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My building still has some asbestos pipes. Removing that stuff can be expensive and annoying, so it is usually delayed again and again.
by mkl95 3y ago
My building still has some asbestos pipes. Removing that stuff can be expensive and annoying, so it is usually delayed again and again.
- Sharlin 3y agoThey're essentially harmless as long as they're in there. Removing the stuff is the dangerous part.
- elromulous 3y agoHarmless, until some contractor accidently disturbs it, and people have to have their home vacated (just happened to a friend of mine). That story might just be an anecdote, but the US has really normalized the "it's ok to live with poison, just don't awaken it". Same with lead pipes, lead paint, etc. Government remediation is long overdue. This is a price we pay as a society, we should treat it as a society.
- anonuser123456 3y agoPretty harmless to the building occupants. The contractor is at risk it they are doing it everyday for a decade.
- wtfwhateven 3y agono, it's dangerous for everyone, not just contractors.
- alex_lav 3y agoCare to explain?
- usrusr 3y agoIf it's dangerously unknown to the contractor, chances are inhabitants won't know better. The contractor only exposed for a few hours, inhabitants live there.
- anonuser123456 3y agoAverage construction zone concentrations of ACM during demolition hover around 1fcc. It can be higher for some specific cases (zonolite or high concentration asbestos insulation) but for general things like contaminated drywall, duct wrapping etc it is generally low. This is during actual demolition of ACM mind you, not just disturbing a little drywall here and there. When disturbance is completed, concentrations fall of with the air exchange rate and clear usually with 24-48 hours back to background levels. Diluting that by the volume of the entire building not under construction would generally put that at or below the 0.1fcc OSHA limit without PP. The OSHA limits assume 1 extra cancer death/300 workers for someone with maximum exposure limits for 8 hours per day, 250 days / year for 30 years. That is to say… A contractor spending a day kicking up asbestos results in 1/7500th ish of the dose required to cause an excess of 1/300 deaths. And this assumes that acute low exposures hold the same linear dose response rate as high dosage chronic exposure. That is a controversial assumption in the literature. My information is based on reading over 50 asbestos related journal articles, EPA and OSHA policy documents etc. From all the informarion available, it’s just not that big a deal for the average building occupant.
- dangus 3y agoContractor disturbs aesbestos, HVAC systems could spread the particles around the whole building. That's a simple example.
- alex_lav 3y agoExcellent. It’s nice to see a comment with more substance than “nu uh”.
- zipping1549 3y agoIt's as harmless as a defective WW2 grenade in a garage.
- anonuser123456 3y agoSaid no epidemiologist ever.
- andbberger 3y agoidk "it's in a bucket forever" sounds like a pretty good remediation strategy to me. dollar-for-dollar that government money probably has more impactful things to do. eg plastering public spaces in cities with bollards (see the awful awful west portal crash)
- akira2501 3y ago> Harmless, until some contractor accidently disturbs it, and people have to have their home vacated (just happened to a friend of mine). That's inconvenience. Which was systematically invoked because the harms are well understood and tended to.
- faeriechangling 3y agoThis is a community based out of San Francisco, the once city levelled by the San Andreas Fault. Accepting low probability dangers to reduce costs is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff.
- nicup12345689 3y ago[flagged]
- fckgw 3y agoWhat?
- Reason077 3y agoThe hazard with most asbestos is when it’s disturbed: usually by construction, repairs, renovation work, etc. As long as it doesn’t need to be disturbed by such work, and the hazard is well known/well marked to anyone contemplating it, in many cases the lowest-risk option is just to leave it be.
- Dalewyn 3y agoAlso known by this age old wisdom: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. For another point of comparison: Asbestos has been banned in new construction in Japan for a long time, but asbestos in old construction are all still there. They are only dealt with when the building is demolished, because the risk of just leaving it there is close to nil.
- alistairSH 3y ago…the hazard is well known/well marked to anyone contemplating it But is it always marked? Or can a homeowner demo a wall and find themselves with lung cancer?
- 1123581321 3y agoYes and no are essentially the answers to your questions.
- randerson 3y agoWhat about earthquakes?