level of [asbestos] exposure below which clinical effects do not occur > in general, people who become ill from inhaling asbestos have been regularly exposed in a job where they worked directly with the material If minimal exposure causes small effects, and maximal exposure - loose, lots of it, long periods of time - causes huge effects, you would expect the people who interact with it most to show the most severe symptoms. That does not mean the small effects are not present, only that they're smaller than the large effects. For an analogy, poking people with a penknife is not a healthy activity. Just because most people who die from or who go to the hospital for knife wounds were stabbed with larger knives does not mean we should promote poking people with small knives, and suggest that knife wounds are only bad if you're stabbed with large fixed-blade knives many times. Being worst in the latter case does not mean that they're benign in the former case. A headline that law enforcement are now allowing people to stab each other with small knives would be ridiculous.
  - LeifCarrotson 8y ago
    On reading sibling comments, I note that there's an important counter-analogy which I neglected to mention: Many things do have minimum exposure levels below which they are safe. Various medicines, for example - an appropriate dose is good for you, overdosing will kill you.
- SeanAppleby 8y ago
  > Asbestos can be found naturally in the air outdoors and in some drinkable water, including water from natural sources. Even nonoccupationally exposed members of the human population have tens to hundreds of thousands of asbestos fibers per gram of dry lung tissue, equivalent to millions of fibers in each lung. If you're using this as an argument that increased asbestos exposure has no correlation to negative health outcomes, then you are contradicting the scientific literature for the sake of making a naturalistic fallacy. Why are you doing that? It's just a strange attempt at an argument. > OMG we're all gonna get mesothelioma from the asbestos that is normally found outdoors, unrelated to man-made activity! Again, because something appears in nature does not mean that it isn't positively correlated to negative health outcomes and that we shouldn't minimize it. That just point blank is not an actual argument. If you want to make an argument for your position you will need to cite research that increased asbestos exposure does not significantly increase negative health outcomes, which will be hard because it's well studied and the research is pretty conclusively against you. To illucidate why your argument isn't valid at a basic level, you can apply it to other things. Cyanide is present in almond plants and a byproduct of metabolizing apple seeds. Does that mean we should lax regulations around how much we systematically increase people's exposure to cyanide? What about radiation? People are exposed to ionizing background radiation every day. Do you think that somehow means that increasing that radiation exposure won't increase rates of cancer?
  - hpcjoe 8y ago
    The study linked in the article itself, indicates that the current state of scientific understanding is that water born and skin contact are not significant issues for asbestos, and the primary concern is inhalation. Took me only 5 minutes to find it looking through the docs. I am not agreeing with the GP on their theory of "overblown". Asbestos initiated cancers seem to be some of those with no known threshold. That is, there is no safe amount of asbestos dust inhalation above which you get cancer. I am disagreeing with your statement on the scientific literature and consensus. As far as I know (not my field, so I am an outsider looking at literature), there is no strong consensus either way. There are hypotheses that need deeper looks [1][2][3][4][5]. That is, it looks like there may be something there, but the investigators can't as of yet, distinguish between this as causal versus other factors. This does not mean I think it is safe to ingest a bowl of asbestos followed by an asbestos flavored adult drink. What it does mean is that evidence is inconclusive, though there are a few pathways researchers could imagine would make sense as a causative. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28276807 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28276807 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27919155 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27919155 [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15820729 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15820729 [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3304998 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3304998 [5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21534087 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21534087 [minor update to add a missing "be" ]
- b0bbins 8y ago
  My father, a Systems Analyst, had the misfortune to spend 18 months in the late sixties working on a site where a new Air-Conditioning system was being installed and lagged with Chrysotile (White Asbestos.) Thirteen years later he was dead due to mesothelioma. His "regular job" did not involve working directly with the material and Asbestos continues to kill hundreds of pople each year who do not directly work with this material. https://www.teachers.org.uk/edufacts/asbestos https://www.teachers.org.uk/edufacts/asbestos
TimTheTinker 8y ago
That is a 1980 pamphlet, not a scientific paper. OP is right -- there is a lower limit of acceptable asbestos exposure that is not well known. All the asbestos-related mesothelioma cases were from workplace exposure for an extended period (more than two months). Furthermore, there are two major forms of asbestos that have widely varying effects. Chrysotile has been shown to not be harmful in small doses. (That's the stuff that you'll find in popcorn ceilings installed prior to 1974.) "Inhalation toxicity studies of chrysotile at non-lung overload conditions demonstrate that the long (>20 µm) fibers are rapidly cleared from the lung, are not translocated to the pleural cavity and do not initiate fibrogenic response." Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/

xienze 8y ago

> However, in general, people who become ill from inhaling asbestos have been regularly exposed in a job where they worked directly with the material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos > Asbestos can be found naturally in the air outdoors and in some drinkable water, including water from natural sources. Even nonoccupationally exposed members of the human population have tens to hundreds of thousands of asbestos fibers per gram of dry lung tissue, equivalent to millions of fibers in each lung. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos#Environmental_asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos#Envi... OMG we're all gonna get mesothelioma from the asbestos that is normally found outdoors, unrelated to man-made activity! Again, I stand by what I said. The risks of asbestos to ordinary people are way overblown. It has to be loose and you have to be exposed to a lot of it for a long period of time. Regular people are fine. Edit: ya know people, you could respond to the specific claims instead of pressing the "I disagree" button. Is asbestos a dangerous substance? Yes, in certain circumstances. Are those circumstances something normal people need to be concerned about? No, not unless you work with the substance every day and without proper precautions.

docker_up 8y ago
People are downvoting because they believe what they've been told for decades from the media and late night lawyers commercials but this is the scientific fact. Non-friable asbestos is not dangerous, and people who don't work with it on a constant basis are not at risk. Those people who work with asbestos over longer periods of time are the ones who are at risk. A handful of exposures to friable asbestos will not give you lung cancer. This is the same belief/religion with high salt or high fat diets. People have grown up for so long with those beliefs because we have been indoctrinated that when new science comes up that disproves the above, they disbelieve the science.
- pastor_elm 8y ago
  >A handful of exposures to friable asbestos will not give you lung cancer Simply not a claim you can make. The incidence may be very low, but it has been proven that asbestos fibers are directly responsible for the creation of cancerous mesothelioma cells. Any number of fibers in your lungs 'may' cause cancer, even one.
  - docker_up 8y ago
    > it has been proven that asbestos fibers are directly responsible for the creation of cancerous mesothelioma cells. This is also a claim you simply cannot make. Every chemical has a toxicity level. A single x-ray could give you lung cancer if you're unlucky. Just because there's a claim floating around that a single fiber could cause cancer is meaningless. Was this in a test tube or a lab environment? Every day, millions of your own body cells are developing cancer because the DNA is being misreplicated during mitosis. But you have structures in your body that fight against this cancer and destroy those cells. You're saying, without any evidence, that your body can't fight a few microscopic fibers? Remember, any number of x-rays, including dental x-rays, could also cause cancer but you don't see people banning x-rays.
    - shadofx 8y ago
      Radiation has known degrees of safety. https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=10098 https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_tab... >There is no "safe" level of asbestos exposure for any type of asbestos fiber. https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/ https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/
    - thawkins 8y ago
      Chemicals can have levels of dilution, where below a certain level it ceases to be a threat. Diluted in air, or in liquids. You cant dilute a fibre.... This is also the same reason why nanoparticles are such a threat.
      - 8y ago
peterwwillis 8y ago
So your argument is, because people get mesothelioma from living near natural deposits of asbestos, we should put more of the stuff in our homes? "What's a little more cancer?" Your own source material shows just living near asbestos gives you higher risk of cancer. You're trying to argue that we aren't at significant risk without prolonged exposure. Living with asbestos is prolonged exposure. Increasing the amount used in products that we all live around/near will increase the risk and incidence of cancers.
- gus_massa 8y ago
  Smoke detectors have a radioactive source, and we put them inside our homes, because the radiation level is so low that the increase of the risk is minimal. Walls have a tiny amount of radioactive material, but they protect you from the radiation of the exterior. I don't know if the walls increase or decrease your cancer risk. There are many thinks that may cause cancer. It's important to calculate the risk of each one, because you can't avoid all of them.
  - shadofx 8y ago
    https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/ https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/asbestos/ The difference between asbestos and radiation is that there is no "safe" amount of asbestos exposure, according to OSHA.
  - falcolas 8y ago
    Nit: most smoke detectors don't use radioactive materials anymore - they are inferior to the infrared sensors that operate on the same principals.
  - peterwwillis 8y ago
    If 55 other developed nations can ban use of asbestos, we can too. There's no need to calculate the risk if we can just avoid it entirely. Why poison yourself if you don't need to?
  - zaarn 8y ago
    Only industrial smoke alarms use radioactive sources and even then only some types (you need different types for different situations). The radioactivity in a smoke alarm is already negligible when you hold it in your hand, never mind when it's mounted on a ceiling. Additionally the americium-241 used in smoke detectors is mainly alpha decay and a sheet of paper will stop it, the remaining radiation that is dangerous is gamma and it's exposure is so far below annual average background that you might not even bother. Flying in a plane will expose you to a thousand times more radiation.
ilikehurdles 8y ago
Are you here on some kind of political mission? You're not making scientific claims, you're picking single sentences out from a context that backs up the actual scientific claims made the by the actual scientific paper posted by the person you're replying to. Why pretend that we can't click on the same wikipedia link as you and read the paragraphs surrounding the quoted and impressively vague "However, in general..." sentence. At least, I gotta thank you for pointing out a needlessly vague an slanted statement in wikipedia. It should be removed or amended with the figures that follow elsewhere.
- xienze 8y ago
  > Are you here on some kind of political mission? No, I'm just annoyed that people seem to treat a statement of fact, that asbestos in your floor tiles or walls is a grave risk to people who don't work around it all day is so controversial. > Why pretend that we can't click on the same wikipedia link as you and read the paragraphs surrounding the quoted and impressively vague "However, in general..." sentence. Did you click on it though? Because you would've seen this immediately after: > A paper published in 1998, in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, concurs, and comments that asbestosis has been reported primarily in asbestos workers, and appears to require long-term exposure, high concentration for the development of the clinical disease. Which again, supports my original statement.
  - ilikehurdles 8y ago
    “Primarily” and “generally” means 70-80% here, based on the actual figures, not 99.5% which is what it sounds like you want people to think. That’s a huge amount of people affected not working in construction.
mtw 8y ago
In the same wikipedia article >A history of asbestos exposure at work is reported in about 70 percent to 80 percent of all cases. This means in 20 to 30 percent of all cases, health effects occur in subjects who do not have periodic exposure to asbestos at work. 20 to 30 percent is not negligible.
mikestew 8y ago
Edit: ya know people, you could respond to the specific claims instead of pressing the "I disagree" button. I pressed the "made a reasonable argument, even if I disagree, and backed it up with some sources" button. More folks would do well to choose that one more often over other choices.
RobertRoberts 8y ago
There seems to be group think present even here on HN. I don't downvote comments if that at least attempt to make a coherent argument with supporting facts. But, when I got rid of asbestos insulation around some water pipes I followed every precaution. But many people seem to think chlorine isn't toxic because it's so common. Note: There is _no_ known antidote to chlorine poisoning. (an example of how there is a toxin around us everyday, in our drinking water, in our pools, on our clothes, cleaning products, etc...) Why is there no outrage over this? https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/chlorine/basics/facts.asp https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/chlorine/basics/facts.asp More on asbestos many people may not know that I got from the same wikipedia entry. "Portions of El Dorado County, California are known to contain natural amphibole asbestos formations at the surface. The USGS studied amphiboles in rock and soil in the area in response to an EPA sampling study and subsequent criticism of the EPA study. The EPA study was refuted by its own peer reviewers and never completed or published." "Globally, samples collected from Antarctic ice indicate chrysotile asbestos has been a ubiquitous contaminant of the environment for at least 10,000 years." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos#Environmental_asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impact_of_asbestos#Envi...
- mikeash 8y ago
  Does persistent low-level exposure to chlorine cause health problems?
  - RobertRoberts 8y ago
    That's a good question, does it? I know that there was a time when not a single doctor in the world believed there was such a thing as latex allergy. My family is in the chemical business and my father (chemist) won't put chlorine in his pool, he uses a bromide of some kind. But, if something is popular (asbestos was at one point) it must be just fine.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      This is argument based on a counter-factual though. Chlorine as used for keeping our water supply safe does appear to be warranted (i.e. the benefits outweigh the costs), whereas the use of asbestos is the other way around; the health effects clearly outweigh the benefits. Public policy should be based around what we know, not what you wish to be true but isn't.
Kurtz79 8y ago
Because your arguments are ridiculous, and you are referencing directly to material that points out very clearly that exposure to asbestos carries a risk of health hazard, for the people exposed. "In general" people who become ill from inhaling asbestos have been regularly exposed in a job where they worked directly with the material ??? If there is even the risk that a single person could fall ill because of unintentional exposure, then it should be ground enough for a blanket ban. It's like saying that smoking should be allowed again in public places, since "in general", people that get cancer are first-hand smokers.
LeifCarrotson 8y ago
Both of the following statements statements are true: > there is no level of [asbestos] exposure below which clinical effects do not occur > in general, people who become ill from inhaling asbestos have been regularly exposed in a job where they worked directly with the material If minimal exposure causes small effects, and maximal exposure - loose, lots of it, long periods of time - causes huge effects, you would expect the people who interact with it most to show the most severe symptoms. That does not mean the small effects are not present, only that they're smaller than the large effects. For an analogy, poking people with a penknife is not a healthy activity. Just because most people who die from or who go to the hospital for knife wounds were stabbed with larger knives does not mean we should promote poking people with small knives, and suggest that knife wounds are only bad if you're stabbed with large fixed-blade knives many times. Being worst in the latter case does not mean that they're benign in the former case. A headline that law enforcement are now allowing people to stab each other with small knives would be ridiculous.
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago
  On reading sibling comments, I note that there's an important counter-analogy which I neglected to mention: Many things do have minimum exposure levels below which they are safe. Various medicines, for example - an appropriate dose is good for you, overdosing will kill you.
SeanAppleby 8y ago
> Asbestos can be found naturally in the air outdoors and in some drinkable water, including water from natural sources. Even nonoccupationally exposed members of the human population have tens to hundreds of thousands of asbestos fibers per gram of dry lung tissue, equivalent to millions of fibers in each lung. If you're using this as an argument that increased asbestos exposure has no correlation to negative health outcomes, then you are contradicting the scientific literature for the sake of making a naturalistic fallacy. Why are you doing that? It's just a strange attempt at an argument. > OMG we're all gonna get mesothelioma from the asbestos that is normally found outdoors, unrelated to man-made activity! Again, because something appears in nature does not mean that it isn't positively correlated to negative health outcomes and that we shouldn't minimize it. That just point blank is not an actual argument. If you want to make an argument for your position you will need to cite research that increased asbestos exposure does not significantly increase negative health outcomes, which will be hard because it's well studied and the research is pretty conclusively against you. To illucidate why your argument isn't valid at a basic level, you can apply it to other things. Cyanide is present in almond plants and a byproduct of metabolizing apple seeds. Does that mean we should lax regulations around how much we systematically increase people's exposure to cyanide? What about radiation? People are exposed to ionizing background radiation every day. Do you think that somehow means that increasing that radiation exposure won't increase rates of cancer?
- hpcjoe 8y ago
  The study linked in the article itself, indicates that the current state of scientific understanding is that water born and skin contact are not significant issues for asbestos, and the primary concern is inhalation. Took me only 5 minutes to find it looking through the docs. I am not agreeing with the GP on their theory of "overblown". Asbestos initiated cancers seem to be some of those with no known threshold. That is, there is no safe amount of asbestos dust inhalation above which you get cancer. I am disagreeing with your statement on the scientific literature and consensus. As far as I know (not my field, so I am an outsider looking at literature), there is no strong consensus either way. There are hypotheses that need deeper looks [1][2][3][4][5]. That is, it looks like there may be something there, but the investigators can't as of yet, distinguish between this as causal versus other factors. This does not mean I think it is safe to ingest a bowl of asbestos followed by an asbestos flavored adult drink. What it does mean is that evidence is inconclusive, though there are a few pathways researchers could imagine would make sense as a causative. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28276807 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28276807 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27919155 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27919155 [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15820729 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15820729 [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3304998 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3304998 [5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21534087 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21534087 [minor update to add a missing "be" ]
b0bbins 8y ago
My father, a Systems Analyst, had the misfortune to spend 18 months in the late sixties working on a site where a new Air-Conditioning system was being installed and lagged with Chrysotile (White Asbestos.) Thirteen years later he was dead due to mesothelioma. His "regular job" did not involve working directly with the material and Asbestos continues to kill hundreds of pople each year who do not directly work with this material. https://www.teachers.org.uk/edufacts/asbestos https://www.teachers.org.uk/edufacts/asbestos

TimTheTinker 8y ago

That is a 1980 pamphlet, not a scientific paper. OP is right -- there is a lower limit of acceptable asbestos exposure that is not well known. All the asbestos-related mesothelioma cases were from workplace exposure for an extended period (more than two months). Furthermore, there are two major forms of asbestos that have widely varying effects. Chrysotile has been shown to not be harmful in small doses. (That's the stuff that you'll find in popcorn ceilings installed prior to 1974.) "Inhalation toxicity studies of chrysotile at non-lung overload conditions demonstrate that the long (>20 µm) fibers are rapidly cleared from the lung, are not translocated to the pleural cavity and do not initiate fibrogenic response." Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/