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EPA Staff Objected To Agency's New Rules on Asbestos Use, Internal Emails Show (nytimes.com)
Top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency pushed through a measure to review applications for using asbestos in consumer products, and did so over the objections of E.P.A.'s in-house scientists and attorneys, internal agency emails show. From a report: The clash over the proposal exposes the tensions within the E.P.A. over the Trump administration's efforts to roll back environmental rules and rewrite other regulations that industries have long fought. Asbestos, a naturally occurring mineral and known carcinogen, was once common in insulation and fireproofing materials, but today most developed countries ban it. The United States still allows limited use in products including gaskets, roofing materials and sealants. The proposed new rule would create a new process for regulating uses of asbestos, something the E.P.A. is obliged to do under a 2016 amendment to a toxic substances law.
Yeah, who give a shit about things like peoples health or the environment we live in. Lets just do whatever the fuck we want!
And when you're investing, you're not spending a large chunk of your life for that money. Why should a supposedly democratic country have a tax system that explicitly encourages wealth concentration by taxing capitalists less than labor?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Trump claims asbestos is "safe". Trump has a lot of real estate. Hmm...
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
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Maybe not destroying our environment is more important than your commute. If you don't like how long your drive is, move somewhere else.
-SaNo
So basically the mesothelioma death rate (from all causes, not just asbestos related) went from 1.396 per 100,000 to 1.093 per 100,000 per year.. Or a reduction of 0.3 per 100,000 per year. That puts the benefit of banning asbestos at the very bottom of the list of causes of death, even if you assume 100% of mesothelioma was caused by asbestos.
The money we spent banning and ripping out asbestos probably would've been much better spent on things like PSAs to buckle your seat belt, or suicide prevention hotlines. Those have a death rate nearly a hundred times higher than the reduction in mesothelioma death rate. Heck, fires kill 5.0 people per 100,000 each year, so it's even possible that banning asbestos resulted in more people dying to fires than were saved from death by mesothelioma.
Based on this one paper, it would seem that banning asbestos was a vast overreaction. Given the tiny scale of the problem, it probably would've been better addressed by stricter regulations mandating masks and filters during the mining and processing of asbestos, and manufacture of products containing asbestos, rather than a widescale ban. Kinda like how disproportionate news coverage of airliner crashes has caused us to spend more on preventing airliner crashes, resulting in air travel being 86x safer than cars.
Sure. You also need to have labor. So why should capital get preferential treatment?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Yeah, who give a shit about things like peoples health or the environment we live in. Lets just do whatever the fuck we want!
People's health? Asbestos is hands down the greatest fire retardant ever discovered; it's only cancer causing when breathed in shredded microfiber form. Banning it everywhere no matter what is wild overreaction. More asbestos installed safely would prevent fires and improve heath.
Maybe. But it is the removal of the asbestos -- in a fire where particles form an aerosol -- or when the building is torn down -- that it gets into the air. I've been in plenty of buildings with asbestos. They were built long ago, and the stuff is fine while it remains undisturbed.
US buildings are primarily 'throw-away', meaning that the building will probably come down within 50 years, creating an asbestos problem.