Posted on 05/24/2023 6:55:03 AM PDT by LouAvul
I guess it's still around. I worked at a filling station in the early 60s and they did a lot of brake work. I didn't realize brakes were made with asbestos.
I worked for pop's construction company and we did quite a bit of demolition. I knew there was some insulation with asbestos, but it was also in drywall and joint compound.
And it's still around. I didn't realize that. It wasn't outlawed till the late 70s/1980 and lots of buildings are still standing with asbestos building materials. Apparently, as long as it's encapsulated it's not an issue.
From my googlefoo, the latency period is 20 years to 60 years, with the average being 40 years. The demographic affect (mostly) are those who worked in the industry. Mining the material, manufacture of insulation, brakes, etc. And ~20% of those workers were adversely affected.
"Prolonged exposure" is a term researchers use.
It's sort of like sunshine in that, when baby boomers were young, we didn't even think about the potential for harm.
God invented it, so He must have wanted us to use it.............
My Dad worked in heavy industry with all types of dangerous materials.
One Thanksgiving, we hosted the extended family and baked a turkey
that was so large that the oven door would not close.
Dad had some asbestos material, sort of like rough cardboard that he wrapped around
the open door to keep the heat in.
The turkey was delicious and I’m still around to tell about it 75 years later.
One other mineral found usually in proximity to asbestos: talc.
See lawsuis vs Johnson & Johnson.
A town southeast of Montreal in the Canadian province of Quebec is named Asbestos. Or, at least it was ... read something a few years back that they were contemplating a name change. Not sure if it happened ... it was of interest to me because as a kid I visited the town of Asbestos with my dad.
Cancer was not caused by physical contact with asbestos.
The cancer resulted from breathing the minute asbestos slivers present when asbestos was roughed up or broken down. The actual disease is called mesothelioma and results from the insoluble asbestos slivers embedded in lung tissue as a result of breathing air containing the asbestos breakdown.
Lawyers got ahold of it and extrapolated the danger far, far beyond reality . They filed a laws suit and won. The asbestos companies were required to put up millions and millions into a fund from which claims could be paid. And, of course, each claim was attached to a lawyers bill.
Presently, all that money has not been claimed. There are ads from law firms that specialized in asbestos claims still today soliciting clients. The old men running those firms are going to die knowing all that money is still unclaimed and they didn’t get it
I gave a question for you: the tile is our kitchen is crumbling. I assume it is made of asbestos given the home’s age. Is there a liqid product that would fill amd harden in the holes if poured on top?
If I could do that, then I could seal it. Rustoleum makes a floor paint now which might work on top if the whole thing.
My husband kept promising to fix it, but did not. Now the tile is REALLY crumbling. He used to wax the church’s tile floors like you did. They always looked so good after buffing.
Use a roller loaded with paint and just paint over it. That is safer than tearing the stuff out and hauling it out.
I know people who died from mesothelioma from asbestos, but they never worked around it. I worked around it and have plaques in my pleural cavity, but it is not in much danger of moving.
Thanks for the additional information. There always are tradeoffs. One just needs to accurately assess them.
I remember halon fire extinguishers were very good at putting out fires, especially gasoline fires. They banned them because halon was bad for the atmosphere. I always wondered the tradeoffs to the atmosphere of the fires that got out of control because of the lack of halon versus the release of halon. I guess I doubted the honesty of our scientist even then.
It wasn’t the planes, it was the fires/s
Like with anything there are different forms of asbestos. Some are very bad, some are benign. The problem is once the class action lawsuit frenzy started, there was no stopping it until every possible lawsuit avenue was sucked dry. If something had the word asbestos in it, the lawsuit happened even if it was tangential and not dangerous. Billions squandered, lawyers bought islands
Ding ding ding, winner winner, chicken dinner. I was on a jobsite where the carpenters cut it with skil saws right in front of god and everybody.
Asbestos is unbeatable for heat protection. Absolutely.
Yes it can be dangerous with exposure. But to me it’s almost like cigarettes - yes, not good for you, but not likely to affect you immediately.
Personally I think the cost-benefit is solid for asbestos. I don’t know why they can’t just work with it with hazmat suits while building, etc.
Fires from planned demo, not from any plane crashes.
Worked as a mechanic for many years. Changed a million brake shoes, then brake pads. We used to blow the dust (asbestos) off the backing plates with the air hose.
Was in the Navy, chipping paint and cleaning the inside of boilers. The Navy, OBSESSED with preventing fires, had asbestos EVERYWHERE.
I was a plumber by trade for many years. Removed and discarded asbestos by hand without any protection. I have literally rolled around in asbestos in crawl spaces. I know what asbestos tastes like. (It has a metallic taste)
I started smoking cigarettes at 15 and continued to do so for 40 years.
I am 73 years old. Still kicking. Not to say that asbestos and smoking are good for you, but to say that asbestos isn’t a DEATH sentence for everyone.
Transite.......
Transite was a very popular panel material that was reasonably well priced, easy ro work anddurable. A major ingredient was asbestos.
It could infact be sawed with a Skill saw or a more elaborate power saw. The saw dust contained the tiny asbestos slivers.
You are correct. I’ve read the same.
Tort attorneys have made billions of dollars demonizing a very effective natural product.
Books have been written about how they come into a town with mobile X-ray and promises of big payoffs and miraculously everyone who takes an x-ray is infected.
And stupid juries made up of ignorant people award billions.
I remember my father, in the 1940s, in the basement, using his bare hands (and not wearing a mask) to cover our hot water pipes with asbestos as insulation. He lived to 93 and died of heart trouble.
Keep it wet while you get rid of all the loose stuff. Put it in bags. Epoxy or epoxy paint might work to fill in and seal. Try to match the color of the grey/green tile. Then seal the whole thing with a sealer from a janitorial supply store. Put acrylic floor “finish” (wax) on top of that.
That is what I might try to do. Good luck.
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