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Asbestosis

diamondgeezer.blogspot.com

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Re: Asbestosis

#211

Post by bamboozled »

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…

It is but you're mostly thinking of white asbestos, not blue or brown. If you go read about the history of asbestos and links to cancer you will find that while white asbestos isn't good, it's much much less likely to kill you as quickly as brown or blue.

Have a read about Wittenoom in Western Australia. It was a town on the outskirts of a blue asbestos mine, it's absolutely tragic what went on there, kids would be playing in mounds of blue asbestos, many of them tragically died.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittenoom,_Western_Australia

Re: Asbestosis

#212

Post by bamboozled »

XorNot wrote: post #2

Asbestos is genuinely more terrifying then nuclear radiation. If something is radioactive then a Geiger counter will tell you at a distance, it'll even triangulate it. Asbestos? It can be everywhere and the only way to know is to collect samples, pay $100 a piece to a lab to do phase contrast microscopy and wait. Then do it again the next time you find something suspicious. And once you've cleaned it out..well hope y…

I went on this trip too, and while yes asbestos is bad, white asbestos (by far the most common type, mined and used) is way less likely to cause the type of damage you're describing, brown and blue asbestos are more inline with what you describe. But even then, people who lived in Wittenoom, WA are still alive today.

Re: Asbestosis

#213

Post by Ray20 »

bruckie wrote: post #127
jabl wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

$560 out of $200k is 0.3%. $4500 out of $200k is 2.3%. Either way, yeah it's a small fraction.

Small fraction here, small fraction there, and you've get a $200k house.

Re: Asbestosis

#214

Post by somenameforme »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #208
somenameforme wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I'm sure you can see yourself already, a lot depends on the individuals in question. I'm approaching my mid 40s and am still a gym rat - and at my peak lifetime strength + endurance levels. On the other hand I also have peers that have already muddled their minds and broken their bodies, often through years of indulgence, sometimes well before their 40s. This [1] is RFK Jr at friggin 71 years old, amongst other…

Having heard stories of his fatherhood journey, I would not hold up RFKJ as a model of anything except selfishness.

You mean his habit of nailing anything that moves? I can't judge him there. You never know what's happening (or not) in somebody's private life. And for a man with all the opportunity in the world - I can only say that I'd look with suspicion at whoever was to cast stones there.

He's an eccentric man in a hyper-polarized world yet has raised 6 children that, at least publicly, have remained neutral to supportive of him. He's gotta be doing a lot right there IMO. And having a 70 year old father that's still in phenomenal shape and health is something our GP would certainly have liked to have had.

Re: Asbestosis

#215

Post by armonster »

kryogen1c wrote: post #207
ryukoposting wrote: post #77

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, but my parents and my whole extended family are from an area in eastern Michigan, about 2 hours north of Detroit. Especially back then, the local economy was heavily dependent on Dow Chemical, who has a massive facility in the area. My grandfather worked there. He was one of the first people to ever handle Saran wrap. He also recalls hilarious stories, like a time when someone pranke…

> men in their 40s who worked in the dioxin plant looked like they were in their 80s. Many hard-working people died young there There are still pockets of this. In the big US Navy shipyards, the exotic metals welders are not known for living very long.

A quick google search didn't return anything on this for me, do you have any additional details you could pass along?

Re: Asbestosis

#216

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

Ray20 wrote: post #213
bruckie wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$560 out of $200k is 0.3%. $4500 out of $200k is 2.3%. Either way, yeah it's a small fraction.

Small fraction here, small fraction there, and you've get a $200k house.

i would be a homeowner if a $200k house were available to me near my job :(

Re: Asbestosis

#217

Post by im3w1l »

monooso wrote: post #196
im3w1l wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ironic that even when the subject is resistance you are looking for a master to tell you what to do. If you want to be free there must be a choice and for there to be a choice there must alternatives. How *could* we have resisted? What were our options? This is not just a theorethical complaint. I think there were in practice many different things you (in the plural sense) could have done that could have worked…

Don't tell me what I'm doing, it's very annoying and arrogant. I'm not looking for a master to tell me what to do, I'm asking OP to justify their slight. As for the many, many things which could have worked in your opinion, people have been resisting the introduction of such laws for years. A common, and correct, refrain on HN is that the people resisting have to win every battle; the people trying to introduce such…

> the people resisting have to win every battle; the people trying to introduce such legislation only need to win one.

To some extent this is true I suppose, but these laws are not (yet) irreversible. The people introducing them have to keep winning for them to remain on the books.

Re: Asbestosis

#218

Post by ryukoposting »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #183
ryukoposting wrote: post #77

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, but my parents and my whole extended family are from an area in eastern Michigan, about 2 hours north of Detroit. Especially back then, the local economy was heavily dependent on Dow Chemical, who has a massive facility in the area. My grandfather worked there. He was one of the first people to ever handle Saran wrap. He also recalls hilarious stories, like a time when someone pranke…

We spent some time this summer in the Saginaw and Midland area. The "mark" that the Dow family made is very visible, insofar as charities, buildings, etc. I would imagine that's the tip of a very scary industrial contamination iceberg.

Yep. Midland is basically Dow, the City. My dad went to Dow High School. One of the main tourist attractions is Dow Gardens (worth visiting if you didn't, by the way). Or you can go watch a baseball game at Dow Diamond. It's pretty, too - one of the best collections of Prairie architecture in the world... much of it designed by Alden B. Dow, son of the company's namesake, and student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Just don't go in the Tittabawassee river.

Re: Asbestosis

#219

Post by ryukoposting »

kryogen1c wrote: post #207
ryukoposting wrote: post #77

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, but my parents and my whole extended family are from an area in eastern Michigan, about 2 hours north of Detroit. Especially back then, the local economy was heavily dependent on Dow Chemical, who has a massive facility in the area. My grandfather worked there. He was one of the first people to ever handle Saran wrap. He also recalls hilarious stories, like a time when someone pranke…

> men in their 40s who worked in the dioxin plant looked like they were in their 80s. Many hard-working people died young there There are still pockets of this. In the big US Navy shipyards, the exotic metals welders are not known for living very long.

Hah, funny, my grandfather actually left the Navy shipyards to go to Dow. He was also one of the folks who went on strike in 1974:

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/947016

https://www.ourmidland.com/lifestyles/article/Throwback-Dow-...

https://www.nytimes.com/1974/04/02/archives/50-pickets-at-do...

Re: Asbestosis

#220

Post by EvanAnderson »

ryukoposting wrote: post #218
EvanAnderson wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We spent some time this summer in the Saginaw and Midland area. The "mark" that the Dow family made is very visible, insofar as charities, buildings, etc. I would imagine that's the tip of a very scary industrial contamination iceberg.

Yep. Midland is basically Dow, the City. My dad went to Dow High School. One of the main tourist attractions is Dow Gardens (worth visiting if you didn't, by the way). Or you can go watch a baseball game at Dow Diamond. It's pretty, too - one of the best collections of Prairie architecture in the world... much of it designed by Alden B. Dow, son of the company's namesake, and student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Just don't…

We were only in that area for a couple of days. It seems to be a nice area. Midland has a bit of a theme park / artificial feel to it, though. Saginaw seems a little more "authentic".

We were impressed by Dow Gardens. I'm also particularly interested Alden B. Dow's architecture. I'm hoping to attend one of the various tours the studio offers next year.

I happened to see an article[0] about a Dow house coming up for sale last year. That ignited my interest in that area of the state. (I'm not a credible enough potential buyer to actually see this property in the flesh, sadly.)

Some of my family lived in the Traverse City area and we still have property there. We spend time there every summer and, coming from western Ohio, we always take a westerly route to get up there. I'd never spent any time on the eastern side of the peninsula before. We're definitely going back for another couple days sometime.

[0] https://www.mlive.com/realestate-news/2024/08/see-inside-an-...

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