Hippies Banning Crysotile

[Tyler Durden]

James Donald wrote...

>Not this cypherpunk -- the evils of asbestos are ninety percent
>hot air.

That's about the right percentage.

>In reality, if someone is
>exposed to enough asbestos to be a problem, he is painfully
>aware of it.  Only a minuscule minority among those now
>receiving stupendous awards were exposed to that level of
>asbestos.

Not really. This party line is equally hot air. Basically, there are two 
main modes of asbestos related disease: asbestosis and melothemeoma (I 
probably spelled that last one wrong.) The Manville miners inhaled huge 
quantities of Asbestos and almost all of them died of asbestosis. This can 
occur when exposed to any type of asbestos in large quantities.

Another form of asbestos-related death is a whole different story. 
Melothemeoma is due to when the non-serpentine types of asbestos pierce the 
lung wall and push stray genetic refuse into cell nuclei, starting a really 
bad lung cancer. The form of asbestos most closely associated with this is 
crocidilyte, which is needle-like and a beautiful dark blue in color. That 
form of asbestos can cause cancer even in very low exposures. Forunately, 
its exceedingly rare. Back in the late 80s I only saw perhaps half a dozen 
samples of it in the course of viewing many thousands of asbestos.

As for floor tiles using asbestos, I would never bother removing them...the 
asbestos in them probably mitigates far more fire-related danger than it 
causes exposure-related risk. As for hanging clumps of Asbestos down in your 
boiler room, close the door and don't let the kids play down there. Don't 
abate, as you'll probably create more exposure than if you left it alone.

Summary: your odds of dying due to low levels of asbestos exposure are 
exceedingly low, but decidedly nonzero.

-TD








>     --digsig
>          James A. Donald
>      6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
>      8gm9gCyQYFsIMdu+WBfQDsch65rBj3PGxaGDX58F
>      4/6al9vqF/sHVMF7iikxBjrsqugs4W7kRkOUPPUFA


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