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Comment by gravitronic | Hacker News Reader

Starting to eye my dryer lint as a toxic substance

Yes? Any sort of dust is best avoided and treated with care. Your literal dead skin can be toxic if you let it build up enough.

depends what you’re drying, no?

I personally use a clothing rack to hang all my plastic (polyester, spandex, etc) clothes, and i only put cotton items in the dryer. Including towels of course.

If you put a machine that blew asbestos fibers out the wall/roof of the building in most homes in the US people would probably be pretty upset.

For that matter, I wonder if they ever made asbestos clothing for routine wear? Looks like aprons, oven mitts, and ironing board covers.

I don't think we can yet compare microplastics to asbestos. Asbestos is still used today but in much more industrial, safe ways than it once was used. Not to downplay any net harm but I don't believe its as clear yet.

I'm pretty sure we can compare them. Whether the ultimate harm will be anywhere near that level of impact I have no idea, but they're clearly tiny fibers infiltrating places they weren't expected with possible health outcomes as a result of indiscriminate use before the risks were fully understood.

I don't think you can compare the net harm yet? Unless you have research that no one else does. We know asbestos is a carcinogen, we know it gets lodged into the lungs and does not remove itself. We know the outcomes from heavy exposure.

While we know plastic is getting to places it should not be, we have not fully figured out all the negative impacts. Those impacts will drive where/when to use it.

Edit: Again, I am not trying to downplay potential harm. It might be a serious issue that is driving poor outcomes but I don't believe we have research of that as of yet.

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