Asbestos Dumping: Is It the New 'Environmental Terrorism?'

It appears this dumping was recent, and is in violation of the law....but is not that uncommon in the area.....and I agree hardly rises to the level of serious criminal activity, much less terrorism....

They think MY cancer was caused by long term asbestos exposure. It insulated the wall of the canteen, as well as the hangar floor. Of course the plaster covering it was broken by equipment bumping into it.

Every Chemo treatment I curse the bastard who put it there.

The author might be considered as engaging in terrorism, by hyping a crime in order to frighten people. Or job-mongering.

In a construction environment, the key word would be 'friable asbestos', which would need to be addressed in a health and safety plan. Prior to work starting, someone (the project manager generally) needs to determine that asbestos will be disturbed during the demolition/construction phase of any project if the possibility of asbestos exists.

The job specific health and safety plan would define PPE, work exclusion areas, air quality monitoring procedures, removal procedures, chain of custody, and disposal procedures.

California is quite strict on this issue, as well as being expensive issue to address.

OK asbesstos is a powerful carcinogen. Asbestos can induce mesothelioma, lung cancer, probably pharinx, stomach, ovaries, colon, rectum cancers…..and asbestosis (pneumoconiosis a chronic, non cancerous respiratory disease).

More data.

Commercial asbestos contain many types of fiber: chrysotile (white asbestos), amosite (brown asbestos), crocidolite (blue asbestos), tremolite, actinolite,anthophyllite.

There are important differences in potency between the fiber types as causes of mesothelioma and lung cancer.

Pure chrysotyle (not tremolite associated) have little risk. Chrysotile is cleared in months (humans). Other amphibole fiber (crocidocite, amosite) are more dangerous (cleared in years).

Exsposure: cumulative.

General calculated risk for cumulative exposure: 10f/ml/year (10 fiber/ ml / years of exposure) .

Fibers size: length > 5 micron, diameter < 3 micron , lengh/diameter ratio > 3.

Undisturbed asbestos can not cause cancer.

The greatest risk, perhaps, in the cases described, concerns those who have dismantled and abandoned asbestos.

You are misusing the term asbestos. Asbestos means striated rock, nothing else. There is a wide difference in asbestos (striated rock). Most asbestos used in the USA is Crysotile, a soft long fibre when beaten out of it's matrix. It never causes mesolothemia. It was often used by throwing a handful of it into cement mixer on the job to make the cement pump work smoother with less wear. In extreme concentrations in the air it (as all other particles) can overload the lungs and cause asbestosis. Amosite mostly mined in South Aftica and used in pipe insulation, is a brittle often short fibre that can be breathed in and get stuck in the lining of the lung causing mesolothemia and death. Two completely different kinds of material, but both striated rock and called asbestos. When properly used both are excellent materials and of great benefit to society. Neither is as dangerous as gasoline or even fiberglass. But the EPA slyly and effectively used asbestos to build their bureaucratic empire.

Likely…. Thanks for the clarification. Obviously we carry out different professions and use different languages. I'm not a geologist, but a doctor. In medicine, the correct term is asbestos. Is for this reason that pneumoconiosis caused by asbestos is called asbestosis

The correct name of the malignant tumor is mesothelioma.

When you use a collective term such as asbestos for a material such as amosite you are definitely misleading people in our society just as bad as the EPA did. Also as a doctor you probably know that the only methods a doctor has to determine asbestosis is to operate, get a sample of what is in the lung or ask the patient what he/she does for a living. Otherwise, there is little to differentiate between black lung (coal minors) brown lung (farmers) silicoses (stone workers) and emphysema (the catch all for anyone who overloads their lungs). Avoid smoking and working in extremely bad environments and you only have to worry about bad luck and the EPA.

Misleading people? Why? For a patient it is important to know what type of disease and if the disease is curable The patient does not care to know the name of the fiber that caused the disease. Try talking to a bricklayer, a butcher, a farmer of the various names of the fibers. If it is a polite people looks at you as if you were a Martian. A good physician must make himself understood by his patient I live among normal people, with basic cultural notions

I have no dealings with the EPA and I do not care ..

You scare me. A doctor who knows it all and has quit learning. I've run across several lazy doctors in the VA and I know they are dangerous. Please learn more about your subject than you read in bulletins from the EPA. It is important to your patient that he understands the dangers of amosite. As for the most prevalent form of asbestos found in the USA, Chrysolite, pour some milk on it and it would be healthier for you and significantly less fattening than Wheaties.

Dear Mikenelson6, I do not know doctors (or other people) who know everything. My only certainty is: I know that I do not know. Socrates teaches.

But I'm glad that others know more than me. I can always learn new things

In our country we do not use Weathies for breakfast.

This differentiation between types of asbestos fibers is not widely known and should be a widely trumpeted televised topic of discussion to bring the threat back into some realistic framework in the public's eye....

Here's a blurb on this subject...

http://spiderjohnson.com/asbestos.html

WOW! I would call what the EPA did more of an act of terrorism or treason than most anything else that has ever been done to this country.

The unwarranted financial costs alone is staggering. The financial impact and regulations following 911 were less than what this act cost us.

I agree......This excerpt says it all....."Columnist Warren Brookes of the Detroit News has pointed out that this probably brought about the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986. An asbestos-based putty produced by the Fuller O'Brien Paint Co. had been used, together with O-rings, to seal joints in the booster rockets. They quit making the putty because of the new requirements regulating the use of asbestos, and less effective putty was substituted. NASA reported in 1985 that after the putty was changed four of the first 12 shuttle flights experienced O-ring erosion from superheated gases that should have been stopped by the putty. It predicted possible launch failure as a result. Brookes noted that the National Research Council panel on redesign of the booster rockets agreed that "the inability of the (new) putty...reliably to effect a pressure seal" was a major problem." Malcolm Ross of the U.S. Geological Survey, who pioneered in the fight for sanity on asbestos, told Brookes, "There is no doubt in my mind that the Challenger disaster was caused by asbestos paranoia.""

I always thought that the Challenger disaster was because NASA violated their own go-nogo flight rules to make the launch happen.

If memory serves, there were a number of human factors that were at fault. One was the decision making process itself.

The main issue was NASA'a insistence to launch after a prior scrub and even though Thiokol engineers provided information to NASA with concerns that the abnormally cold conditions would impact O-ring sealing performance, NASA decided to ignore those recommendations and launch.

While the O-Rings could have been made better, Thiokol was aware of the limitations and communicated that to NASA. NASA decided to launch anyway.

I'm not pointing a finger, just saying the confusion over asbestos fiber types and usage has caused or contributed to, so much wasted energy and resources that the least that could be done is to bring out the truth about what type of fibers can be used in what types of applications with a low threat of any harm.....the same can be said for hemp...and I think legislation should be brought up to date with what is known....

This is the first time I've ever heard of that idea, which seems doubtful.

Don't leave out the trial attorney's who have made billions, bilking the public.

I agree, same as stealing copper wiring which damages the national infrastructure and can put lives at risk. If the penalties for such activities were increased to be comensurate with the possible harm it would be a better deterent.
IMO it could be called terrorism or treason, I don't care what it's called as long as the penalties are ramped up.
Del

Not sure about where this is located however; unless something has recently changed, asbestos laden materials are not strictly controlled in the USA if they are generated by a home owner.

The NESHAP and other EPA regulations are more focused on commercial and industrial generation and disposal.

I have never been able to understand why there is a difference in the regulations as the asbestos is a threat regardles of where it originates.

I know education will help with those that care however, there is a growing number of people that simply do not beleive nor care about this type of regulation.

"I know education will help with those that care however, there is a growing number of people that simply do not beleive nor care about this type of regulation."

I don't think that its so much that they don't care.

More so its people are getting better informed and finding out they have been manipulated and outright lied to for so long now by those who make and enforce the regulations that they no longer have any good reason to trust what they are being told when those same agencies make a new regulation.

This especially rings true when it becomes obvious that there is very little provable or justified scientific backing behind the new regulation but there is piles of money to be made off of making sure you comply with the new regulation.

I am surprised with these sensible responses. I think we often over react to dangers. Asbestos dust is dangerous but you need to breathe it into your lungs to get either cancer or mesothelioma. Terrorism is an act to terrorize the public. These polluters are just trying to save a buck.

I suspect the chances of you coming down with cancer from an asbestos dumping is far less than dying from a lighting strike. I am old enough to know second hand of work conditions of a local asbestos plant. The air was so full of particles it looked like perpetual snow. A large portion of those workers probably contracted mesothelioma and/or lung cancer. Many of these workers spent many years exposed to heavy asbestos dust 40 hrs a week. I know there was a case where someone worked at a auto break company for a day and got lung cancer. Do we know for a fact that was his only exposure? It was occurred to me people will lie for money. He could have had other exposures that he kept secret. Maybe the exposure was not from asbestos at all. Public safety would be better served policing for muggers etc than policing for illegal asbestos dumping. I have no problem throwing the book at someone caught dumping any hazardous material.

Then you have a case like Yusef1. Is it possible you were exposed to radium from something other than your canteen? Sorry if I do not believe your canteen created your problem. Do you even know if the causative agent was asbestos? Did they find asbestos in your lung? You can also breathe in radium from coal fire smoke. There are trace amounts of radium in coal. There is less radium in coal than asbestos but it is in coal it is not consumed in the fire. Are you certain you were NEVER exposed to trace amounts of coal smoke in your life? That would be before smoke scrubbers were mandatory for coal furnaces.

PCBs is another material where we have over reacted. 10 years after the ban there wasn't 1 known case where PCBs were found to effect a human. Persons working in a PCB plant had no increased risk to any disease. Some of the workers even fell into vats of the stuff and had been completely submerged. The US banned cyclamates while the rest of the world did not. The population of the rest of the world did not suffer.

Not that it really matters to me...(like I am not getting a payout or anything) but they DID find asbestos in my small intestine. So much in fact that they figure that even if I beat this cancer, there will be more.

Its what they told me. Its not like I am an expert on this. I don't know what kind it is...only that it was used for insulation and the wall was all broken up by equipment bumping into it. It was a hangar after all. Nor am I upset at the people who kept coming in, and plastering more plaster over the cracks. I note that THEY used hazmat suits when they did that.

Do I think it was caused by asbestos? No. To my knowledge, I never worked with spent uranium shells. And it is pretty breezy in a hangar..too breezy for radon to have any effect. However, half the people who worked in that hangar twenty years ago have contracted cancer. Half of THEM were heavy smokers and they got mouth, esophageal, and lung cancer. T'other half...bowel cancer. I am one of them.

Wow!

Your post certainly has amazed me. This is very chilling did the asbestos show up on an X-ray or was in found in a colonoscopy? If there was any radium it would be obvious in a X-ray. Of course your Drs probably know one hundred times the expertise what our combined membership could muster.

I wrongly figured a crack in a wall would not generate much dust. That is sobering food for thought.

They put in a push endoscope to find out what it was. Then they did a CT scan. Thats what found the fibers. At least I think so...I was pretty groggy at the time seeing as how I had not eaten for about 16 days.

And fifteen before that. One day I got a meal to stay down right in the middle of the "difficulty". I thought it was a fold in my guts, but no..it was a dragon biting down on my small intestine, about a foot and a half past my stomach. The unusual location was what tipped them off to look for fibers there. They found hundreds.

Anyway, I don't want to sound like I am whining. I had a good run. And who knows...a lot can happen in a year!

And it wasn't cracks in the wall...it was whole sections that had come away....

You are not whining you are educating us ignorants get another nasty view of this topic. A whole section of a wall came away and was opend, well that makes sense. When the wall came away it probably created large amounts of air borne asbestos dust. Of course, you had no way of knowing that you were being exposed to asbestos fiber dust. Thank your lucky stars this didn't happen 15 - 20 years ago. I hope they can cure you.

Yeah...I remember brushing it (asbestos dust) off the table before I sat down. It MUST have got into the coffee...the burner was right there...

One of the guys who worked in Cassiar BC (asbestos mine and manufacturing factory) poo poo'd the risk. He had worked without hazmat equiipment for ten years before he joined up. I see now why he said that...I never knew there were different types of asbestos. The kind that I was exposed to was a combination of yellow, (which I think was glass fiber), white (grey) and another colour which I cannot remember. But I think it was more yellow than grey.

Can they "fix" me? Well, they tell me I will be on chemo for the rest of my life. They are pretty cagy about telling how long the rest of my life will be...but the interwebs tell me I might have as much as three years. I already lived through one year. That gives me a fifty fifty chance to make it to next christmas. Now you know why am so snarky on this forum, and becoming more and more intolerant of stupid questions. And more and more tolerant of good questions.

Bill

If I was healthier, I would probably take a job clearing asbestos. Like..what can it to to me NOW?

Believe me I think you are less snarky than many. Maybe that is because I don't like stupidity. Ignorance is not stupidity. Ignorance combined with arrogance is!

Very sorry to hear you have such a poor prognosis.

Colonscopy + biopsy (as usual). Slide and microscopy. Now you can see the fiber....When you breathe in the fibers pass through the nose and pharynx. From the pharynx you can enter in the respiratory tract or in the esophagus and therefore in the digestive tract.

From the pharynx the fibers are 'washed away' by saliva and transported in the digestive tract.