[HN Gopher] EPA bans asbestos, a deadly carcinogen still in use ...
___________________________________________________________________
EPA bans asbestos, a deadly carcinogen still in use decades after
partial ban
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 236 points
Date : 2024-03-18 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| ourguile wrote:
| Great news, friend is currently dealing with asbestos remediation
| headaches. Can't imagine having to deal with someone so dangerous
| every day.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Googling this it seems it doesn't cause headaches. Also if
| you're doing the remediation, you should have PPE and good
| protocols to protect you.
| hokumguru wrote:
| I think they meant metaphorical headaches dealing with
| asbestos remediation. As in difficulties.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Asbestos is a two-faced material.
|
| On one hand, it really helped to reduce frequency of devastating
| fires in the late 19th and early 20th century. Many lives saved.
|
| On the other hand, especially for people working with it, it is a
| harbinger of doom.
| simonw wrote:
| The R101 was a British hydrogen airship with 50 passenger
| cabins and a smoking room (despite being filled with hydrogen)
| - but the smoking room was lined with asbestos for safety.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R101
| timr wrote:
| > On the other hand, especially for people working with it, it
| is a harbinger of doom.
|
| That's overstating it. We know how to work with the stuff
| safely, but yeah, you don't want to put it in places where
| unskilled people have access to it.
|
| If we can safely work with trans-uranic compounds and things
| like hydrofluoric acid, we can safely work with asbestos.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| We _know_ , as a civilization, yes, but that doesn't mean we
| do it.
|
| Especially in the developing world, manual workers' rights
| aren't very strong and plenty of people working in
| shipbreaking or material recycling don't have any PPEs, or
| barely any.
|
| People working with trans-uranic compounds are usually lab
| employees/scientists, whose employers value them higher and
| are willing to spend more money to protect them.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > That's overstating it. We know how to work with the stuff
| safely, but yeah, you don't want to put it in places where
| unskilled people have access to it.
|
| Which includes everyone renovating their home. I recently
| backed out of a purchase because the sellers couldn't find
| out if there was asbestos used in the tile glue. If there
| were asbestos, it would have added a significant cost and
| especially >> 3 months of delay in moving in because people
| certified to work on that shit are more rare than gold.
|
| > If we can safely work with trans-uranic compounds and
| things like hydrofluoric acid, we can safely work with
| asbestos.
|
| The compounds you list are generally highly regulated, very
| difficult to get your hands on if you can't prove why you
| have a legitimate need for it, pretty expensive, and you
| won't find them outside of places that need to have it.
|
| As for asbestos, there are enough "jack of all trades" type
| handymen who don't give a fuck about safety - neither their
| own nor those of their client. That's why it got banned in
| the EU even for theoretically harmless usages.
| monknomo wrote:
| to be perfectly honest, we can't really work safely with
| trans-uranic compounds, just look at rock mountain flats
| babypuncher wrote:
| We should consider ourselves lucky that it is not somehow
| cheaper for low cost homebuilders to fill their drywall
| with plutonium.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, we can work with, say, plutonium, in extremely small
| amounts, in extremely controlled circumstances, and there are
| still problems. That's very different to how asbestos was
| used, though. It used to be used _everywhere_.
| XorNot wrote:
| Except you really can't, for the same reason in both cases.
| Asbestos is _only_ useful if you can use it everywhere, that
| 's it's whole value - cheap and available.
|
| But it's literally worse then radiation because it's inert:
| you can't detect it easily, the dust persists and goes
| everywhere, and there's no way to reliably know without
| expensive testing if it's in a place. And once contaminated,
| you probably can't get rid of all of it.
|
| My backgarden is _filled_ with the products of people
| demolishing asbestos containing fiber-cement board from some
| time in the 70s where evidently they just tossed it all into
| a section of retained wall and buried it (guess how I found
| out? Because I had to dig up the sewer pipe, and then
| discovered the reason the whole area is subsiding because it
| didn 't magically compact itself over time either).
| akira2501 wrote:
| > asbestos containing fiber-cement board from some time in
| the 70s where evidently they just tossed it all into a
| section of retained wall and buried it
|
| I wonder if they did this out of habit or because
| regulations made it difficult to dispose of otherwise?
| asdff wrote:
| On yet another hand, house fires wouldn't be so devastating if
| they weren't making multifamily balloon framed timber
| structures.
| timr wrote:
| > "For too long, polluters have been allowed to make, use and
| release toxics like asbestos and PFAS without regard for our
| health"
|
| Criticizing politican-speak about science is almost pointless,
| but this is a ridiculous conflation of two wildly different
| things: asbestos, which is a specific mineral, and for which the
| link to lung cancer in humans is indisputable; and "PFAS", which
| is a hazy conglomeration of things for which the scientific link
| to harm is weak, and mostly based on animal studies or bad
| observational data.
| cobalt60 wrote:
| When you're gonna compare two things and say one is
| indisputable and the other is weak, cite some claims. PFAS are
| real, test your water from your tap today. Any carcinogen is
| detrimental to health but depends on exposure, same goes for
| PFAS.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The thing about PFAS to me is it is a build up over time. So
| it's like heart disease as a silent killer. You can live with
| it for a long time before you start to notice the effects
| crote wrote:
| The worst part is that it doesn't really degrade either.
| There's literally no way around it, the world just gets
| increasingly polluted by it.
|
| Smoking causes cancer? Stop smoking, and prevent people
| from smoking near bystanders. Asbestos causes cancer? Ban
| it in new products, and mandate secure removal for existing
| stuff. It's not _that_ hard to deal with: just stop using
| the harmful thing and it 'll be fine.
|
| PFAS causes cancer? Permanently condemn all contaminated
| land, kill all wildlife trying to get out, mandatory
| cremation for all humans who lived there, and a total ban
| on breastfeeding for mothers who lived there.
|
| PFAS might not yet be definitively proven to be harmful in
| limited quantities, but the bio-accumulation is bad enough
| that we just cannot take that risk.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > Any carcinogen is detrimental to health but depends on
| exposure, same goes for PFAS.
|
| I think you can emphasize your point by noting two
| categories, those which bioaccumulate and those which don't,
| but the exposure of things bioaccumulated is, to your point,
| endlessly extended.
| timr wrote:
| Bioaccumulation is certainly _a factor_ to be concerned
| about, but you can 't skip over the part where you
| definitively demonstrate harm.
|
| Lots of things bioaccumulate, but cause no problems at all.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Are you saying that the dozen studies listed in wikipedia about
| PFAS harm to humans are flawed?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per-_and_polyfluoroalkyl_subst...
| timr wrote:
| Yes. Specifcally, anything that is an observational
| epidemiology study (which is much of it) is extremely low
| credibility. Observational epidemiology is historically
| terrible, low-quality research that gets lots of hype but
| doesn't stand up to rigorous analysis.
| thsksbd wrote:
| Chronic toxins that affect us over decades are difficult to
| detect. For starters, few studies last the long.
|
| That PFAS are very unreactive is meaningless. They still
| occupy volume and therefore affect kinematic rates and
| occupy reaction sites.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> That PFAS are very unreactive is meaningless. They
| still occupy volume and therefore affect kinematic rates
| and occupy reaction sites._
|
| They're surfactants so they can interfere with basic
| processes in the intracellular matrix like cells sticking
| to each other and forming tissue. The long term
| epidemiological effects and in vitro studies are just
| getting started understanding the effects.
| timr wrote:
| > They're surfactants so they can interfere with basic
| processes in the intracellular matrix like cells sticking
| to each other and forming tissue.
|
| You know what else is a surfactant? Soap.
|
| Literally every surfactant "interferes with basic
| processes in the intracellular matrix" -- they disrupt
| lipids (fats). That's how they work. They're not
| inherently dangerous as a category of chemicals. You
| slather yourself in them daily.
|
| This discussion is veering into "the dangers of
| dihydrogen monoxide" territory now. You can make pretty
| much anything _sound scary_ if you try hard enough.
| voodoomagicman wrote:
| PFAS are different from soap in that your body can't
| break them down or excrete them well, so they
| bioaccumulate. Eating soap is absolutely not good for
| you, and if it also built up in your body people would be
| really worried about small exposures to it.
| thsksbd wrote:
| Funny how you speak of "dihydrogen monoxide" - a very
| polar solvent which is incredibly safe.
|
| Just because DHM is fairy will tolerated, I wouldn't go
| around drinking a pint of, say, methanol another polar
| solvent.
| thfuran wrote:
| Aren't the concentrations of concern down in ppt range?
| Surely that can't be the explanation for why so low a
| concentration would affect much of anything.
| crote wrote:
| What's you suggested alternative? Deliberately exposing
| large groups of people to likely-harmful chemicals and
| seeing at what concentration they die?
| timr wrote:
| My suggested alternative is doing good, well-controlled
| science.
|
| No, you don't need to deliberately expose people to
| toxins to do that. That's a straw man, when much of what
| passes for observational epidemiology is loaded with
| obvious uncontrolled confounders (like poverty).
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Could you describe how you would design a "good, well-
| controlled science" study/experiment on the effects of
| PFAS in humans?
| timr wrote:
| I could describe any number of study designs. But the
| burden is not on me, it's on the people who are in the
| research area to do good science.
|
| More to the point, my ability (or lack) to come up with
| an experiment is not an excuse for you or anyone else to
| cite bad science with impunity. Likewise, if a study
| design is _bad_ , it's bad _regardless of my ability to
| correct it._
| spenczar5 wrote:
| I think the burden could be on the chemical producer: do
| "good science" to show this material is safe, or don't
| use it at all. That conservative mindset seems very
| reasonable to me.
|
| The question remains - what is "good science?"
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Look dickhead, I haven't cited shit. You keep bringing up
| methodological issues with the existing studies. I'm only
| asking if you think a good study could be done and what
| it would look like.
|
| If you're going to fold like a cheap suit to a softball
| question (that isn't shifting the burden, it's trying to
| understand what you consider a good methodology) then
| kindly either shut the fuck up or fuck off and let the
| adults talk.
| JoshTko wrote:
| So your argument is basically observational epidemiology
| study = low quality hence we cannot make conclusions? It
| would be a fair point if this were a single observational
| (non experimental) study. However when you look at a dozen
| studies on humans which all exhibit the same pattern where
| high PFAS in blood correlates with higher cancer rates then
| the burden of proof shifts to prove that PFAS is safe, not
| the other way around.
|
| Theoretically it's conceivable that there is a separate,
| common factor in all the studies that causes the illness
| (e.g., people who are prone to cancer are somehow attracted
| to working with PFAS) but I think after the n-th human
| observational, plus experimental animal studies that at
| least show hormone disruption - we probably should on a go
| forwards basis operate with the assumption that PFAS are
| likely very toxic for humans, unless proven to be mostly
| safe.
| SkinTaco wrote:
| It might be more possible than you think
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
| steviedotboston wrote:
| Also the danger of asbestos is specifically when it is breathed
| in over extended periods of time. There are forms of asbestos
| that are really not all that dangerous to the general public,
| but people freak out when they hear the word.
|
| If there are suitable alternatives its good to ban it and move
| on.
| jijijijij wrote:
| > There are forms of asbestos that are really not all that
| dangerous to the general public
|
| Source?
| frud wrote:
| Any form that doesn't have loose fibrils, microparticles,
| or dust.
|
| I'd compare it to wood from walnut trees, which is
| perfectly safe to handle and use in dining tables, etc.,
| but dust from its' woodworking is toxic.
| jijijijij wrote:
| > Any form that doesn't have loose fibrils,
| microparticles, or dust.
|
| Encasement breaks, materials erode, have to be
| manufactured and disposed. That's not a valid argument at
| all.
|
| > I'd compare it to wood from walnut trees
|
| Well, then you are very uninformed. The toxicity
| characteristics are nothing alike. If you want to point
| to a similar hazard, I'd suggest beryllium compounds.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Bedrock, for one. Asbestos occurs naturally in many common
| rocks. A map of asbestos-containing bedrock includes many
| population centers in the U.S:
|
| https://www.mindat.org/photo-1146434.html
|
| Basically any situation where the asbestos is not shedding
| dust or fibers into air that'll be breathed by humans is
| pretty safe. Contact with asbestos causes virtually no
| health risks; it really has to get into the lungs to do
| damage.
| jijijijij wrote:
| That's not a source at all. For some places with
| naturally occurring exposed asbestos minerals (e.g.
| Turkey) you _do_ find a significantly higher incidence in
| specific lung cancers. That 's also true for areas around
| mines (e.g. Canada).
|
| It is hard to establish a mesothelioma baseline, because
| fibers can be found in the air everywhere at all times,
| but it is believed to be a specific disease caused by
| exposure, more or less always.
|
| > not shedding dust or fibers into air
|
| Which they all do, at some point in time. Even short
| exposure has been linked to mesothelioma and there is no
| safe exposure levels for any type of asbestos.
|
| > Contact with asbestos causes virtually no health risks;
| it really has to get into the lungs to do damage.
|
| This is not true. It is suspected to cause cancer and
| other issues upon ingestion and it does cause skin
| disease too.
| steviedotboston wrote:
| Floor tiles in your home. Lots of homes in the 50s/60s had
| asbestos floor tiles installed. These tiles aren't going to
| kill you. You can leave them alone, cover them with another
| layer of tile.
|
| If you remove them, you can hire an abatement company which
| takes a tremendous level of precuation, but when you
| consider the tiny amount of asbestos in the tiles, the fact
| that its not really breathable, and your exposure is not
| over an extended period of time, removing tiles yourself
| with some basic precaution should be fine.
|
| The sorts of asbestos you find around the house that you
| absolutely don't want to mess with would be things like
| pipe insulation. That stuff is loose, lightweight and can
| easily be breathed in.
|
| Basically just use some common sense and understand what
| makes asbestos dangerous.
| jijijijij wrote:
| Yeah, no source...
|
| Every asbestos product erodes at some point. Yes, you can
| cover or encapsulate it - that's trivial. Ultimately
| someone has to deal with it tho, and that's when it is
| always gonna be dangerous. A new home owner may also not
| know about your cover-up.
|
| Your prior statement is misleading. You are talking about
| mitigations, not inherent risk.
| es7 wrote:
| I'm not really clear on the asbestos risk. Everything I've read
| and heard seems to indicate that the panic around asbestos
| might be overblown. Asbestos is unsafe but it is a matter of
| degrees. In certain cases like loose-fill insulation or certain
| situations where workers grind/cut asbestos regularly, it seems
| to cause a meaningful level of risk. Especially for those who
| are already smokers.
|
| But having gone through a remodel in a house with asbestos, I
| have been blown away at the extreme level of regulations, the
| meticulous procedures that remediation companies have to
| follow, the tens-of-thousands spent on remediation and repeated
| testing, and the tens-of-millions being thrown around in courts
| whenever Asbestos comes up.
|
| As best as I can tell, the risk is close to zero for minor and
| occasional exposure in otherwise healthy individuals. I'm open
| to seeing hard evidence to convince me otherwise.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| In 100 years I bet those same stringent policies will exist
| for fiberglass batt
| throwup238 wrote:
| They'll exist for a lot of nanotech like carbon nanotubes
| too. Pretty much any rigid nanostructure has potential for
| same effect on the lungs as asbestos since it's caused by
| mechanical damage.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| It depends on bioaccumulating, i've read. Inert things
| can't have bonds broken by macrophages, etc, labeling
| them with an ion. Carbon chains i supposemight break down
| biologically , but maybe won't.
| observationist wrote:
| Asbestos repeats the injury, endlessly, with near
| immunity to any chemical decomposition. Mechanical
| decomposition just makes it more dangerous, as it cleaves
| into sharper, tinier needle like structures. Other
| nanostructures aren't nearly as chemically stable,
| especially inside the body, and can be metabolized or
| expelled from the body through natural processes.
| Asbestos sticks, shatters, and all the jagged little
| needle pieces stick where they are.
|
| Fiberglass, dust, and so forth can be expelled by the
| body and don't represent nearly the same level of harm as
| asbestos. The material's mechanical and chemical
| properties make a huge difference in how dangerous they
| are. Asbestos is chemically robust and mechanically
| fragile in a way that makes it more dangerous and sticky
| over time.
|
| A nanotube that damages a few cells, then gets
| metabolized or oxidizes, and then expelled, is far
| different from a slowly exploding needle bomb that will
| reside in your body for decades, endlessly killing the
| cells it contacts, resulting in infections, inflammation,
| cancer, and sometimes even dead septic chunks of tissue.
|
| Asbestos is, on balance, a terrible, horrible thing, and
| the harm it does can't be justified by the potential for
| good uses. Fiberglass insulation or carbon nanotubes
| aren't good for your lungs, but the dangers they pose can
| be reasonably considered against their benefits. these
| materials present a very different scale and magnitude of
| harm, especially over time.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| From your mouth to God's ear.
| rayiner wrote:
| Probably not. Fiberglass has been studied for
| carcinogenicity specifically based on the experience with
| asbestos:
| https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/fiberglass-
| insulat... ("Fibers deposited in the deepest parts of the
| lungs where gas exchange occurs are removed more slowly by
| special cells called macrophages. Macrophages can engulf
| the fibers and move them to the mucous layer and the larynx
| where they can be swallowed. Swallowed fibers and
| macrophages are excreted in the feces within a few days.
|
| Synthetic vitreous fibers deposited in the gas exchange
| area of the lungs also slowly dissolve in lung fluid.
| Fibers that are partially dissolved in lung fluid are more
| easily broken into shorter fibers. Shorter fibers are more
| easily engulfed by macrophages and removed from the lung
| than long fibers.").
|
| We also have been unable to find clear evidence of health
| harms in longitudinal studies of fiberglass manufacturing
| workers: https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ToxProfiles/tp161-c2.pdf
| ("Studies of workers predominantly involved in the
| manufacture of fibrous glass, rock wools, or slag wools
| have focused on the prevalence of respiratory symptoms
| through the administration of questionnaires, pulmonary
| function testing, and chest x-ray examinations. In general,
| these studies reported no consistent evidence for increased
| prevalence of adverse respiratory symptoms, abnormal
| pulmonary functions, or chest x-ray abnormalities; however,
| one study reported altered pulmonary function (decreased
| forced expiratory volume in 1 second) in a group of Danish
| insulation workers compared with a group of bus drivers.").
| timr wrote:
| > Everything I've read and heard seems to indicate that the
| panic around asbestos might be overblown. Asbestos is unsafe
| but it is a matter of degrees.
|
| Oh definitely. Like, if you ask the EPA, they'll tell you
| that there's "no safe level of exposure"...which is true at a
| population level (and completely understandable for a
| regulatory body to say), but terrorizes the kind of people
| who panic at the idea of chemicals.
|
| You don't want to be breathing the stuff when it's floating
| in the air, but people absolutely freak out over the idea of
| being near anything _containing_ asbestos, even if the stuff
| is sealed in plastic or ceramic -- tons of old floor tiles
| contained it, for example. That 's pretty obviously harmless,
| unless you grind it up and aerosolize it, but it triggers the
| same level of response as fraying asbestos pipe insulation.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Part of what we're dealing with here is that asbestos
| present in a home harms not only your health but...
| potentially the perceived $$ value of your home. Your
| biggest financial investment.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Yep, and sometimes asbestos exposure is better than being
| burned alive.
|
| Life is a matter of trade offs.
|
| We may have better trade offs now with advances in material
| science, but all those uses of asbestos were not made by
| mustache twirling villains.
| nostrademons wrote:
| > As best as I can tell, the risk is close to zero for minor
| and occasional exposure in otherwise healthy individuals. I'm
| open to seeing hard evidence to convince me otherwise.
|
| Asbestos is interesting in that the mechanism of
| carcinogenicity is very well-studied and well-understood. The
| fibers get into the lungs; the body can not get them out of
| the lungs; they cause persistent cell-damage as they
| mechanically rupture lung cells; and then the resulting
| chronic inflammation eventually causes cancer.
|
| Because it's so well understood, we also know how to protect
| against asbestos. If the fibers are never airborn, they can't
| get into the lungs. If you're wearing an N95 mask or
| respirator, they can't get into the lungs. If you can cough
| them out in the moment, they don't stay in the lungs. Once
| they're in the lungs, you're pretty well screwed. It's a
| sliding scale of how screwed, with more exposure causing more
| cancer risk, but the fibers are not coming out and will
| continue rolling cancer dice while they're in there.
|
| Having asbestos in your walls or ductwork is not going to
| kill you - the asbestos fibers aren't in the air. Doing a DIY
| reno on your asbestos-containing walls absolutely _can_ kill
| you, and there have been cases of mesothelioma linked exactly
| to that.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Is there any way to wash them out of the lungs?
|
| At the same time could smokers get a lung cleaning
| treatment?
| thereisnospork wrote:
| It probably _could_ [0] be done, but good luck getting an
| FDA approval.
|
| [0]Speaking of smokers specifically, it is entirely
| possible to 'breathe' oxygenated liquid per fluorocarbons
| ('PFAS') which would very likely dissolve and 'wash out'
| tar from the lungs.
| jijijijij wrote:
| No. Because of their needle shape, they wander deep into
| the tissue. The notoriously associated cancer is found in
| the mesothelium, a layer around the lungs.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Lots of non-banned substances are more dangerous to breathe
| than asbestos. I understand the risks because I spent 20
| years working in a building containing asbestos, and
| received annual notifications and warnings. It's been
| banned for use in construction for over 30 years, so I
| don't see how the EPA ban will make much difference.
| adriand wrote:
| > the fibers are not coming out and will continue rolling
| cancer dice while they're in there
|
| This is rather alarmist. The truth is more nuanced. This
| resource [1] lists a variety of biological mechanisms that
| work to remove asbestos fibers from the lungs beyond simply
| coughing them out, such as via "alveolar macrophages".
|
| > Doing a DIY reno on your asbestos-containing walls
| absolutely can kill you
|
| This is true, but if this made any readers anxious, it's
| important to note that "light, short-term exposure rarely
| causes disease" and that it is "not uncommon for homeowners
| to do a renovation and then realize afterward that they
| disturbed asbestos products. Fortunately, the risk from
| this is low." [2]
|
| My advice is that if you are going to renovate your home,
| unless it is quite new and you have good reason to believe
| there is no risk of asbestos contamination, you should
| assume that materials like tiles, plaster, drywall,
| insulation, etc., may contain asbestos, and get them tested
| before commencing. However, if you have renovated in the
| past and are anxious about exposure, chill out. You can't
| change anything now, and unless you were renovating
| regularly, you'll very likely be fine.
|
| Remember that if you live in a rural area, you can be
| exposed to asbestos via natural weathering of rock. If you
| live in an urban area, you have likely been exposed to
| asbestos via construction and demolition work taking place
| nearby.
|
| [1] https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/asbestos/biological_fate
| _of_a...
|
| [2] https://www.asbestos.com/exposure/short-term/
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's also under-appreciated how risky many common substances
| are when ground or cut. Cutting concrete, for example, can
| cause silicosis of the lungs[1] if precautions aren't taken.
| Wood dust is also potentially carcinogenic[2].
|
| Then there's stuff like metal fume fever[3], which _seems_ to
| be temporary but who knows what long term effects we 'll
| discover in the future.
|
| [1] https://www.elcosh.org/document/1930/d000852/Dry+Cutting+
| %25...
|
| [2] https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/chemicals/wood_dust.html
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_fume_fever
| nostrademons wrote:
| The general rule of thumb should be "don't breathe dust",
| not regulating specific types of dust. Almost all forms of
| dust are bad for you.
| nxobject wrote:
| Quartz has a similar effect to concrete, too.
| Scarblac wrote:
| My dad died of it some years ago, and we never knew where his
| lungs came into contact with the stuff. He never worked in
| construction, but sometimes near it. There is typically about
| 30 years between the contact with asbestos and getting ill.
|
| It's a very depressing diagnosis, there is no remedy and you
| just get gradually worse over a year or so until you die.
| uptown wrote:
| I'm very sorry about your dad and how his death must have
| pained your family.
|
| My dad also died from asbestos exposure leading to
| mesothelioma. His final months were a lot like what you
| described.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It takes one asbestos exposure to get a fiber hooked in your
| lung. It's worth some hassle. It's not just about you, but
| also the people who handle it downstream in the waste
| disposal pipeline, people who are involved in unrelated
| construction, etc. Asbestos killed a lot of people.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| It always amazes me that for every type of potentially
| hazardous substance or situation there will be people state
| 'Everything I've read' or 'From my own research' and the
| downplay or dismiss the concern.
|
| There are a LOT of people that have worked with asbestos that
| went on to develop severe lung disease.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| I feel very disappointed in many of people commenting here.
| Because it looks like - as long as I'm not the one hurt,
| who cares that it's their health and life at risk.
|
| As long as I can have my stuff cheap.
|
| :(
| jghn wrote:
| Also things like the asbestos house siding and floor tiles
| that were ubiquitous for a while. If you have an older house
| there's a decent chance you either have it or it's lurking
| underneath what you do have when people just covered it up.
|
| Getting rid of it is a huge hassle because it qualifies for
| full asbestos remediation. But yet it's nowhere near the
| danger to get rid of than the loose-fill insulation.
| thsksbd wrote:
| PFAS will mess you up. Badly.
|
| "How bad could they be?" You ask. "They're incredibly
| unreacitve!"
|
| Enter steric interference.
|
| Also, there's a very good reason we do animal studies; because,
| unless there's a really good reason why something (say burnt
| food -> we've coevolved with cooking) wouldn't affect humans,
| if it kills animals, it kills us.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is a completely different risk profile.
|
| Asbestos is dangerous, mostly for people who work with it, but
| other than that, it is just rock, and it occurs naturally.
| After a few years of not using it and disposing of the decaying
| remains of stuff made with it, it is unlikely to stay a
| problem.
|
| PFAS on the other hand are not natural, we are putting out tons
| of stuff that can last for thousands of years and is very hard
| to get rid off. Maybe it is a problem, or maybe not. If it is
| not, then we are lucky, but if it is, then our grandchildren
| and their own grandchildren who may only remember asbestos from
| history books will be left with a major problem to deal with.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Asbestos is also naturally occurring and as a result there's an
| ambient level of asbestos in the air regardless of how hard you
| regulate.
|
| I find asbestos to be such fascinating substance. As a kid I
| thought it was cool as hell ("a fluffy rock!?") and even now I
| think it's pretty neat in its natural form. Because asbestos
| has so many useful properties - ridiculously insulating _and_
| non-flammable - many of the substances that replaced the
| asbestos are the PFAS this sentence is complaining about. As
| far as I know there 's still not a good non-PFAS substitute in
| many cases.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Were these remaining uses harmful? Is this just a PR victory?
| kube-system wrote:
| Brake linings in particular were a harmful use, because they
| are worn away into dust during use, and mechanics in particular
| are exposed to a brake dust as an occupational hazard.
| asdff wrote:
| Mechanics should be wearing sufficient PPE if they are
| working with particulate pollution. Take asbestos out of the
| brake dust but they still do things that generate plenty of
| particulate, which is only an occupational hazard when
| coupled with improper ppe.
| azinman2 wrote:
| How often do you see mechanics with any kind of PPE?
| toast0 wrote:
| Almost all professional mechanics are wearing coveralls.
| That's PPE.
|
| I've certainly seen a lot that wear gloves. That's PPE.
|
| Goggles or safety glasses are common but not ubiquitous
| in the shops I've seen. That's PPE.
|
| Ignoring masks that seem responsive to COVID, I haven't
| seen a lot of masks or respirators outside of shops where
| they're doing paint work, but I also don't get to see all
| the shop space and masks are intrusive, so probably if
| mechanics wear them, it's only when they perceive an
| accute risk. You don't usually keep your welding mask on
| all day, unless there's a lot of welding.
| asdff wrote:
| How is this an argument to them not needing to wear PPE?
| Asbestos isn't the only particulate risk they face. PPE
| on the other hand would solve the others. You can say you
| don't see mechanics wearing PPE but thats because its not
| presently regulated. How many kitchens today lack a
| handwashing sink? Zero, if they have passed a health
| inspection.
| kube-system wrote:
| Health inspection failures are very common. Health
| inspections also only capture a specific a point in time.
| I have personally eaten at restaurants that initially
| passed a health inspection, yet failed later for not
| having a functional handwashing sink.
|
| e.g. https://medium.com/@michaelkduchak/predicting-
| chicago-health...
|
| Ensuring complete compliance at this level is very
| difficult.
| azinman2 wrote:
| It's not an argument, but an observation. They deal in
| all kinds of chemicals and other nastiness, and I've
| never seen one wear PPE. I've even talked to mechanics
| about it and they don't seem to care.
| lbotos wrote:
| My younger brother worked at an independent BMW shop for
| a bit and they wore gloves all day. Anyone actively using
| airtools also had on ear muffs. Grinding, they'd wear a
| face shield. Yes, often ppl are dumb but they don't have
| to be.
| kube-system wrote:
| Unfortunately PPE is not always taken seriously by
| automotive tradespeople (and their employers). It is common
| to see both professional mechanics and home mechanics doing
| brake jobs without PPE, in many places.
|
| Also, smaller amounts of brake dust are distributed
| everywhere in the environment where vehicles are operated.
| IntrepidWorm wrote:
| Sure, but ensuring all mechanics everywhere have access to
| use PPE, and then enforcing its correct use is way less
| effective in practice than removing the hazardous material
| from the workplace entirely. Being exposed to any fine
| particulate matter over long periods will be detrimental to
| health (we aren't evolved to breath large amounts of dust),
| but not every particulate is an acute carcinogen.
| asdff wrote:
| We can play whack a mole getting every source of
| particulate out of the garage (can we even do that?
| consider sanding, grinding, painting, etc, not just the
| brakes are making this), or we can use our existing
| workplace safety enforcement mechanisms to enforce ppe in
| this industry like they've enforced ppe in many other
| industries.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > __or_ we can_
|
| Or, and hear me out because I know this is crazy... we
| can do both! By trying to get rid of the bad stuff from
| the workplace _and_ get better at enforcing ppe use.
| robocat wrote:
| > we aren't evolved to breath large amounts of dust
|
| We are doing that evolution at present!
|
| The best way to do evolution is something that kills
| children before they breed. Second best for evolution is
| killing adults before they breed. Mostly ineffective is
| killing adults after they breed: although in theory loss
| of an adult can affect the population breeding chances
| downwards for children.
|
| Just a reminder that evolution is about breeding children
| and not so much about death.
| IntrepidWorm wrote:
| I'm just spitballing here, but I'd wager that the human
| toll required to evolve effective resistance to regular
| and prolonged asbestos exposure is more than most of us
| would be willing to pay.
|
| We already evolved these massive craniums filled with (to
| date) the most intricate and powerful general computers
| in the world - it seems like the solution to asbestos
| exposure is simply engineering a way to avoid it. No
| evolution necessary.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Sounds like my shadetree approach means I'm steps ahead of
| the pros.
| greenavocado wrote:
| Independent mechanics never wear PPE and they are covered
| in dust and automotive fluids daily.
| asdff wrote:
| So take out the asbestos and they are still at risk
| because the fundamental issue is a lack of PPE. You can
| regulate PPE. Many industries have done it. Shadetree
| work, sure, people do dumb things like cook hotdogs in
| shopping carts and sell that too, that will always
| happen. But for a brick and mortar mechanic they are
| already going though many regulations (e.g. how they deal
| with oil). PPE requirements are nothing in comparison to
| having to deal with things of that nature, or even just
| general small business requirements.
| kube-system wrote:
| How? Staff an OSHA inspector to stand around in every
| garage? If Jim at Jim's Auto Service doesn't want to wear
| a mask, he's not going to wear one. It's not like oil
| where there's an evidence trail and a big mess if he
| decides to dump 50 gallons in the back lot.
|
| Yes, there's more that could be done in regards to PPE
| enforcement, but I think that's really an orthogonal
| issue. Asbestos isn't necessary in brakes, and can be
| banned regardless of PPE enforcement.
| robocat wrote:
| > shadetree
|
| https://shadetreehq.com/what-is-a-shadetree-mechanic/
|
| Not a term I've heard in New Zealand.
| biscuits1 wrote:
| RIP, McQueen :pray:
| cjensen wrote:
| Normally modern brakes do not contain asbestos. All major car
| manufacturers have not used it in decades. Why was it still
| being used at all?
| kube-system wrote:
| Global OEMs haven't used asbestos for a while. They don't
| want the liability, and it makes logistical sense for them
| to use brakes that are legal in all markets.
|
| But some low-cost aftermarket replacement brakes imported
| from countries where it is still legal to manufacture them,
| have contained asbestos. Asbestos is cheap and functional.
| robocat wrote:
| An acquaintance was trying to argue that Lamborghini
| brakes contained asbestos. There are places where
| asbestos is the ideal engineering material but my guess
| is that brakes is not one of them.
| kube-system wrote:
| The phrase "ideal engineering material" doesn't make any
| sense. You can't define what is ideal until you define
| the design goals.
|
| If you want to optimize price and fire resistance, and
| you have no other goals, asbestos is ideal.
|
| But yes, VAG quite likely has other goals when designing
| a Lamborghini.
| robocat wrote:
| You are being uninformatively pedantic, "There are
| places" is enough context for a throwaway sentence.
| Analysing every word or phrase is not productive and I
| think my meaning was clear enough.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html doesn't
| specifically mention nitpicking: I admit I have the same
| fault (Edit: rephrased this).
|
| Edit 2: perhaps I should have added that I think
| engineering is the art of making good compromises.
| kube-system wrote:
| I'm not being pedantic, as far as I understand the
| meaning of your comment. Asbestos _is_ a very good
| material for making very cheap brakes, and in developing
| countries brakes are sometimes still made with asbestos
| for that reason.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean... it seems incredibly unlikely, given that the EU
| banned the manufacture, import and use of asbestos items,
| except for one extremely narrowly defined case where no
| acceptable substitute existed at the time (electrolysis
| diaphragms for chlorine production plants), about 25
| years ago. Is their theory that Lamborghini ships the US
| models to the US brake-less, then adds special US-only
| brakes, for some reason?
| Sharlin wrote:
| It's crazy that this particular use case wasn't already
| banned. I mean, the stuff is only dangerous in particulate
| form - so why on Earth was it permitted to be used for things
| that by their very nature wear down to particulates during
| use?
| kube-system wrote:
| There were previous attempts to ban it but they were
| overturned by courts in the 90s
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Because the dose makes the poison.
|
| Low levels of asbestos exposure is statistically unlikely
| to harm you, and the concentrations from brake dust are
| relatively low. As long as a brake shop ventilates its work
| spaces it's a negligible risk to workers.
| ramblenode wrote:
| > Low levels of asbestos exposure is statistically
| unlikely to harm you
|
| This is not correct. One could say that low levels of
| asbestos have not statistically been shown to cause harm,
| but that is quite different from statistically showing
| evidence of no harm. Harm may very well be occuring, but
| it is below the sensitivity threshold of our instruments
| to detect it.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| What ever harm it might be causing, is below the
| detection threshold, and thus meaningful risk tolerance
| of everyday life.
|
| Living near a freeway for instance is substantially more
| dangerous to your health than occasional incidental
| exposure to asbestos.
|
| You are breathing asbestos right now. In every breath.
| chucksta wrote:
| Talc, ie baby powder. Its still too common in cosmetics too
| afaik
| kube-system wrote:
| Talc has sometimes been contaminated with asbestos, but it
| isn't a use of asbestos.
| black6 wrote:
| One tainted batch of talcum powder from J&J and now I have to
| use much less effective corn starch to powder my nether
| regions.
| op00to wrote:
| Check back in 30 years.
| adrr wrote:
| Someone has to mine it, pack it/assemble it.
| m463 wrote:
| baby powder contains asbestos.
| imglorp wrote:
| ... yes, for which J&J just paid a $8.9B settlement. I don't
| know if that makes it true or right, but maybe a little?
| declaredapple wrote:
| I think that happens because talc deposits often contain
| asbestos so it's not an uncommon contaminate.
|
| that doesn't mean talc products always contain asbestos
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7691901/
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I think you mean that there exist baby powders which use talc,
| and there exist talc mines contaminated with asbestos, so there
| exist some (not all) baby powders that contain(ed?) asbestos.
|
| of course, how to know what does and does not is unclear.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Baby powder these days, in Europe at least, is finely divided
| starch, usually potato or maize. Has been for a long time.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| (Available in the US too)
| GenerWork wrote:
| I'm curious as to why they banned the use of asbestos by the
| chlor-alkali industry. It seems that the asbestos is relatively
| inert (i.e. it's not going anywhere), perhaps they had some
| evidence that there were asbestos fibers getting into the final
| products?
| whatshisface wrote:
| That stuff almost always gets into the lungs of the workers
| making it. Oftentimes stuff gets banned because nobody can
| handle it properly.
|
| Its actually kind of like nuclear power. The electricity isn't
| more dangerous to consumers, but observation of the mortal
| nature of man lead to the conclusion that it'd be better to
| keep corporations away from it.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| If we had kept up the pace of nuclear construction, we would
| have finished decarbonizing our electric grid by now.
| Instead, we've barely started. Was it worth the extra 100Gt
| of CO2 in the atmosphere?
| Filligree wrote:
| Yes. Extra CO2 and global warming is far less likely to
| scuttle your reelection attempts, and voter deaths don't
| matter if they're diffuse enough no-one will point their
| finger at you.
| contravariant wrote:
| Diffuse isn't the most important bit, the main point is
| that they happen during the _next_ election cycle.
| jajko wrote:
| People clearly prefer slow silent mass death (and messing
| up world for good for grandchildren) over few-per-century
| bigger accidents (when literally everybody in the world
| takes notes and massively improves).
|
| Similar to car massive amount of death (not even going into
| secondary and tertiary effects) and nobody bats an eye,
| even if they know personally somebody who died like that.
| Yet every single plane crash and tons of folks are getting
| panic attacks.
|
| Human psychology fascinates me, but at the same time makes
| me outright sad. So much potential often wasted on utter
| stupidities, and even worse - its trivial for skilled
| people to manipulate masses into literally shooting off
| their own feet with 12 gauge shotgun buckshot, just play
| the fear tune well enough for long enough.
| tacocataco wrote:
| I think you might be interested in Adam Curtis' "century
| of the self" if long documentaries are your thing.
| HPsquared wrote:
| See also, economic policy of the last 100 years or so.
| rurp wrote:
| I think you're right to be sad about it, and I would add
| "deeply concerned" as well. Our society is at a point
| where the most dangerous risks are ones that the human
| mind is pretty bad at reasoning about. That's a big
| problem, to put it mildly.
|
| Climate change, nuclear weapons, bio threats, and runaway
| AI all pose immense risks, at scales that are hard to
| reason about intuitively. Hopefully we develop ways to
| better manage current and future risks before a big one
| blows up.
| legulere wrote:
| Yearly added renewable generation (not capacity, but actual
| generation) is already much larger than added nuclear power
| ever was.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Strange, that same observation and the corresponding 3
| million worldwide deaths yearly didn't change our attitude
| towards fossil fuel combustion and its air pollution.
|
| Even more remarkable, the fact that nuclear is kept out of
| the hands of corporations, but the oil industry is not might
| have been the cause that the latter put so much money and
| effort into the nuclear fear campaign.
|
| More people die of fossil fuel air pollution per year than
| have died of COVID. We might have saved more lives during the
| lock down by the reduction in pollution than the actual virus
| containment.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Strange, that same observation and the corresponding 3
| million worldwide deaths yearly didn't change our attitude
| towards fossil fuel combustion and its air pollution.
|
| Stranger still, alcohol is still legal even though there's
| "no safe level of consumption"[1].
|
| [1] https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-
| level-of-...
| HPsquared wrote:
| Every activity carries risk of one form or another.
| oblio wrote:
| True, but as we remove various forms of risks and prolong
| life, for sure there will be a point in the future where
| our 200-year-living descendants will say: why were those
| idiots actively, massively and collectively poisoning
| themselves?
| admax88qqq wrote:
| It's different when someone wants to put something into
| their own body vs someone wants to put something into the
| air and water we all share. Stop pretending it isn't.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > 3 million worldwide deaths yearly
|
| Is this a count or a statistic?
| Reason077 wrote:
| Vastly more people have died from _hydro_ accidents, let
| alone coal pollution, than have ever died from all the
| world's nuclear accidents combined.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The very same meticulous regulatory oversight that make
| plants safe makes them impossible to get through permitting
| cost-effectively. The result of the "soft ban" are a number
| of extremely safe plants that it's not economical to make
| more of. You could hypothetically enforce a similar "soft
| ban" for leaded gasoline or asbestos - by requiring
| elaborate filtration, containment and disposal procedures,
| plus monitoring and redundant process oversight. They'd
| never show up on consumer vehicles or in homes, but they
| may show up in a handful of specialty applications,
| complete with extraordinary amounts of paperwork and large
| government departments. Some people might start talking
| about "clean fiber," or "safe leaded."
|
| P.S. if you are wondering what's wrong with allowing
| corporations to take on endeavors with a risk of causing
| large amounts of damage, it's because the value of a
| company isn't allowed to go negative due to bankruptcy and
| the corporate veil. If you're able to incorporate, you can
| profit from a series of "-$1,000 if I lose, +$1 if I win,"
| bets, because creating $1000 liabilities on an entity with
| no money in the bank costs little more than the equipment
| you'd be forced to liquidate.
| SnorkelTan wrote:
| China seems to be building next gen reactors in
| reasonable amounts of time.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Let's check again in 50 years, after the safety systems
| have had time to deteriorate, and we've had Chinese
| Glasnost for a look into the archives from 2056. (The
| Soviet Union would have kept Chernobyl a secret if Sweden
| hadn't detected the radiation. If the accident had been
| limited to the boundaries of Ukraine, it might never have
| been revealed as long as the regime lasted.)
| rsynnott wrote:
| Virtually all plants being built in China today are
| third-gen evolutions of proven second-gen PWRs,
| themselves very safe.
|
| Hiding a Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster would be far
| more difficult today; even in China, total news blackouts
| are a lot more difficult to pull off than they used to
| be. And the designs in use are inherently a lot safer and
| more conservative than the RBMK type (which was really
| pretty innovative and impressive for the time, if you
| ignore the unfortunate tendency to explode, but certainly
| _not_ conservative).
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| It doesn't have to be Chernobyl level which are unlikely.
| It could just be radioactive waste contamination in
| ground water or things like that.
| _visgean wrote:
| > The Soviet Union would have kept Chernobyl a secret if
| Sweden hadn't detected the radiation
|
| they would try but it would leak one way or another.
| Simply too many people involved...
| pdonis wrote:
| Chernobyl was not a result of safety systems
| deteriorating over a long period of operation. We have
| plenty of reactors in the world that have operated for
| decades and their safety systems still work just fine.
|
| Chernobyl was the result of an insane reactor design
| (positive void coefficient of reactivity and no secondary
| containment) which then had uncontrolled experiments run
| on it during operation. Nobody is going to repeat that
| bonehead move.
| rlpb wrote:
| > ...it'd have to involve a serious overhaul of the very
| concepts of corporations and liability in America
|
| Don't insurance companies solve this problem? Require the
| nuclear corporation to have liability insurance by
| regulation. Then the liability is shifted to an
| underwriter who has much more diversified risk.
| whatshisface wrote:
| That sounds like a great idea, if you can get it
| implemented. Policymakers seem to be going in the
| opposite direction with things like tort reform (dollar
| value limitations on damages), and insurers who make
| exceptions for "acts of God," like major natural
| disasters. Hundred-billion-dollar insurance policies on
| the habitability of areas several counties in expanse,
| along with courts willing to resettle entire cities as
| part of treble damages is far from the system we have!
| These astounding things would be necessary to fully
| replace regulation with liability, even for the often-
| seen-as-less-apocalyptic chemical industry, which is
| nonetheless capable of killing thousands in extremis, and
| that would have to be insured.
| bbarnett wrote:
| There'd just be a run down to lowest policy price, and
| then after a disaster the government would have to bail
| out. Which it does with glee.
| jltsiren wrote:
| They would solve the problem by making nuclear power too
| expensive for anyone to consider. Insurance companies
| don't like risks they can't quantify reliably. They
| either won't underwrite such risks at all, or they charge
| unreasonable premiums.
|
| The risks of nuclear power are still largely unknown, as
| there have been only two major disasters over a few
| decades. Both of them cost ~$200 billion, at least
| according to some estimates. We don't know how much worse
| the reasonable worst case could be. Chernobyl and
| Fukushima were also one-off disasters with specific
| causes. Insurance companies would also have to be
| prepared for multiple disasters in a short period of time
| caused by systemic issues in the design of a particular
| reactor type.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> The risks of nuclear power are still largely unknown,
| as there have been only two major disasters over a few
| decades._
|
| No, the risks of nuclear power are _very well known_ , as
| there have been only two major disasters over quite a few
| decades, and _the root causes of both of them are well
| known and easily avoidable_.
|
| _> We don 't know how much worse the reasonable worst
| case could be._
|
| Yes, we do. We know that Chernobyl was _worse_ than any
| reasonable worst case for any other reactor, because
| nobody is going to build another reactor with a positive
| void coefficient of reactivity and with no secondary
| containment, and then run uncontrolled experiments on it.
| And we know that Fukushiman _was_ a reasonable worst
| case, because it subjected a just shut down reactor to
| zero decay heat removal for an extended period, and that
| is going to be the consequence of the worst possible
| accident that could happen to a _running_ reactor, since
| any such accident will shut the reactor down.
|
| In other words, in a sane world, the risks of nuclear
| power would be _more_ insurable than the risks of, say,
| coal power, precisely because the nuclear risks are
| contained. No insurance company is going to sign up to
| liability for deaths due to respiratory failure from
| breathing coal dust over a period of many years. But in
| our insane world, we don 't hold _anyone_ accountable for
| such risks, so we end up treating nuclear, which is far
| safer per unit of energy generated than any source except
| solar, as if it were the riskiest of all sources.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| In the US we get 20% of our power from nuclear, we have
| for 40 years, and most of those plants were built before
| we invented safety. How much risk for 100%? <5x. Probably
| much less, because we learn.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by, "invented safety," but the
| NCR keeps a close watch on old plants as well as the new
| ones.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Some levels of safety must be designed in, and those
| designs have the attractive property that they do not
| necessarily rely on continued organizational competence.
| Not that that's a bad thing. The more layers of defense
| the merrier, of course.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Some designs are resistant to one failure, reactor
| runaways; but the larger and more expensive problem is
| keeping radioactivated coolant and parts out of our
| waterways and waste/recycling streams.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| If only the overall amount of waste were small, the
| transport secure, and we had geological formations in
| which to bury the stuff that by their very dissolvable-
| but-not-dissolved existence proved that water left only
| by evaporation!
|
| Ah well. I'm just glad that renewables are finally moving
| forward. Better late than never.
| wpietri wrote:
| And I'd add that nuclear power is worse here than even
| standard capitalism. In the US, the federal government
| provides a massive subsidy in the form of free insurance:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nucl
| ear...
|
| And that's before we get to all of the other subsidies,
| cataloged here: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-
| power-still-not-via...
|
| I'm a big fan of free and fair markets, and think that
| they have been woefully underapplied in recent decades.
| Happily there's an uptick in antitrust regulation, so
| maybe we're moving in the right direction.
| whatshisface wrote:
| All regulated industries receive liability breaks as
| "compensation" for being regulated. For example, many
| classes of product approved by the FDA are considered
| immune from liabilities related to dangers discovered in
| application[0], in particular, medical devices[1]. I
| agree that it is likely to distort the markets and
| incentivize regulatory capture.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FDA_preemption [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riegel_v._Medtronic,_Inc.
| wpietri wrote:
| Do you have more examples for this "all"? There are a lot
| of regulated industries out there, and I haven't heard of
| liability exemptions for them. E.g., food is highly
| regulated, but there are plenty of lawsuits over that.
| Ditto cars. Or banks. Or airplanes.
|
| From what I've seen, I think things like the Price-
| Anderson Act are less about universal liability
| protections for regulated activities, and more about
| special pleading by people with money. It seems to me
| that the correct response for "this is so dangerous
| nobody will insure it" is not "well fuck it, go ahead and
| the government will cover your losses."
| pdonis wrote:
| _> In the US, the federal government provides a massive
| subsidy in the form of free insurance_
|
| While I'm no fan of this act on general principles and
| would be fine with seeing it repealed, to call it a
| "massive subsidy" ignores the fact that, as the Wikipedia
| article you link to notes, the secondary insurance
| provided under it _has never been used_. _Every_ claim
| has been within the amount of primary insurance coverage,
| which is bought on the open insurance market at normal
| rates. This is strong evidence that nuclear power is in
| fact an ordinary insurable risk and the government does
| not _need_ to take measures like this act.
| rsynnott wrote:
| The tricky bit about nuclear construction today isn't
| really _safety_ so much as public acceptance; you'll get
| tied up for decades in disputes which are nothing in
| particular to do with the safety regulation, and
| everything to do with public opposition.
| legulere wrote:
| Death rate is just one measure for safety, there are also
| other ways of harm like evacuation.
|
| Another way risks of nuclear are underestimated are
| compound effects over long durations. A million years and a
| thousand years are easily grouped together under very long,
| but at a incidence of once per thousand years it's the
| difference between 1 and 1000.
| briandear wrote:
| More people have died from wind turbines than in all the
| nuclear accidents combined.
|
| Here's some data from just Scotland:
| https://scotlandagainstspin.org/turbine-accident-statistics/
| pfisch wrote:
| It is hard to say how many people died from chernobyl. Some
| accounts say more than 30k(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li
| st_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...)
|
| Your link shows ~200 from wind turbines.
| patall wrote:
| The wind number seems to include everything, i.e transport
| etc. To have a fair comparison, one would need the number
| of premature deaths in uranium ore mining etc. Without
| that, it is kind of apples to oranges. (And I don't want
| downplay wind turbines, I fully aware that maintanance on a
| 200m high pole is dangerous)
| tolien wrote:
| > Here's some data from just Scotland:
|
| No it's not (putting aside that they seem to be a bunch of
| anti-wind cranks).
|
| > Total number of accidents: 3493
|
| If you drill into the PDF they link to:
|
| > 3493 Miscellaneous 31/12/2023 Whispering Willow North
| windpower facility, Franklin County, Iowa USA
|
| Last I looked, the USA hasn't been part of the UK in almost
| 250 years.
|
| But also their data is nonsense - they've counted one
| turbine catching fire as two separate incidents, and
| conveniently ignore that it was during a named storm when
| the turbine was exposed to winds gusting >70 knots and
| thousands of people lost power due to downed power lines
| [0].
|
| Even if you take their number as gospel, which seems unwise
| given they're counting this as an accident:
|
| > "World's biggest wind farm makes bid to force land
| sales". Report that SSE Renewables, owners of the Berwick
| Bank wind farm project off the cost of East Lothian,
| Scotland, are seeking to force landowners to sell land to
| operators of the Berwick Bank project.
|
| > Their application to Scottish Ministers to use a
| Compulsory Purchase Order for lands has brought a stream of
| objections from private land owners, Network Rail, and EDF
| who operate Torness nuclear plant. The application will now
| go to public enquiry.
|
| The FT [1] claims 2202 _deaths_ due to Fukushima:
|
| > There were 2,202 disaster-related deaths in Fukushima,
| according to the government's Reconstruction Agency, from
| evacuation stress, interruption to medical care and suicide
|
| 0: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/met
| offi...
|
| 1: https://www.ft.com/content/000f864e-22ba-11e8-add1-0e895
| 8b18...
| ars wrote:
| This has an overview:
| https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/ez_import/Asbestos_...
|
| Nothing is in the final product, and there is no worker contact
| except around every 10 years as the cell is replaced.
| GenerWork wrote:
| Thanks for the link. Seems strange that this industry would
| be singled out considering that asbestos exposure seems
| really limited.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I think they now use a polymer membrane that works better at
| keeping the two products separate.
| adrr wrote:
| Someone still has to mine it.
| amluto wrote:
| I recall reading some rather concerning accounts from plant
| maintenance workers in chlor-alkali plants. It wasn't some
| nicely contained chunk of asbestos -- it sounded like fluffy
| asbestos got everywhere.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| Are they going to ban tiger's eye
| mkl95 wrote:
| My building still has some asbestos pipes. Removing that stuff
| can be expensive and annoying, so it is usually delayed again and
| again.
| Sharlin wrote:
| They're essentially harmless as long as they're in there.
| Removing the stuff is the dangerous part.
| elromulous wrote:
| Harmless, until some contractor accidently disturbs it, and
| people have to have their home vacated (just happened to a
| friend of mine).
|
| That story might just be an anecdote, but the US has really
| normalized the "it's ok to live with poison, just don't
| awaken it". Same with lead pipes, lead paint, etc.
|
| Government remediation is long overdue. This is a price we
| pay as a society, we should treat it as a society.
| andbberger wrote:
| idk "it's in a bucket forever" sounds like a pretty good
| remediation strategy to me. dollar-for-dollar that
| government money probably has more impactful things to do.
| eg plastering public spaces in cities with bollards (see
| the awful awful west portal crash)
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Pretty harmless to the building occupants. The contractor
| is at risk it they are doing it everyday for a decade.
| wtfwhateven wrote:
| no, it's dangerous for everyone, not just contractors.
| alex_lav wrote:
| Care to explain?
| zipping1549 wrote:
| It's as harmless as a defective WW2 grenade in a garage.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Said no epidemiologist ever.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Harmless, until some contractor accidently disturbs it,
| and people have to have their home vacated (just happened
| to a friend of mine).
|
| That's inconvenience. Which was systematically invoked
| because the harms are well understood and tended to.
| Reason077 wrote:
| The hazard with most asbestos is when it's disturbed: usually
| by construction, repairs, renovation work, etc.
|
| As long as it doesn't need to be disturbed by such work, and
| the hazard is well known/well marked to anyone contemplating
| it, in many cases the lowest-risk option is just to leave it
| be.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| It's still in schools in Canada, especially older grade schools,
| many of which still don't have AC. I sometimes wonder where all
| the taxes went to.
| morkalork wrote:
| I'd wager it's in most institutional sorts of buildings built
| in the 50s and 60s.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Are they banning it in safety gear like bunker gear?
| gtvwill wrote:
| Product shouldn't be on market and should have global bans on its
| sale and installation/use. It's everywhere in building, and
| because it has dangers when removed or worked on, nobody wants to
| pay to get that work done correctly. Resulting in situations like
| we now have asbestos fibers found in mulch distributed across
| sydney. From kids playgrounds to the local council garden bed.
| All because someone wanted to avoid a fee whilst holding the
| perspective of "It's not that dangerous".
|
| Have pulled raw asbestos when drilling from like 300m+ down.
| Stuff is crazy pretty but is a pita to handle and keep safe.
| Looks almost like spicy fairy floss.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| The reason no one wants to pay the fee is because the exposure
| standards are so unreasonably low, that remediation costs huge
| $$$. And since we've made everyone terrified of the stuff, only
| specialized dumps handle it.
|
| Reasonable precautions that prevent 95% of exposure could be
| had at a fraction of the cost if people were more reasonable
| about the stuff.
| ryanisnan wrote:
| The US has in my opinion the exact wrong approach to regulation
| here. The deny-list approach of regulation may very well foster
| innovation, but it also fosters lawlessness and exploitation.
|
| If a company can get away with not needing to really care about
| the negative side effects of their products, they will most
| certainly do that.
|
| The entire model needs to be inverted.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Modern technology wouldn't exist if we had this philosophy 200
| years ago. I hardly think it's a worthwhile trade off.
| ryanisnan wrote:
| With respect, I don't entirely agree.
|
| I do think you're right in sentiment; things would look very
| differently. If given a choice, I'd rather live in a slower-
| paced society where development was held to higher standards.
|
| What we have now is a complete shit show.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The deny-list model is fine if 1. You deny quickly and
| decisively, 2. Actually deny, without loopholes, grace periods,
| or grandfather clauses (which will all be abused) and 3.
| Actually enforce, rather than just throwing a law over the wall
| and ignoring violators.
|
| The US is pretty slow with #1, absolutely terrible and
| ineffective with #2, and uneven/spotty with #3.
| ryanisnan wrote:
| If we assume that those are the three conditions under which
| a deny-list model is fine, then I think the US' inability to
| meet those conditions more or less disqualify it from it
| being a fine choice.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| The alternative is the government keeping a gigantic register
| of materials I may or may not use, a completely insane
| proposition.
| failuser wrote:
| How long will EPA survive? Trump promised to bring asbestos back
| last time. Will probably do it again if re-elected.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| If he didn't bring it back last time why would he bring it back
| the 2nd time? He'll probably do it right after he mandates lead
| piping in all schools.
| failuser wrote:
| He kept it legal.
| https://apnews.com/article/ea3d87fb8ef741c3bc255f1921892c9d
| animatethrow wrote:
| An EPA ban can't do anything about natural mineral asbestos that
| occurs near many residential areas. Floods continue to
| contaminate residential areas with natural asbestos and have done
| so for millennia. Recent report from Washington state:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfbedUVOxCU
|
| California's state rock is serpentinite, which is known for its
| often beautiful green coloration, and for containing chrysotile
| asbestos:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpentinite
|
| There's an outcrop near the Golden Gate bridge (scroll down for
| photo):
|
| https://www.nps.gov/goga/learn/education/serpentinite-faq.ht...
| happytiger wrote:
| Leading the world in protecting Americans by following the lead
| of more than 50 countries. That's my EPA. Good job!
| fastball wrote:
| Not sure what purpose the snark serves - the way you phrased
| your comment seems to imply someone involved claimed they are
| "leading the world", but that isn't the case.
| hexo wrote:
| Not sure what or who your comment serves, at all.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| He's making fun of the fact that a majority of the US
| population assumes the US is leading in, quite simply, any
| area.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Is he making fun of the actual fact or just the majority of
| the US population? If it's the latter, wouldn't it be more
| worthwhile to make fun of whatever institutions cause them
| to believe this simple flattery?
| avery17 wrote:
| Chuckle and move on. :)
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