Brake linings in particular were a harmful use, because they are worn away into dust during use, and mechanics in particular are exposed to a brake dust as an occupational hazard.
Low levels of asbestos exposure is statistically unlikely to harm you, and the concentrations from brake dust are relatively low. As long as a brake shop ventilates its work spaces it’s a negligible risk to workers.
This is not correct. One could say that low levels of asbestos have not statistically been shown to cause harm, but that is quite different from statistically showing evidence of no harm. Harm may very well be occuring, but it is below the sensitivity threshold of our instruments to detect it.
Living near a freeway for instance is substantially more dangerous to your health than occasional incidental exposure to asbestos.
You are breathing asbestos right now. In every breath.
The sensitivity of an instrument to detect harm has no relationship to whether there is some ground truth harm. In many cases, like smoking cigarettes or getting hit on the head repeatedly, harm is incremental and compounding---a single event may not be detectable, but it is almost certainly still harmful.
This is a thought-terminating cliche, not a useful position.
But some low-cost aftermarket replacement brakes imported from countries where it is still legal to manufacture them, have contained asbestos. Asbestos is cheap and functional.
If you want to optimize price and fire resistance, and you have no other goals, asbestos is ideal.
But yes, VAG quite likely has other goals when designing a Lamborghini.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html doesn't specifically mention nitpicking: I admit I have the same fault (Edit: rephrased this).
Edit 2: perhaps I should have added that I think engineering is the art of making good compromises.
It seems unlikely that Lambo would use asbestos. I had made an off-the-cuff bet against a pig-headed acquantance that asbestos brakes were banned here before I knew anything. He rang up his mate with a Lambo who had some other story!
NZ has some import exceptions but it looks to me that the exceptions are mostly for something like QC training kits for recognising asbestos: https://www.worksafe.govt.nz/topic-and-industry/asbestos/imp...
I've certainly seen a lot that wear gloves. That's PPE.
Goggles or safety glasses are common but not ubiquitous in the shops I've seen. That's PPE.
Ignoring masks that seem responsive to COVID, I haven't seen a lot of masks or respirators outside of shops where they're doing paint work, but I also don't get to see all the shop space and masks are intrusive, so probably if mechanics wear them, it's only when they perceive an accute risk. You don't usually keep your welding mask on all day, unless there's a lot of welding.
e.g. https://medium.com/@michaelkduchak/predicting-chicago-health...
Ensuring complete compliance at this level is very difficult.
Also, smaller amounts of brake dust are distributed everywhere in the environment where vehicles are operated.
Or, and hear me out because I know this is crazy... we can do both! By trying to get rid of the bad stuff from the workplace and get better at enforcing ppe use.
We are doing that evolution at present!
The best way to do evolution is something that kills children before they breed. Second best for evolution is killing adults before they breed. Mostly ineffective is killing adults after they breed: although in theory loss of an adult can affect the population breeding chances downwards for children.
Just a reminder that evolution is about breeding children and not so much about death.
We already evolved these massive craniums filled with (to date) the most intricate and powerful general computers in the world - it seems like the solution to asbestos exposure is simply engineering a way to avoid it. No evolution necessary.
Yes, there's more that could be done in regards to PPE enforcement, but I think that's really an orthogonal issue. Asbestos isn't necessary in brakes, and can be banned regardless of PPE enforcement.
https://shadetreehq.com/what-is-a-shadetree-mechanic/
Not a term I've heard in New Zealand.