asbestos

Post Reply New Topic

really random. anyone know about mesothelioma? im kinda paranoid, because I've gotten mad and punched multiple holes in my wall, and never thought about the exposure to asbestos. anyone know how much exposure it takes?

damn, and i just found out the tile in my basement where i have lived for 2 yrs has asbestos. great, another paranoia and now possibly lung cancer in 20 yrs. FML

My grandfather died of that.

But it's fine. I doubt you'll die.

Either your walls are drywall or rock lathe or wood lathe plastering depending on year of construction.
Not to worry, no asbestos there.......
If you could punch a hole in the wall I'd bet it was drywall .
Drywall is non toxic other than long term exposures to the silicates i.e. trades men .

(I can speak for North America and Europe here).

thank you. I had a meltdown shortly after posting, kind of embarrassing, but one of my things is when i get obsessed my logic gets an overide, and i begin to freak out. pretty much from statistics on mesothelioma and my own thoughts racing telling i am statistically inclined to get lung cancer in 15-20 yrs. man that has to be the worst part of aspergers.(speaking for myself)

i have a tendency to ruminate on terrible diseases too, theres just so many of them.

Ive had asbestos scares too, but i never think about it these days. To put it into perspective rememeber people in the construction trade have done worse things every week of their working lives. Asbestos related illness is still relatively rare outside industry workers. My dad used to play in WW2 blitz wreckage that must have been heavily contaminated, and hes ok. Lots of children grew up making little houses out of asbestos roofing.

So there is a risk (we all have some asbestos in our lungs) but its not worth worrying about. Most asbestos is the chrysotile (Sp?) white form that has a much lower cancer risk than the brown/blue varieties. The blue stuff they used to mine in austrailia is scary stuff - but odds are there isnt much in your area.

A huge risk factor for developing mesethiloma is smoking - so if you smoke just use any asbestos exposure as an excuse to quit.

Here's the bottom line on asbestos: It's 100% safe as a building material, and it's only dangerous to humans if you breathe it's dust. If you were to grind up an acoustical ceiling, and blow it around the room with a fan, you'd be breathing the fibers. Punching a hole in the wall won't raise enough dust, unless you do it 10x a day for 30 years or something.

Mesothelioma is only a threat to people who used to work in asbestos factories, and there's no threat whatsoever to normal people in normal houses with normal asbestos materials built-in. Every TV set, every stove, and every toaster up until very recently, has asbestos in it. Houses were built with asbestos shingle siding too, and it's all around us at all times.

Lately, asbestos is just another tool that dishonest personal injury lawyers are using to try to recruit uneducated people into lawsuits so the lawyers can get richer. That's all it is; plain and simple.

Charles

No, that's not entirely true. You can get mesothelioma from constant exposure to low levels of asbestos, and not necessarily in factories. The reason people didn't always die from it was because actual exposure levels differ, peoples' genetic susceptibility varies and also, years ago it was harder to diagnose and a death could be put down mistakenly to something else.

Also, asbestos wasn't widely used until the second World War. It took a few decades before people noticed the link, and now governments are doing their utmost to remove it.

You're right about greedy lawyers; in many cases, they do try to feed off others misfortunes, but mesothelioma is so closely linked to asbestos exposure that anyone who gets it has probably been exposed at some point in time. That doesn't necessarily mean that anyone exposed to asbestos will get mesothelioma, even if they worked in a factory for years. It also doesn't seem fair to penalise a company if the exposure was before the risk was widely known, except that in America, the poor patient may need the compensation to pay for their treatment. If anything, I would be inclined to vilify the Health care and insurance system.

OP, if you are worried about asbestos in your house, you should get it checked out and removed. Mesothelioma is a horrible disease, so it's better safe than sorry. Your exposure won't be too high if it's only recent (or even for 2 years) but I'd get rid of it you can. Do you know who built your house or have a home owners manual? There should be data on whether or not your house was built before the laws came into play.

My aunt's an environmental engineer, and I was worried about floor tiles in my house having asbestos, so she asked someone at work if it's possible they could have been made with it. My aunt's coworker said the asbestos was mainly used in commercial applications, not items you would find in residents. If the walls you punched are in your home, chances are they don't have asbestos. If they are in a school or office building, the risks are low of you having any complications from minimal exposure.

Most people who get sick with mesothelioma worked in places with prolonged exposure to asbestos, like ship yards and factories.

I dont think thats correct at all, unless you live in a newly built town. There is loads of asbestos in building of a certain age. And in old domestic products that you pick up for next to nothing in antique-type warehouses. In britain you can see it just looking out a window - a lot of garage/shed roofing is typically 40% asbestos. IIRC after the link was definately proven beyond doubt, the price dropped and even more of it got used.

The worst case i heard of (not counting austrailia) was a tower block in london, which had massive amounts of asbestos that was old & friable (breaking up) I seem to remember the lifts/elevators contained a lot of it. And the whole building had a fan based heating system so fibres were constantly being circulated.

my house was built in the 40's. the wall in my room sometime in the late70's mid 80's. I put plastic wrap and duct tape over all the holes, and I'm moving to AZ in less than a month. my moms logic is that I have lived in this house since I was 3 so therefore there cannot be asbestos because I would have already died( I HATE HER LOGIC ITS TERRIBLE AND STUPID) . so if i asked her to get it checked, she wouldn't. so im just going to leave it as is, move to AZ and never worry about it again. if 20 yrs from now I get cancer, I guess il know where it came from. and il just vaporize large quantities of MJ til the day i die.

OK do not panic, to explain one thing to you I hate asbestos almost more than any substance on earth. If I was God for a day I would make much of the asbestos on earth vanish or turn into rockwool as my big great deed. So I am not some asbestophile from the asbestos industry.

Before you panic you need to think. When you punched the hole in the wall did you see any loose fibre like material. The worst form of asbestos is non cement bonded fibres which were wrapped around pipes and sometimes used as thermal insulation in lofts or walls. As if did not see that type then hopefully you were not exposed to much.

Cement bonded asbestos must never be smashed up, but punching a hole in an asbestos and cement sheet should be no where near as bad as sawing or drilling it. Try in future not to punch walls or other things when you get angry. Maybe get a boxer's punch bag, you can beat the living daylights out of some of those with no fear of lung disease.

Does asbestos cause cancer? I thought the asbestos fibres are sharp and cause tiny cuts and scaring in the lungs and eventually your lungs working surface area becomes so small you can't breathe. BTW my house which was built in 1965 has an asbestos garage roof, asbestos guttering and down pipes and the watertank in the loft is also made from asbestos. A common place to find asbestos in Britain is behind a gas fire. If your house was changed from a coal fire to a gas fire then there is a good chance asbestos was used to seal off the fireplace.

Sleep soundly everyone .

That might be the case in Britain. According to the Department of Environmental Quality (I am in the US and each state has it's own department that deals with environmental issues, like regulating. There's also a federal Environmental Protection Agency that overlooks the state agencies), asbestos was too expensive to put into houses and was mostly used by commercial contractors in insulation, adhesives, and floor tiles. Contractors building houses didn't want to spend the extra money and didn't buy the more expensive products containing asbestos. Instead, they opted for the cheaper, less durable, absestos free floor tiles. For once, cheapness and poor quality was advantageous, in the long run