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Comment by steven2012 | Hacker News Reader

steven2012

Asbestos dust is certainly a terrible thing to breathe in, but I think there's a lot of over-hype on the dangers of asbestos. I worked closely with contractors last year, and they all said the same thing, that asbestos fears were largely overblown.

The government and real estate agents treat it as if it's nuclear waste, but being around asbestos isn't guaranteed to give you lung cancer. It's only when you create a dust from it by grinding it, and if it gets airborne. There are main mitigation techniques that can control asbestos pretty easily. Having it in your house isn't terrible as long as you deal with it properly.

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It seems to kill people randomly.

A family member used to work for a company that produced asbestos cement products. I can still remember touring the factory as a child: the grinding machines shaping the pipe couplings, standing on top of the dust collector as it was being emptied, the sealed room at the beginning of the production line into which the raw asbestos was being blown. (I only looked through the glass door of that one, though I gather it wasn't unknown for people to be locked in there for a joke, whilst workmates enjoyed the "snow show".)

Yet, for that, some people who worked at the company are still healthy (and being regularly monitored), whilst others are dead from mesothelioma. It's as if some people are susceptible, whilst others aren't, and size of dose isn't the overriding factor.

I don't think it's overblown, in that people do die (unpleasantly) from minimal exposure to asbestos. Perhaps that's why asbestos is treated so gingerly: to some people it is as dangerous as nuclear waste and we don't know who those people are?

--- Edit: final question mark.

Sounds like smoking. Some smokers still manage to live healthy lives into their 90s, but the majority don't. I wonder what the exact numbers are for mesothelioma.

You are arguing that we should use anecdotal evidence to guide public health policy. Please stop doing that and use a scientific approach instead.

I remember when I was a carpenter apprentice and asked for personal safety equipment and then being told that "wood dust never harmed anyone" or "I never use hearing protection and my hearing is just fine". I have encountered this attitude in many places, especially in small companies where not following safety rules can be seen directly in the profits. But you also see it in big projects, where the main contractor hires sub-contractors that hires sub-sub-contractors and no one has an overall responsibility.

The problem is that the layman doesn't know / have the capability to detect asbestos or properly control it. Fissionable material can be safe if you properly control it, but we don't let people play around with that.

The other problem is that it's easy to accidently make dust out of otherwise 'safe' asbestos, at which point it's too late. For example, hit and break a wall for whatever reason (put a hole in an internal wall, fallen branch hitting a roof), or drop some sort of heat-resistant cooking device that breaks when it hits the floor. It's one of those things where even if you do know of the risks, the possiblity of it being accidently realised is significant.

I fully acknowledge that some of the material properties of asbestos are truly amazing - its heat resistence is incredible and we'd be well served finding a safe equivalent - but on balance it is simply not enough to justify its use in applications where the layman can be exposed to it.

I'm not saying we should continue to use it and I'm not saying that it's perfectly safe. But if you were to ask regular people about asbestos, I would wager that most of them think that if you are exposed to any sort of asbestos, you're going to get lung cancer immediately. Scaring people to the point where people are misinformed from word-of-mouth doesn't make it any safer.

For example, many houses in the Bay Area have asbestos in it, so it's not like having it in your house is going to kill you. You need to deal with it intelligently, but just having asbestos in your home isn't going to kill you. And even then, unless you're breathing it in all the time, you're not automatically going to get lung cancer, just like if you get a CT scan with a radiation exposure equivalent to hundreds of X-rays, you're not automatically going to get cancer. Proper education is important. Sure, lots of people tragically got lung cancer due to heavy exposure, but some exposure won't guarantee anything bad, but it certainly feels like you will based on how people talk about it.

Most contractors, if they know or are unsure will not touch certain jobs with a 10ft pole for fear of asbestos. In older houses in the Bay Area, likely culprits are old tile, the glue used, or old ducting.

With care, most of this can be removed with little risk. However, as you point out, caution is needed and most DIYers may not think about things. The other extreme is calling in the men in bunny suits that will run multiple thousands for even small issues due to permits, precautions, and disposal.

Are they afraid for their lives or the lives of their crews, or afraid of the liability?

Statistically, the DIYers need not really think about it, either. If you work with it at most a few days of your life. you can be the unlucky guy who breathes in a lot of asbestos dust and dies, but chances are you won't (if you don't go berserk when demolishing a building, and are smart enough to wear a mouth/nose cap when working inside in dust)

Professionals in the industry, on the other hand, may work way more carefully, but still run a much larger risk of adverse effects due to their longer exposure time. That's another reason the men work in bunny suits.

My grandfather died of mesothelioma from asbestos last year. Other than that he was 89 years old and otherwise in fantastic shape for his age, tending a multi-acre garden and working on landscaping. He was not a carpenter, nor was he a contractor. He ran a boiler at a sugar cane processing plant. The only time he was exposed to asbestos was in the day to day operations of that facility. He was not an employee at the time that it was built.

I don't know why you have been down-voted. You are correct, and most of the replies to the contrary are along the lines of "I knew someone who worked in an Asbestos-heavy-industrial environment and they died from it so therefore it's all dangerous."

For most members of the public, our interaction with Asbestos will be from it's use as a building material for roofs, insulation or pipes. The risk only increases if it is heavily disturbed, usually due to building work or demolition.

There some asbestos products where the fibres can easily get into the air like lagging and others where they are bonded in side some product like a cement and it isn't a risk if you leave it alone. The risk for average people is home renovation as asbestos was used in a huge variety of building products and it isn't always obvious. Clearly you can do things to mitigate the risk.

What you're observing has little to do with asbestos, lead paint, etc, and everything to do with the way realtors/government operate. That being said, I've worked on probable lead-painted materials before but wouldn't want to deal with asbestos.

It certainly doesn't help that (supposedly) only some types of asbestos are dangerous.

The white asbestos (chrysotile) that the article talks about is listed as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the US Dept of Health.

Right, what I mean is all asbestos is treated as if it was chrysotile, when not all is. That kind of contributes to the feeling of "wow are we overblowing this?"- even if we aren't.

From what I've read, all the other kinds of asbestos are definitely, obviously terrifying. The debate is whether chrysotile, or some variants of it, are dangerous and to what degree.

From the US National Institute of Health (NIH) report on Asbestos. First sentence:

Asbestos and all commercial forms of asbestos are known to be human carcinogens based on sufﬁcient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans.

You can read the rest if you want more info:

http://web.archive.org/web/20110429155522/http://ntp.niehs.n...

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