32 ms·

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'v

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?
- ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
  The problem with not taking a "zero tolerance" approach is that the problem isn't going to go away. As you say, the asbestos including materials are often best left untouched rather than being removed by a DIYer which may well release the fibres into the air. However, that's just kicking the can down the road as at some point the house will need renovating or rebuilding and that's when the asbestos fibres will be released. As always, it ends up cheaper to just chuck dangerous materials into the wider environment rather than dealing with them in a responsible manner. It's a shame that we can't retroactively penalise the builders that used so much asbestos.
  - cts-i-cts-d 1y ago
    You can’t punish retroactively, Lex retro non agit. It’s the lawmakers that create the environment we all work inside of to maximize our profits. There’s probably at least 3 as dangerous as asbestos materials used in current day and we are yet to find out. Zero tolerance means paralysis, it’s a naive ideal. Look at the recent medical technologies where zero tolerance for unwanted side effects has to be balanced with benefits. What isn’t a trade-off?
    - georgemcbay 1y ago
      Whether or not specific regulations exist for a particular danger, if a company or individual can be found to be aware of the negative consequences of their use of certain compounds and they don't publicly document those dangers they can (in the US anyway) and should absolutely be held legally accountable for failure to warn. History is rife with companies/industries who were well aware of the dangers they were creating to people for decades while actively suppressing the evidence of such that they themselves discovered. Which companies this applies to for Asbestos in particular, I couldn't tell you, but it would be shocking if there weren't lots of bad actors who knew they were bad actors considering there has been research on the dangers of Asbestos since 1927 -- nearly a full century ago.
    - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
      With asbestos, it's not so much a trade-off as it will continue to be a possible hazard unless it's disposed of correctly. I can relate to a homeowner not wanting to pay for testing/removing asbestos ceiling tiles etc. but if they don't then any disruption to those tiles can release potentially lethal fibres into the air (asbestos doesn't have a "safe" dose, so it's not like it can be rationalised with "I only made a small hole in that tile"). Comparison with medical technologies isn't particularly valid as people can choose whether to have that treatment or not, but people can't easily choose whether their house was built with asbestos or not. If a house was already built, then the potential danger is already there and we can either deal with it sensibly or not care about the deadly consequences of releasing it into the environment. I don't see the logic of not punishing retroactively as companies may have made a lot of profit and then pay nothing towards the clean-up costs - privatise the profit and socialise the costs. The homeowners/tenants are effectively being punished retroactively when they may suspect/discover that their house contains asbestos, so why should the builders (if they are still around) not have to pay? Maybe there should be extra taxes imposed on industries with a history of environmental abuse to reclaim some of the costs to society.
- lazyasciiart 1y ago
  > Usually these materials are fine if left in place Maybe in Norway you need to tell people to chill over it. But the current attitude to asbestos in DIY spaces in the US/UK is far away from that, and a lot closer to “yea go on just tear it out yourself, you’ll be fine if you put on an n95 and spray some water first”.
  - ghtbircshotbe 1y ago
    I think the dominant attitude in the US is to stick your head in the sand. Tons of older homes have asbestos yet almost zero of them report it in their listing or their disclosure report. If you test it and find it you have to report it. If the buyer tests it and finds it, the seller doesn't want to know because then they'd have to report it. Somehow knowing the house has asbestos lowers it's value significantly more than willfully not knowing + almost certainly having it anyways.
    - thinkharderdev 1y ago
      Happened to me. Bought a house with wood floors in the basement. We had some flooding which ruined the wood and when we ripped it out to replace, turns out the wood floors were installed over the original asbestos tiles. From what I can tell, the asbestos tiles themselves were of no particular danger to us, but once they got wet and started cracking they had to be removed which cost an additional couple thousand dollars on top of replacing he floors.
    - mrbombastic 1y ago
      Yes because proper asbestos removal is very costly and people don't want to deal with it, your house is going to look like the government coming for ET. Very tempting for a singular homeowner to just read up and rent some ventilation equipment and rip it out themselves on the down low even if dangers are very real. There are some old mental asylums in my hometown, beautiful stone buildings on massive property, they have been sitting vacant and decaying for years because they are full of asbestos and no one wants to deal with it.
    - lazyasciiart 1y ago
jojobas 1y ago
Unlike radiation, there's no safe asbestos exposure, if you're really unlucky a single strand can screw you up. On the other hand, of all people having worked at asbestos facilities with early 20th century approach to PPE only 20% developed mesothelioma and 10% died from it. Thinking before swinging your drill will get most people safe enough not to worry about it.
- FlyingAvatar 1y ago
  I don't really buy the comparison. If you're really unlucky, you can get cancer from a "safe dose" of radiation. Low exposures of both things are statistically less likely to hurt you than large doses. We pick a line to call "safe", but completely safety in either case is not guaranteed.
  - nkmnz 1y ago
    There is a natural level of radioactivity which the body is used to compensate. Small additional doses of radioactivity can therefor be neglected. This is not true for stuff like abestos.
    - jojobas 1y ago
      There is even the "hormesis hypothesis" which posits that low levels above background might be beneficial for human health.
    - userbinator 1y ago
      There are actually naturally occurring asbestos fibers in the air, caused by weathering of asbestos-containing rocks.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

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?

ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
The problem with not taking a "zero tolerance" approach is that the problem isn't going to go away. As you say, the asbestos including materials are often best left untouched rather than being removed by a DIYer which may well release the fibres into the air. However, that's just kicking the can down the road as at some point the house will need renovating or rebuilding and that's when the asbestos fibres will be released. As always, it ends up cheaper to just chuck dangerous materials into the wider environment rather than dealing with them in a responsible manner. It's a shame that we can't retroactively penalise the builders that used so much asbestos.
- cts-i-cts-d 1y ago
  You can’t punish retroactively, Lex retro non agit. It’s the lawmakers that create the environment we all work inside of to maximize our profits. There’s probably at least 3 as dangerous as asbestos materials used in current day and we are yet to find out. Zero tolerance means paralysis, it’s a naive ideal. Look at the recent medical technologies where zero tolerance for unwanted side effects has to be balanced with benefits. What isn’t a trade-off?
  - georgemcbay 1y ago
    Whether or not specific regulations exist for a particular danger, if a company or individual can be found to be aware of the negative consequences of their use of certain compounds and they don't publicly document those dangers they can (in the US anyway) and should absolutely be held legally accountable for failure to warn. History is rife with companies/industries who were well aware of the dangers they were creating to people for decades while actively suppressing the evidence of such that they themselves discovered. Which companies this applies to for Asbestos in particular, I couldn't tell you, but it would be shocking if there weren't lots of bad actors who knew they were bad actors considering there has been research on the dangers of Asbestos since 1927 -- nearly a full century ago.
  - ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
    With asbestos, it's not so much a trade-off as it will continue to be a possible hazard unless it's disposed of correctly. I can relate to a homeowner not wanting to pay for testing/removing asbestos ceiling tiles etc. but if they don't then any disruption to those tiles can release potentially lethal fibres into the air (asbestos doesn't have a "safe" dose, so it's not like it can be rationalised with "I only made a small hole in that tile"). Comparison with medical technologies isn't particularly valid as people can choose whether to have that treatment or not, but people can't easily choose whether their house was built with asbestos or not. If a house was already built, then the potential danger is already there and we can either deal with it sensibly or not care about the deadly consequences of releasing it into the environment. I don't see the logic of not punishing retroactively as companies may have made a lot of profit and then pay nothing towards the clean-up costs - privatise the profit and socialise the costs. The homeowners/tenants are effectively being punished retroactively when they may suspect/discover that their house contains asbestos, so why should the builders (if they are still around) not have to pay? Maybe there should be extra taxes imposed on industries with a history of environmental abuse to reclaim some of the costs to society.
lazyasciiart 1y ago
> Usually these materials are fine if left in place Maybe in Norway you need to tell people to chill over it. But the current attitude to asbestos in DIY spaces in the US/UK is far away from that, and a lot closer to “yea go on just tear it out yourself, you’ll be fine if you put on an n95 and spray some water first”.
- ghtbircshotbe 1y ago
  I think the dominant attitude in the US is to stick your head in the sand. Tons of older homes have asbestos yet almost zero of them report it in their listing or their disclosure report. If you test it and find it you have to report it. If the buyer tests it and finds it, the seller doesn't want to know because then they'd have to report it. Somehow knowing the house has asbestos lowers it's value significantly more than willfully not knowing + almost certainly having it anyways.
  - thinkharderdev 1y ago
    Happened to me. Bought a house with wood floors in the basement. We had some flooding which ruined the wood and when we ripped it out to replace, turns out the wood floors were installed over the original asbestos tiles. From what I can tell, the asbestos tiles themselves were of no particular danger to us, but once they got wet and started cracking they had to be removed which cost an additional couple thousand dollars on top of replacing he floors.
  - mrbombastic 1y ago
    Yes because proper asbestos removal is very costly and people don't want to deal with it, your house is going to look like the government coming for ET. Very tempting for a singular homeowner to just read up and rent some ventilation equipment and rip it out themselves on the down low even if dangers are very real. There are some old mental asylums in my hometown, beautiful stone buildings on massive property, they have been sitting vacant and decaying for years because they are full of asbestos and no one wants to deal with it.
  - lazyasciiart 1y ago

jojobas 1y ago

Unlike radiation, there's no safe asbestos exposure, if you're really unlucky a single strand can screw you up. On the other hand, of all people having worked at asbestos facilities with early 20th century approach to PPE only 20% developed mesothelioma and 10% died from it. Thinking before swinging your drill will get most people safe enough not to worry about it.

FlyingAvatar 1y ago
I don't really buy the comparison. If you're really unlucky, you can get cancer from a "safe dose" of radiation. Low exposures of both things are statistically less likely to hurt you than large doses. We pick a line to call "safe", but completely safety in either case is not guaranteed.
- nkmnz 1y ago
  There is a natural level of radioactivity which the body is used to compensate. Small additional doses of radioactivity can therefor be neglected. This is not true for stuff like abestos.
  - jojobas 1y ago
    There is even the "hormesis hypothesis" which posits that low levels above background might be beneficial for human health.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    There are actually naturally occurring asbestos fibers in the air, caused by weathering of asbestos-containing rocks.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]