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Asbestosis

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Re: Asbestosis

#91

Post by Aurornis »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #28
irjustin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall we're having kids later and later myself included. This is one of the natural consequences I will face. Sometimes I wish it had kids in my twenties but for now I'm glad I didn't. We'll see.

The best age for having kids biologically, in terms of health is... Close to 18. I had my first child when I was 27 and I was already very tired in the nights, we agreed with wife that it would have been better to start earlier. Some people have kids when 35-40 and I cannot imagine it at all. I'm too tired right now. Much wiser, but my health would not allow me to stay up nights

> Close to 18. I had my first child when I was 27 and I was already very tired in the nights, we agreed with wife that it would have been better to start earlier

I have some extended family who had some unexpected kids around that 18 age and I firmly disagree that it’s better. We had so many more advantages by having kids when older, from better emotional regulation to better time management practices.

I had kids when older than you. Although some of the early years being up late weren’t easy, it also wasn’t devastatingly tiresome. My wife and I split duties and staggered our schedules.

The low sleep years were also over very quickly. It’s not like you’re up all night with kids until they’re 10 years old. Optimizing the entirety of raising kids based on being as young as possible to stay up late during the first year of life isn’t a good idea, IMO. You have to look at the big picture.

I’m sorry you’re struggling and I don’t mean to downplay your personal struggles, but at the same time I have to agree with other comments that are puzzled at someone in their 20s being so crushingly tired when parents in their 30s routinely handle child raising. If you have some unmentioned condition then I don’t mean to belittle that, but I don’t want others reading these comments to assume your description is typical.

Re: Asbestosis

#92

Post by thinkharderdev »

ghtbircshotbe wrote: post #84
lazyasciiart wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Usually these materials are fine if left in place Maybe in Norway you need to tell people to chill over it. But the current attitude to asbestos in DIY spaces in the US/UK is far away from that, and a lot closer to “yea go on just tear it out yourself, you’ll be fine if you put on an n95 and spray some water first”.

I think the dominant attitude in the US is to stick your head in the sand. Tons of older homes have asbestos yet almost zero of them report it in their listing or their disclosure report. If you test it and find it you have to report it. If the buyer tests it and finds it, the seller doesn't want to know because then they'd have to report it. Somehow knowing the house has asbestos lowers it's value significantly more…

Happened to me. Bought a house with wood floors in the basement. We had some flooding which ruined the wood and when we ripped it out to replace, turns out the wood floors were installed over the original asbestos tiles. From what I can tell, the asbestos tiles themselves were of no particular danger to us, but once they got wet and started cracking they had to be removed which cost an additional couple thousand dollars on top of replacing he floors.

Re: Asbestosis

#93

Post by derriz »

jaccola wrote: post #53
KaiserPro wrote: post #5

I know its not fashionable, but things like asbestos is the point of regulation. If you ignore the health effects, asbestos is a fucking brilliant material, strong(if used with a binder) exceptionally fireproof, UV stable and fairly inert. Why _wouldn't_ you use it? To use modern parlance; only melts wouldn't use it, thats who (this message brought to you by your friendly corporate sponsor...) The problem is that it…

Would you buy a product with asbestos in if it wasn't regulated against? (Assuming we removed all similar regulation so the lack of regulation does not its self imply safety.) Of course you wouldn't. We have journalists to uncover dangers like this; they are clearly financially incentivised to do so. We have courts to assess damages. We don't need government regulation. Such a common trope that "the heartless capital…

All successful markets in history have been regulated to some degree. A market requires sellers AND buyers and buyers will flock to a market where they're not burdened with the cost and expense of having to do their own research and investigation before even considering a purchase, never mind actually completing a trade.

Completely unregulated markets simply don't scale in terms of successful trading - the regulation replaces the work each buyer would have to do and thus is actually more efficient than having each buyer replicate the work of the regulator. This is why they have been out-competed by regulated markets in the course of history.

Re: Asbestosis

#94

Post by mrbombastic »

ghtbircshotbe wrote: post #84
lazyasciiart wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Usually these materials are fine if left in place Maybe in Norway you need to tell people to chill over it. But the current attitude to asbestos in DIY spaces in the US/UK is far away from that, and a lot closer to “yea go on just tear it out yourself, you’ll be fine if you put on an n95 and spray some water first”.

I think the dominant attitude in the US is to stick your head in the sand. Tons of older homes have asbestos yet almost zero of them report it in their listing or their disclosure report. If you test it and find it you have to report it. If the buyer tests it and finds it, the seller doesn't want to know because then they'd have to report it. Somehow knowing the house has asbestos lowers it's value significantly more…

Yes because proper asbestos removal is very costly and people don't want to deal with it, your house is going to look like the government coming for ET. Very tempting for a singular homeowner to just read up and rent some ventilation equipment and rip it out themselves on the down low even if dangers are very real. There are some old mental asylums in my hometown, beautiful stone buildings on massive property, they have been sitting vacant and decaying for years because they are full of asbestos and no one wants to deal with it.

Re: Asbestosis

#95

Post by pixl97 »

yanslookup wrote: post #42
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #13

Plenty of people die from asbestos exposure when renovating their house.

This is not factual. Asbestos is not kryptonite. One time exposure is not going to have short term or long term impact to your health. There is a lot of FUD around asbestos, check out all of the panicked posts on reddit.

This is not factual.

The cancer causing mechanism of asbestos is mechanical. A single strand in the wrong place could cut your DNA up. With any probabilistic process the more exposure the more chances and the greater the likelihood.

Re: Asbestosis

#96

Post by FlyingAvatar »

jojobas wrote: post #58
Etheryte wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think asbestos is something that needs balance to the conversation. It's like radioactive material, you will most likely not even know that you've had too much exposure until your health is already permanently affected. The illness may manifest a considerable time later so you might not even know what it was. It's very easy to unknowingly be exposed when e.g. renovating a house or other similar arrange…

Unlike radiation, there's no safe asbestos exposure, if you're really unlucky a single strand can screw you up. On the other hand, of all people having worked at asbestos facilities with early 20th century approach to PPE only 20% developed mesothelioma and 10% died from it. Thinking before swinging your drill will get most people safe enough not to worry about it.

I don't really buy the comparison. If you're really unlucky, you can get cancer from a "safe dose" of radiation.

Low exposures of both things are statistically less likely to hurt you than large doses. We pick a line to call "safe", but completely safety in either case is not guaranteed.

Re: Asbestosis

#97

Post by throwaway290 »

wincy wrote: post #56

One thing I think most Western people don't realize, especially with how terrified we are of asbestos, is that it is still used and being mined today! Russia still extensively uses Abestos, the name literally comes from the Russian town of Asbest which is known for exporting, you guessed it, asbestos, to countries like China, India, and Brazil. Of course being Russian they also say it's a Western lie that Asbestos ca…

This is false actually. asbestos is banned in Russia in residential flat construction (unless it is fully isolated so that it doesn't get inside the space) exactly because it is bad for your lungs. There's limits on how much asbestos can be in the air safely and thry are pretty low

Re: Asbestosis

#98

Post by simonlc »

morkalork wrote: post #74
gruez wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the name literally comes from the Russian town of Asbest which is known for exporting, you guessed it, asbestos Seems incorrect. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/asbestos Etymology From Old French abestos, from Latin asbestos, itself from Ancient Greek ἄσβεστος (ásbestos, “unquenchable, inextinguishable”), from ᾰ̓- (ă-, “not”) + σβέννῡμῐ (sbénnūmĭ, “I quench, quell”).

More likely the town is named after the material, there's an Asbestos in Canada as well. I always get a kick out of cities named like that: Cobalt Ontario, Uranium City, for example.

They renamed the town, it's called Val-des-Sources now.

Re: Asbestosis

#99

Post by jabl »

Ray20 wrote: post #85
meindnoch wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they say, the main export of Russia is suffering. Both figuratively and literally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy3piCUPIkc

Isn't asbestos used pretty much everywhere in the world (except rich countries)? So yes, it's dangerous. But it's very cheap, and poverty is far more dangerous than asbestos. It's simply a fact: residents of most countries simply can't afford a 200k dollars asbestos-free house, like Americans or Europeans can. If Americans had less affordable homes like the rest of the world have, they would still be building them ou…

Not using asbestos is not the reason why homes in the Western world are expensive.

https://aiobs.org/how-healthy-and-costly-are-the-most-used-i... shows insulation cost for a (typical?) 1500sqft (~140m^2 for the rest of the world) home. The most common, and also the cheapest, type of insulation being fiberglass bats at $560. So if this home would cost $200k, that's 3% of the total price. So even if asbestos would be free, it would barely move the needle in total cost.

Edit: That $560 looks suspiciously low. Googling around some more shows an insulation (incl. installation) cost for a "typical" home at around $3500-$4500. In any case, a small fraction of the total cost of a house project.

Re: Asbestosis

#100

Post by throwaway173738 »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #86
cts-i-cts-d wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t punish retroactively, Lex retro non agit. It’s the lawmakers that create the environment we all work inside of to maximize our profits. There’s probably at least 3 as dangerous as asbestos materials used in current day and we are yet to find out. Zero tolerance means paralysis, it’s a naive ideal. Look at the recent medical technologies where zero tolerance for unwanted side effects has to be balanced with…

With asbestos, it's not so much a trade-off as it will continue to be a possible hazard unless it's disposed of correctly. I can relate to a homeowner not wanting to pay for testing/removing asbestos ceiling tiles etc. but if they don't then any disruption to those tiles can release potentially lethal fibres into the air (asbestos doesn't have a "safe" dose, so it's not like it can be rationalised with "I only made a…

The EPA’s own documentation states that Asbestos is primarily an occupational hazard. If the fibers are not embedded in a friable material you will not get any significant exposure. Occupational hazards are those encountered routinely by someone engaging in an occupation. So harvey the homeowner isn’t at much increased risk if he removes asbestos himself as long as he takes precautions and cleans up afterward. It’s a fiber and a dust not some magic material that soaks in through your skin. And obviously don’t start a business removing asbestos for people without doing the licensing.

Fiberglass batts are really bad to handle too, and same with gypsum dust and saw dust from cutting manufactured stone countertops. If you do anything indoors you should definitely wear a respirator and full sleeves.

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