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.
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.
I don't get the snark, but I do get the point -- but i'd be remiss not to point out that a lab or individual seeking funds to try to prove the sensibility and health benefits of asbestos, in any form, would be laughed out of town.
So, when asking 'for source' regarding niche topics with controversial opinions, well, it's not strange that the study or source is nowhere to be found; but it's more complicated than just "source doesn't exist, so premise must be false.".
I agree, however, that due to the unstable and ever changing nature of entrapped asbestos that it should be avoided wherever possible.
One nit: there are PLENTY of materials in use that degrade to a more dangerous thing over time, and it hasn't really kept us from using them. Carbon black dust is famously dangerous and we are pumping out more carbon fiber than ever before, it's nearly unrecycable and degrades terribly both structurally and potentially chemically depending on the matrix that binds it. We are only hard-fisted against asbestos at this point in time because we have sensible alternatives.
The snark comes with annoyance about the "asbestos really isn't that bad" contrarian talking point, which tends to be sourced in hearsay from other online "hasn't killed me" edgelords.
> So, when asking 'for source' regarding niche topics with controversial opinions...
Are you kidding me? The health dangers are known since the 30s or something. If anything, scientific consensus on asbestos dangers had to fight decades of well-funded industry resistance and lobbying. Look at the regulatory history in Canada...
> there are PLENTY of materials in use that degrade to a more dangerous thing over time, and it hasn't really kept us from using them.
The question is about severity of health impact, persistence and quantity of emission, to compare health hazards here. Cured meat and plutonium are both class I carcinogens, but their dangers are vastly different. Many bad substances can be detoxed by the liver, their ROX-burden blunted by antioxidants within cells, to some extent. There are NOT PLENTY of materials with similar hazard characteristics as asbestos.
I do agree, some carbon fiber products may be the "new asbestos". Looks like their different crystal structures pose different risks, and some erode to asbestos like particles - which altogether really does raise the question why they are not more thoroughly investigated and regulated. However, I suspect a mesothelioma association would probably have shown by now. Although bio-persistent and of similar shape, CF-particles may interact differently with the immune system.
I do absolutely cringe about carbon fiber usage in e.g. 3D-printing. I think, something like CF-rods/rails in the Bambulab printers may be a really bad idea in a living room space, and some people even casually mention acute eye and skin irritation symptoms when printing CF-filaments...
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.
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.
> 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.
Source?