Paul Brodeur, journalist who exposed asbestos hazards, dies at 92
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
I would watch guys I worked with stand in a cloud of dust cutting up 4'x8' sheets of asbestos. I'd offer them my respirator and they'd refuse. They considered that to be unmanly and made a point to give me shit over that.
A few years into that work I convinced the engineers who'd designed those asbestos heat shields to use galvanized sheet metal, which is what the OEM used and we removed. It was less expensive, easier to fabricate and install, and it worked a lot better.
I owe Paul Brodeur a lot, and so do many others.
He's nearly 80, and has had many points of exposure throughout his life. He's mentally as sharp as he's ever been, but his body is failing him as he fights this disease.
His remaining time in this world is likely measured in days, or weeks.
He's alive but not living. It's a condition I wouldn't wish on anyone.
I don't agree with the take away. My parents told me my whole life "don't do drugs", and so I didn't. And no one in the family was into drugs.
What's my point? Not sure. I guess I also hate lies with a passion, and additionally there's multiple ways to get the outcome of not getting your kids to do X. I don't know what it is, but some kids when you tell them "don't do X", they want to do X. I guess you and I, luckily, aren't like that, and I suspect maybe that's a large part of why your parents "don't smoke" thing had an affect on you.
I know everyone says it, but I think "kids do the opposite" is pop-psych BS. I've never met a balanced a person who'd say "I just did the opposite of what my parents told me". I only know of examples where invariably the kids are disturbed also in other ways, and so it's impossible to disentangle cause and effect.
People just repeat nonsense they hear with no basis whatsoever, and so BS propagates.
> Susan Fowler writes, "Beware that such strategies [of reverse psychology] can backfire. Children can sense manipulation a mile away." She instead recommends leading by example.
https://archive.org/details/rbmsbk_ap2-v4_1954_V08N3/page/n3...
My father worked in asbestos abatement projects, along with cleaning up other kinds of HAZMAT. I doubt that this is a mere coincidence.
People with prolonged exposure to sawdust have a 16% chance of getting cancer.
Asbestos is dangerous but not nearly as dangerous as most people think.
It's well-known that both asbestos and wood dust (especially hardwood dust) are carcinogens, but (for example) mesothelioma is very bad and does not require heavy, prolonged exposure — brief and/or low-level exposure has been shown to cause it too. Additionally, inhaled asbestos fibers can remain in the lungs and pleural lining for decades. In contrast, the human body can expel wood dust over time.
Link?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4243788/
Workers with heavy exposure to asbestos have a similar risk of lung cancer as persons with low or no exposure 20 years after the exposure has ended.
13% risk is a number controlling out other factors. Cancer is a numbers game and as a person living your life you stack the risks together.
Trying to rhetorically minimize the danger of this stuff by comparing it to sawdust is specious and gross. Exposure to sawdust is a narrow occupational hazard easily mitigated with PPE. Exposure to asbestos is a much broader - use of baby powder, serving on a ship, working in a boiler room, working as a mechanic, etc. Its a very broad risk that most workers didn’t even realize they were exposed to - just their presence was a risk.
So is the other figure, so the comparison is valid. Maybe wood dust is more dangerous that you assume?
BTW, the asbestos in baby powder had nothing to do with industrial use of asbestos. It was in the talc because asbestos and talc are frequently coincident in the ground.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/07/24/1189745...
I'd never heard of these either. These other books about microwaves and power lines, the titles seem a bit too dramatic and click-baity, which makes me skeptical. But kinda curious if there's any evidence of such coverups.
It’s a call for government regulators who aren’t industry pushovers and conservative evaluation and approval approaches to novel materials. We need a system that won’t enable us to continually find new ways to poison ourselves, but still allows for material innovation. Activists and journalism professionals are key stakeholders in this effort, holding (or at least trying to) government and industry accountable. We continue to need people like Paul who talk about this. Same story, different materials.
(walkable communities are of importance and significance as well of course)
I hope your answer to the first question is not zero because things like PFAS do have benefits that are directly translatable to health outcomes. For example, when used for water proofing clothing, they might prevent hypothermia and save lives in extreme conditions. Plastic water bottles enable the distribution of clean water in areas that don't have (can't afford) good infrastructure. Less glass and more plastic means less broken glass on city streets, which I appreciate as a dog owner who doesn't want his pooch to step on broken shards.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Switching from lead and MTBE to ethanol as an anti knock additive in auto fuel was an objective win. There are more wins like that out there I believe.
Basically, every Chevron employee working with those products will likely develop cancer as a result.
Environmental issues are tough. It’s easy to focus on your dogs’ paw and not even be aware that people are needlessly suffering and dying to protect it.
A) it's not as clear cut as you say
B) it is as clear cut as you say, and I agree with you
But if the latter were true, there would probably be a high profile post on HN or elsewhere about it.
> For exposure assessment, EPA develops conservative exposure scenarios which are designed to provide conservative estimates of exposure; this allows EPA to have high confidence – when it finds no risks of concern – that this is in fact the case. In some instances, due to a lack of information on which to based exposure estimates, the conservative assumptions can lead to an over-estimate of risk. For one of the PMN substances in this integrated risk assessment (a jet fuel), the Agency divided the total projected future annual production volume of the new jet fuel by the total number of locations expected to receive the fuel, and then assumed each location could be an end-use location (e.g., airport) and that all the fuel would be burned there. The scenario that was modeled effectively presumed that every plane at the airport was idling on a runway burning an entire tank’s fuel without ever taking off, that the components of the fuel that contribute to c risk are not fully combusted and are present in the exhaust, and that residents living nearby (in a fenceline community) would continuously breathe the exhaust each day over many years in their lifetime.
It's unfortunate we don't have a better risk assessment.
One branch of my family grew up near the Mobil Refinery on the Newtown Creek in Queens, NYC. 12/12 have had cancers from that place, as do many others.