8 ms·

Asbestosis

288 points by zeristor 1y ago

XorNot 1y ago
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.
- CheeseFromLidl 1y ago
  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.
  - Aldipower 1y ago
    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.
  - jabl 1y ago
    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.
    - bregma 1y ago
      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.
      - jabl 1y ago
        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.
  - anovikov 1y ago
    It's not at all uncommon. Virtually everything that has tiny sharp pieces in it, will work like that. Graphene for instance.
    - CheeseFromLidl 1y ago
      You’re correct. Iirc the blueish smoke from car tires share a similar property.
  - bfkwlfkjf 1y ago
    Which cheese from Lidl do you recommend? I'm in the UK.
  - ortusdux 1y ago
    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.
- emmelaich 1y ago
  If it's intact and below surface the risk is far lower. You have to worry about airborne asbestos. Not saying you should ignore it but don't dig it up without knowing what you're in for.
- bamboozled 1y ago
  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.
deleted 1y ago
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KaiserPro 1y ago
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. [1]https://neu.org.uk/latest/library/what-real-risk-asbestos-schools https://neu.org.uk/latest/library/what-real-risk-asbestos-sc...
- DrewADesign 1y ago
  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.
- jabl 1y ago
  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.
pac0 1y ago
> 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…
- irjustin 1y ago
  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.
  - p0w3n3d 1y ago
    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
    - seper8 1y ago
      Buddy if you're 27 and already describe your life as very tired, there's more going on than pure aging...
      - MattRix 1y ago
        I mean yeah, that’s literally what he’s saying: He’s saying he’s very tired because of his children, especially how they keep him up at night.
aidos 1y ago
It comes up a lot on the diyuk subreddit so they have pinned mega thread about it. I like it to give a little balance to the conversation. https://www.reddit.com/r/DIYUK/comments/133jq4r/the_is_this_asbestos_megathread/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DIYUK/comments/133jq4r/the_is_this_...
- Etheryte 1y ago
  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.
  - Atomic_Torrfisk 1y ago
    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?
bschwindHN 1y ago
I recently came across this unfortunate promotion for asbestos from back in the day: https://imgur.com/V1QcX7I https://imgur.com/V1QcX7I
- bjobjobjo 1y ago
  And I just found this related passage in the Wikipedia article: > More than 1,000 tons of asbestos are thought to have been released into the air following the buildings' destruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos
- beejiu 1y ago
  It's unfortunate this article is about the UK and Imgur has blocked the UK because of the Online Safety Act :(
  - sva_ 1y ago
    I wouldn't blame Imgur for that, but the UK gov + people who elected them/didn't resist.
    - beejiu 1y ago
      Oh yes, please don't think I was blaming Imgur!
    - rwmj 1y ago
      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.
      - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
        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?".
taneq 1y ago
[flagged]
wewewedxfgdf 1y ago
Plenty of people die from asbestos exposure when renovating their house.
- hanspeter 1y ago
  This is an interesting claim. How many is plenty and what are the sources to back this?
- rwmj 1y ago
  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.
  - sgt 1y ago
    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.
- yanslookup 1y ago
  This is not factual. 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.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    This is not factual. 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.
- Atomic_Torrfisk 1y ago
  Source? Usually it is just tradesmen who worked with it directly, or their wives.
krbaccord94f 1y ago
Designing the way to route amplifiers in aesbesto attic, which is one element for compressed exposure to respitory disease.
zeristor 1y ago
I posted diamondgeezer’s blog post on High Street to HackerNews some time ago, and he was most bemused by the HackerNews effect on his website. I’ve also just posted his great article on British Summer Time, I would have that would have been more popular; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710093
spiderfarmer 1y ago
To believe that governments as recent as the first Trump administration wanted to protect the asbestos industry: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-administration-pulls-back-plan-to-rewrite-asbestos-ban https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-administration-p...
KronisLV 1y ago
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.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bartvk 1y ago
  By now, the dangers of asbestos are well known. What was his reasoning about being ignorant?
  - KronisLV 1y ago
    His reasoning, the way he told me, was that: 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.
    - bartvk 1y ago
      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.
enricotr 1y ago
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.
SideburnsOfDoom 1y ago
> 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koegas_mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos_Mountains 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.jonathansteele https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/sep/15/weekend...
- animal531 1y ago
  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-49b9-8c85-9a468b556ce2/DOh/Module%204%20_Toxom%20II_/toxom2/REHRLICH/felix.pdf 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%.
fidotron 1y ago
Relatedly, Asbestos used to be a place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val-des-Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val-des-Sources 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.
- pmlarocque 1y ago
  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.
wincy 1y ago
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).
- meindnoch 1y ago
  As they say, the main export of Russia is suffering. Both figuratively and literally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy3piCUPIkc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy3piCUPIkc
  - jiggawatts 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - hammock 1y ago
      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.
      - jiggawatts 1y ago
        [flagged]
  - Ray20 1y ago
    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.
bigrex 1y ago
[flagged]
tibbydudeza 1y ago
I had a garden shed with an asbestos roof when we moved in - the first renovation was to get rid of it entirely.
truelson 1y ago
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. Here’s to workers rights and living longer.
ryukoposting 1y ago
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. https://www.michiganlcv.org/case/no-compensation-victims-toxic-dioxin-exposure/ https://www.michiganlcv.org/case/no-compensation-victims-tox... https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/midwest/2023/01/30/705228.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/midwest/2023/01/30/705...
- exasperaited 1y ago
  > 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.)
  - ikr678 1y ago
    Engineered stone benchtops/products have already been banned in Australia due to this.
rudimentary_phy 1y ago
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.
- LambdaComplex 1y ago
  Were all the retirees retiring at a certain point? E.g. 20 years after starting
  - rudimentary_phy 1y ago
    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.
- PlunderBunny 1y ago
  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.
  - bamboozled 1y ago
    This is an interesting phenomenon which I personally experience too. If I have something really important going on, I basically don't get sick, when I finally kick my feet up, I just seem to get hammered with a bad cold or flu. I also think it's interesting how my body seems to understand when I can't poop, like if I'm in a train or something without a toilet and just doesn't seem to bother until I tell it it's ok.
olologin 1y ago
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.
- exasperaited 1y ago
  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.
  - olologin 1y ago
    I am sorry for your loss as well, it was even harder for you in twenties.
    - exasperaited 1y ago
      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.
cycomanic 1y ago
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.
- EarthMephit 1y ago
  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.
userbinator 1y ago
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. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/
moribvndvs 1y ago
Great article to reinforce my unease at finding asbestos tiles while remodeling a bedroom.
worik 1y ago
In New Zealand the consolidation of much agri business left many huge buildings vacant throughout the rural back country and in industrial suburbs They would be fabulous, many of them for repurpossing, but because asbestos it is financially impossible to do anything with them. So they rot. Some burn, which I imagine releases the asbestos into the atmosphere It is such a waste
andy_ppp 1y ago
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...
knappe 1y ago
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.
- bryant 1y ago
  > 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.
- marak830 1y ago
  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).
  - SpicyUme 1y ago
    Interesting, I had some vermiculite removed recently and got a response from the ZAI trust that the samples had fibers but they couldn't say specifically that it was asbestos. I assumed that was a legal distinction, it didn't occur to me that it might be from different test methods.
timzaman 1y ago
What if i told you, that having your dad until 34 is a blessing?
jd3 1y ago
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.
aucisson_masque 1y ago
> 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. https://www.senat.fr/rap/r05-037-1/r05-037-1_mono.html#toc28 https://www.senat.fr/rap/r05-037-1/r05-037-1_mono.html#toc28
teddyX 1y ago
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. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/news-events-human-drugs/fda-approves-drug-treat-idiopathic-pulmonary-fibrosis https://www.fda.gov/drugs/news-events-human-drugs/fda-approv... https://stemcellthailand.org/therapies/idiopathic-pulmonary-fibrosis-ipf/ https://stemcellthailand.org/therapies/idiopathic-pulmonary-... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59093-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59093-7
p0pularopinion 1y ago
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.
- port3000 1y ago
  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.
- omnibrain 1y ago
  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.

288 points by zeristor 1y ago

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.

CheeseFromLidl 1y ago
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.
- Aldipower 1y ago
  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.
- jabl 1y ago
  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.
  - bregma 1y ago
    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.
    - jabl 1y ago
      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.
- anovikov 1y ago
  It's not at all uncommon. Virtually everything that has tiny sharp pieces in it, will work like that. Graphene for instance.
  - CheeseFromLidl 1y ago
    You’re correct. Iirc the blueish smoke from car tires share a similar property.
- bfkwlfkjf 1y ago
  Which cheese from Lidl do you recommend? I'm in the UK.
- ortusdux 1y ago
  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.
emmelaich 1y ago
If it's intact and below surface the risk is far lower. You have to worry about airborne asbestos. Not saying you should ignore it but don't dig it up without knowing what you're in for.
bamboozled 1y ago
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.

deleted 1y ago

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KaiserPro 1y ago

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. [1]https://neu.org.uk/latest/library/what-real-risk-asbestos-schools https://neu.org.uk/latest/library/what-real-risk-asbestos-sc...

DrewADesign 1y ago
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.
jabl 1y ago
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.

pac0 1y ago

> 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…

irjustin 1y ago
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.
- p0w3n3d 1y ago
  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
  - seper8 1y ago
    Buddy if you're 27 and already describe your life as very tired, there's more going on than pure aging...
    - MattRix 1y ago
      I mean yeah, that’s literally what he’s saying: He’s saying he’s very tired because of his children, especially how they keep him up at night.

aidos 1y ago

It comes up a lot on the diyuk subreddit so they have pinned mega thread about it. I like it to give a little balance to the conversation. https://www.reddit.com/r/DIYUK/comments/133jq4r/the_is_this_asbestos_megathread/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DIYUK/comments/133jq4r/the_is_this_...

Etheryte 1y ago
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.
- Atomic_Torrfisk 1y ago
  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?

bschwindHN 1y ago

I recently came across this unfortunate promotion for asbestos from back in the day: https://imgur.com/V1QcX7I https://imgur.com/V1QcX7I

bjobjobjo 1y ago
And I just found this related passage in the Wikipedia article: > More than 1,000 tons of asbestos are thought to have been released into the air following the buildings' destruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos
beejiu 1y ago
It's unfortunate this article is about the UK and Imgur has blocked the UK because of the Online Safety Act :(
- sva_ 1y ago
  I wouldn't blame Imgur for that, but the UK gov + people who elected them/didn't resist.
  - beejiu 1y ago
    Oh yes, please don't think I was blaming Imgur!
  - rwmj 1y ago
    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.
    - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
      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?".

taneq 1y ago

[flagged]

wewewedxfgdf 1y ago

Plenty of people die from asbestos exposure when renovating their house.

hanspeter 1y ago
This is an interesting claim. How many is plenty and what are the sources to back this?
rwmj 1y ago
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.
- sgt 1y ago
  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.
yanslookup 1y ago
This is not factual. 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.
- pixl97 1y ago
  This is not factual. 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.
Atomic_Torrfisk 1y ago
Source? Usually it is just tradesmen who worked with it directly, or their wives.

krbaccord94f 1y ago

Designing the way to route amplifiers in aesbesto attic, which is one element for compressed exposure to respitory disease.

zeristor 1y ago

I posted diamondgeezer’s blog post on High Street to HackerNews some time ago, and he was most bemused by the HackerNews effect on his website. I’ve also just posted his great article on British Summer Time, I would have that would have been more popular; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710093

spiderfarmer 1y ago

To believe that governments as recent as the first Trump administration wanted to protect the asbestos industry: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-administration-pulls-back-plan-to-rewrite-asbestos-ban https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-administration-p...

KronisLV 1y ago

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.

deleted 1y ago
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bartvk 1y ago
By now, the dangers of asbestos are well known. What was his reasoning about being ignorant?
- KronisLV 1y ago
  His reasoning, the way he told me, was that: 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.
  - bartvk 1y ago
    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.

enricotr 1y ago

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.

SideburnsOfDoom 1y ago

> 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koegas_mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos_Mountains 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.jonathansteele https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/sep/15/weekend...

animal531 1y ago
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-49b9-8c85-9a468b556ce2/DOh/Module%204%20_Toxom%20II_/toxom2/REHRLICH/felix.pdf 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%.

fidotron 1y ago

Relatedly, Asbestos used to be a place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val-des-Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val-des-Sources 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.

pmlarocque 1y ago
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.

wincy 1y ago

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).

meindnoch 1y ago
As they say, the main export of Russia is suffering. Both figuratively and literally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy3piCUPIkc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy3piCUPIkc
- jiggawatts 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - hammock 1y ago
    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.
    - jiggawatts 1y ago
      [flagged]
- Ray20 1y ago
  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.

bigrex 1y ago

[flagged]

tibbydudeza 1y ago

I had a garden shed with an asbestos roof when we moved in - the first renovation was to get rid of it entirely.

truelson 1y ago

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. Here’s to workers rights and living longer.

ryukoposting 1y ago

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. https://www.michiganlcv.org/case/no-compensation-victims-toxic-dioxin-exposure/ https://www.michiganlcv.org/case/no-compensation-victims-tox... https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/midwest/2023/01/30/705228.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/midwest/2023/01/30/705...

exasperaited 1y ago
> 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.)
- ikr678 1y ago
  Engineered stone benchtops/products have already been banned in Australia due to this.

rudimentary_phy 1y ago

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.

LambdaComplex 1y ago
Were all the retirees retiring at a certain point? E.g. 20 years after starting
- rudimentary_phy 1y ago
  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.
PlunderBunny 1y ago
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.
- bamboozled 1y ago
  This is an interesting phenomenon which I personally experience too. If I have something really important going on, I basically don't get sick, when I finally kick my feet up, I just seem to get hammered with a bad cold or flu. I also think it's interesting how my body seems to understand when I can't poop, like if I'm in a train or something without a toilet and just doesn't seem to bother until I tell it it's ok.

olologin 1y ago

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.

exasperaited 1y ago
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.
- olologin 1y ago
  I am sorry for your loss as well, it was even harder for you in twenties.
  - exasperaited 1y ago
    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.

cycomanic 1y ago

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.

EarthMephit 1y ago
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.

userbinator 1y ago

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. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3581056/

moribvndvs 1y ago

Great article to reinforce my unease at finding asbestos tiles while remodeling a bedroom.

worik 1y ago

In New Zealand the consolidation of much agri business left many huge buildings vacant throughout the rural back country and in industrial suburbs They would be fabulous, many of them for repurpossing, but because asbestos it is financially impossible to do anything with them. So they rot. Some burn, which I imagine releases the asbestos into the atmosphere It is such a waste

andy_ppp 1y ago

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...

knappe 1y ago

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.

bryant 1y ago
> 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.
marak830 1y ago
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).
- SpicyUme 1y ago
  Interesting, I had some vermiculite removed recently and got a response from the ZAI trust that the samples had fibers but they couldn't say specifically that it was asbestos. I assumed that was a legal distinction, it didn't occur to me that it might be from different test methods.

timzaman 1y ago

What if i told you, that having your dad until 34 is a blessing?

jd3 1y ago

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.

aucisson_masque 1y ago

> 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. https://www.senat.fr/rap/r05-037-1/r05-037-1_mono.html#toc28 https://www.senat.fr/rap/r05-037-1/r05-037-1_mono.html#toc28

teddyX 1y ago

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. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/news-events-human-drugs/fda-approves-drug-treat-idiopathic-pulmonary-fibrosis https://www.fda.gov/drugs/news-events-human-drugs/fda-approv... https://stemcellthailand.org/therapies/idiopathic-pulmonary-fibrosis-ipf/ https://stemcellthailand.org/therapies/idiopathic-pulmonary-... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59093-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59093-7

p0pularopinion 1y ago

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.

port3000 1y ago
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.
omnibrain 1y ago
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.