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Asbestosis

diamondgeezer.blogspot.com

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Re: Asbestosis

#221

Post by userbinator »

nkmnz wrote: post #144
FlyingAvatar wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a natural level of radioactivity which the body is used to compensate. Small additional doses of radioactivity can therefor be neglected. This is not true for stuff like abestos.

There are actually naturally occurring asbestos fibers in the air, caused by weathering of asbestos-containing rocks.

Re: Asbestosis

#222

Post by ryukoposting »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #220
ryukoposting wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Hah, I can see that perception for sure. Downtown Midland is very prim and proper, and doesn't really match the culture of the rest of the Tri Cities. Bay City has an adorable little downtown if you're ever in the area again. It's a must-visit if you like antique shops, and much more authentic.

Re: Asbestosis

#223

Post by bamboozled »

PlunderBunny wrote: post #146
rudimentary_phy wrote: post #103

I was very young, but I remember my grandfather was very afraid to retire from the steel mill where he worked most of his life because those who retired tended to get cancer shortly after and die. Sure enough, a little over a year after his retirement, he got a cold that wouldn't go away, and was diagnosed with cancer and died not too long afterwards. I've wondered for a long time (based entirely on anecdotal observa…

My father was a University teacher, and he would get a cold regularly between terms - as if the body knew that it couldn’t ’give in’ until the work period was over.

This is an interesting phenomenon which I personally experience too.

If I have something really important going on, I basically don't get sick, when I finally kick my feet up, I just seem to get hammered with a bad cold or flu.

I also think it's interesting how my body seems to understand when I can't poop, like if I'm in a train or something without a toilet and just doesn't seem to bother until I tell it it's ok.

Re: Asbestosis

#224

Post by monooso »

im3w1l wrote: post #217
monooso wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I invite you to name one UK law of this type which has been reversed.

Re: Asbestosis

#225

Post by margalabargala »

worik wrote: post #151
margalabargala wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> avoided GMO-food, she was always eating as much as possible from her own garden Depending where she lived, this may have been the cause. Plenty of people unknowingly live and grow food in areas that had toxic waste dumped on them a century ago, and it's still there in the dirt. GMO food, in addition to not being any worse for you than non-GMO food, generally gets grown in places that have always been agricultural l…

> grown in places that have always been agricultural land. Living in New Zealand they are often the most polluted. Agri industry is, and was always, very lax about disposing of the extremely toxic chemicals in use

My personal understanding (which may be very wrong) is that there are different sorts/mechanisms of pollution involved.

Ag pollution is usually things like herbicide, pesticide, and fertilizer, which can have disastrous effects downstream if it washes into a river, but don't make things grown on that land poisonous as long as you rinse off anything that has been sprayed on them.

This is in contrast to, say, reclaiming farmland in an area that had a textile dye factory upstream.

There are certainly exceptions, for example many old orchards used lead arsenate as a pesticide, contaminating the soil with both lead and arsenic.

Re: Asbestosis

#226

Post by SpicyUme »

marak830 wrote: post #187
knappe wrote: post #168

My father just retired as a lab analyst looking at builder samples for both modern and historical construction, specifically for asbestos. The day I moved into the college dorms he looked at me and said "Don't move the floor tiles, ceilings tiles or the touch the large ventilation pipe outside my door in the hallway." A lot of the buildings at my university were built with asbestos, so much so that the university had…

I'm currently working as a PCM analyst looking at samples to identify asbestos. There is a lot out there still, we are busy every week. (technically PCM doesn't identify asbestos, just the number of fibers during abatement, PLM will identify asbestos but that takes a lot longer to process).

Interesting, I had some vermiculite removed recently and got a response from the ZAI trust that the samples had fibers but they couldn't say specifically that it was asbestos. I assumed that was a legal distinction, it didn't occur to me that it might be from different test methods.

Re: Asbestosis

#227

Post by SpicyUme »

userbinator wrote: post #156
RobGR wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would appear that you can buy it on Alibaba: https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?tab=all&SearchText=asbe... I have not tried, although I was tempted just out of curiosity -- would it make it through customs and get delivered to me in the US ? The rope and fabric style products should not be that dangerous because they are long fibers that should not break off and float in the air, and the cylinder head gasket mate…

Even cotton dust is bad if you breathe enough of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byssinosis

Baker's lung is a thing too. I think about that when I see the dust from my spice grinder when making various powders. No matter what there is airborne dust when I open the grinder. I try to do my wood cutting outside but I am not sanding much. When I refinished my floors I wore dust protection and a loose tshirt over the dust protection to make clean up at the end of the day a bit easier.

Re: Asbestosis

#228

Post by paulryanrogers »

somenameforme wrote: post #214
paulryanrogers wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Quite a generous interpretation of a guy who is actively destroying the public health system, and whose idea of a family vacation includes a bloody whale head on the roof of the car.

Re: Asbestosis

#229

Post by marak830 »

SpicyUme wrote: post #226
marak830 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently working as a PCM analyst looking at samples to identify asbestos. There is a lot out there still, we are busy every week. (technically PCM doesn't identify asbestos, just the number of fibers during abatement, PLM will identify asbestos but that takes a lot longer to process).

Interesting, I had some vermiculite removed recently and got a response from the ZAI trust that the samples had fibers but they couldn't say specifically that it was asbestos. I assumed that was a legal distinction, it didn't occur to me that it might be from different test methods.

Yeah, for a PCM test we only count 100 fields, and identify the number of fiber end points (upto 2) which with math can give an approx number of fibers/cc2 - helps determine approx how much potential can be in the air (this is usually done during abatement - when it's being cleaned up).

A PLM analyst will use multiple methods to determine if the sample has asbestos, and takes a much longer time.

There are even more expensive tests that can be performed but I'm not so familiar with those.

Re: Asbestosis

#230

Post by somenameforme »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #228
somenameforme wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Quite a generous interpretation of a guy who is actively destroying the public health system, and whose idea of a family vacation includes a bloody whale head on the roof of the car.

Next time you take a step outside, look around. Obesity, skyrocketing rates of all forms of mental illness (one of the most relevant being autism), rapidly declining IQs [1], plummeting testosterone levels (even for people in otherwise good physical shape), and much more.

Why? Nobody knows. So the answer is most likely that we're doing what we've endlessly done countless times dating back to at least the era of the Roman Empire, and are accidentally poisoning ourselves with something (or some things) that we are convinced is completely safe. I'm not saying that Kennedy is right, but I am saying that "we" are wrong. And so walking down a different path on occasion is not only okay, but a very good idea.

[1] - https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-...

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