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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.
We need to get rid of 2 regulations for every new one we create.
No, no we don't ban asbestos. Never have, as it is naturally occuring. We ban synthetic substances all the time, but asbestos being banned is just silly, even if it makes a lot of sense to reduce our exposure to it. Asbestos is found in all sorts of things in trace (and higher) levels. Ever wonder why companies are moving away from talcum powder? Any idea what's in your brake linings?
>> 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...Consumer groups say the agency should be looking for ways to prohibit asbestos entirely.
So...government agency is following the law instead of random/anecdotal citizen input. Generally, I'd think this is a good thing. (If you want to entirely ban asbestos...work on passing that law instead of whining on SlashDot.)
it gives me buzz?
However, a company harms one person - just one - its existence is forfeit.
A multi billion dollar company somehow harms someone, it goes on trial like a person -corporations are people! - and if found guilty executed with it's management.
So back when the Ford Pinto killed those people.
Ford would have been liquidated and Lee Iococa (the executive in charge at the time) sent to the electric chair.
And Tesla with its "autopilot" well, let's just say that Tesla wouldn't exist anymore and Musk would be dead now.
EPA killed a very needed bypass road now there is an new plan and with trump it's time to get it built!
Tax exemptions hurt the real wealth creators to benefit the parasite class. What's wrong with a flat 40% for the high income bracket, why split out investment income? see it could all be so much simpler.... (and suddenly most of the proponents of "simplicity" change their tone)
The racist news.
When the 85/87 interchange was being built in Silicon Valley, small hills on a lot were scraped down to become landfill for the freeway. Construction workers found a boulder-sized deposit of abestos. Caltrans picked up the tab for cleaning up that up. That lot became the future home of an auto dealership because it was so large and flat.
All these articles are complete fear mongering. Asbestos is still completely banned in consumer products. All that this does is allow them in a regulated fashion to allow on a case by case basis some use of asbestos if required by industry. For example the chlorine industry heavily utilizes asbestos as filters in the creation of chlorine based products (PVC materials) and there really is no substitute material that can do the job. This is allowing companies like this not to be hurt economically where its outsourced to other countries.
Make Russia Great Again!
Yet another pro-Russia move from Trump... no, those laws that passed forcing actions against Russia he just does them half-ass for now.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I think you misspelled "far left political activists."
Let's bring back lead-based paints and gasoline.
It creates jobs you know.
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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Asbestos is nasty stuff, dying of Asbestos-related diseases is a horrible way to die. What's next bringing back DDT and PCB's?
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
I whish that anyone who thinks asbestos is a matter of opinion or alternate-fact-bussines does not have to see a loved one go down with the type of cancer this stuff is known to cause...
Quiz : What's the best way to be poisoned in the US of A ?
Answer : Support Trump's E.P.A the Extra Poison Agency.
EPA brought to you courtesy of the fucktards that voted for the orangutan.
Hey let's bring back arsenic-treated lumber, trans fats and CFCs
What do you mean "bring back" all of those things still exist, and are in use to this day, hell mills pump out CCA lumber but the metric fucking shit ton. Remember all those studies that said CCA was bad, it'd kill ya, cause all sorts of problems and there was a mad rush to restrict and ban it? Yeah, and guess what? Nothing, not a damn thing to show that it actually caused problems in wildlife or even humans. What was the solution when CCA was being restricted, well shit we'll just SOAK IT IN OIL(creosote) far worse for the environment, especially since it leeches as it's broken down. Should note that in north america rail road ties are still creosote soaked because it's cheaper then concrete and survives the environmental swings and abuse better then say concrete ties. At least ACQ, you've only got to worry about introducing copper into the environment. Of course, this can lead to copper poisoning in lakes as they discovered, and occasionally copper poisoning in humans if the water source people use to drink is already high in copper.
Trans fats are still everywhere, and CFCs are used in nearly every industry in the world still. The difference is, there's regulations on how it can all be used. Hell asbestos is an amazing fire stop, highly non-conductive, and makes excellent insulation. The problem has to do with the fibers that come off of it when a wire is broken, pipes coated with it have it break off and so-on.
Before someone goes hur-dur-dur, ur and ididot. Yeah, look. I was apprenticing when asbestos was still used in truck and automotive brakes. I spent the better part of 8 years breathing the dust from it, chances of me developing something from it? Low. More likely the shit in automotive fluids(brakes, transmission, oil, gasoline) will be what kills me, providing the general hereditary diseases or old age don't get me first. But even at that, I still believe that we should be researching ways to make asbestos safer and use it, rather then letting it sit in the ground doing nothing while we spend twice or four times the energy to make a synthetic that degrades three times as quickly.
Om, nomnomnom...
More asbestos! More asbestos! More asbestos!
Seriously, we literally elected Bart Simpson. What's wrong with my country?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
In the US money is king, actually it is more than king, it is a religion. All other considerations are null and voided. This is the natural consequence of late stage capitalism. Enjoy living in a poisoned country with a destroyed environment.
If you don't die from fires, tornadoes or flooding, poison sanctioned by the government will kill you.
Make America Great Again hell yeah.
There are basically two things you can do with your money after you've bought groceries and paid the water and electric bills, the basic necessities. You can spend the rest, buying things like lattes and Air Jordans, or you can save / invest it. Spending means the money is basically gone, saving means you'll have it when you need it later. You won't be homeless when you get hurt, sick or old.
Most saving is also investing - the money is used to build something, such as a semiconductor fab or a ship, which produces useful things. The saver gets back their money as chips are sold, plus more money. A LOT more, if they save for retirement while they are young. Having things like semiconductor fabs, next-gen battery research labs, etc is good for a country. A country with no investment is a tribal society living in tents.
One very important example of the spend / invest decision is housing. I was renting an apartment, which meant I was spending over $1,000 / month, $12K per year was just going away from my bank account. Now I spend about the same amount to BUY a house, meaning I'll get most of the money back when I sell the house. Over time, I'll be $300,000 better off buying (investing in the house) than I would renting (spending).
(Getting a house three times as expensive as you need can be a bad idea, whether renting or buying - still renting is generally worse.)
Anyway saving and investing is really good, for the individual doing the investing and for the country. As Barak Obama said, "if you want people to do less of something, tax it". A high tax on investment tends to get people to invest less, which is bad for them and bad for the country. That's why most developed countries tax investment at a much lower rate than the US does. They WANT their people to save an invest, because it's good for them individually and good for the country overall.
You may say "that's not fair that people who save up do better than people who spend all their money as soon as they get it!" Waa. Reality is, not every course of action gets the same results. Your choices matter. Doing smart things, like saving, gets better results. That's why those things are called "smart".
You didn't actually read the article, did you?
The problem with Asbestos isn't that some strains cause cancer (only a tiny percentage of all possible strains). The problem is that it's a total headache to deal with if you open up the walls in your house and discover some.
First of all, how do you know it's Asbestos or stuff that looks like it?
Second of all, how do you know which strain it is?
You have to send a sample to a lab and wait a few weeks every time. Do you know what a nightmare this is when you are doing renovations?
We would all be better off banning the use of this substance in construction. It's just not worth the headache.
Someone needs to tear this Magarity faggot's head clean off, dip it in "clean, wonderful asbestos" and shove it up HIS TREASONOUS FAGGOT ASS,
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What's next? Bring back DDT? Deregulate formaldehyde? Radium jars? Start letting tobacco companies advertise that smoking is healthy?
What do you mean "bring back" all of those things still exist, and are in use to this day,
You're right about CCA. You're mostly wrong about CFCs which have largely been eliminated in most of the world, and are severely restricted. Trans fats were just banned by the FDA as a food additive, and largely have disappeared from food. So I'd rate the OPs statement "mostly accurate".
. Remember all those studies that said CCA was bad, it'd kill ya, cause all sorts of problems and there was a mad rush to restrict and ban it? Yeah, and guess what? Nothing, not a damn thing to show that it actually caused problems in wildlife or even humans.
Arsenic has been a known toxin for hundreds of years. The lumber doesn't appear to be a huge problem because mostly the arsenic gets attached to soil particles. it's more a problem if you burn the stuff.
Yeah, look. I was apprenticing when asbestos was still used in truck and automotive brakes. I spent the better part of 8 years breathing the dust from it, chances of me developing something from it? Low.
Not really the answer I'd want. Low? I'd want zero.
Yes, Big Giant Orange Head wants to bring all those back again! MAGA, remember? It's strong doses of DDT, formaldehyde, radium and tobacco that MAG in the first place. Look, those things were around "when America was Great", so obviously they Made America Great. Get with it!
However it's not because they are healthy, it's because they are cheaper. When you kill your population off with those substances, you don't have to worry about "healthcare", "insurance", "old folks homes", all that loser stuff. We want winners!
So MAGA and bring on the toxins!!!
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https://blogs.biomedcentral.co...
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
Does anyone know what is actually going on here?
From TFA I expected to see text replaced or removed but all it seems to do is add Asbestos and a specific list of uses to substance list of 40 CFR 721.
Does the presence of this text somehow weaken existing new use restrictions of Asbestos? Or is it just that the text added while intentionally nerfed does not in any way reduce existing regulations/laws/whatever governing use of Asbestos?
I'm so confused...
Not of regression (well, yes, that, too), but of Russia.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/russian-asbestos-trump_face
On 25 June 2018, a Russian mining company named Uralasbest, which is one of the world’s largest producers of asbestos, posted a message of support for President Trump on their official Facebook and VK (a Russian version of Facebook) pages. The post included photographs of packed asbestos material adorned with the face of Trump and the text “Approved by Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States.”
They aren't even trying to hide it anymore.
It's like we've elected a cartoon villain for president. Where's Captain Planet when you need them.
Is anyone surprised that a Russian asbestos company is putting Trump's face on their packaging? And is anyone surprised that the company is Russian?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/russian-asbestos-trump_face/
There is a persistent error even experts make in nutrition: attributing the effects of a particular compound to a wider class of compounds to which it belongs for classification purposes. Not all saturated fats are bad, not all unsaturated fats are good. Trans fats (which by definition are unsaturated) are not all bad; the ones that are reasonably common in nature like CLA are good for you. It's when hydrogenation creates products with very high quantities of stuff like elaidic acid, which is rare in nature, that you have problems. Elaidic acid looks enough like the more common vaccenic acid that your body tries to process it, but with subtle differences in the long term.
As for CFCs, global production is much, much lower than it was in 1987. The global goal is a complete eradication by 2030, and in general most of the world has been making steady progress in reduction, but evidence shows somebody in East Asia has been cheating since around 2012. Since it is unlikely to be Japan or Korea, I leave it up to you to figure out who has a large enough economy to hide the emission of 13,000 tons of bootleg CFCs annually. It's probably not Mongolia.
Asbestosis usually requires heavy and regular exposure. However it's not the absestos directly that causes problems, but the long-term effects of chronic low-level inflammation. It takes twenty to fifty years for symptoms to manifest. If I'd had moderate occupational exposure I wouldn't freak out, but I'd take extra good care of my lungs to keep that inflammation down. That means not smoking, getting your flu shots, an anti-inflammatory diet and living somewhere with low air pollution -- all things that are good for you anyway.
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Trump will have children's toys made from asbestos in no time.
I don't believe you understand the casual factors for Asbestos and Cancer. 1 fiber of Asbestos in your lungs will eventually cause cancer. you will probably just die of something else first. It is a very small sharp item that can cut the DNA in the cells. eventually it will cut something important. enough fibers and the odds of it happening become sooner rather than later.
It doesn't "cut the DNA in cells" - it interferes with chromosome segregation during cell division, leading to chromosome abnormalities in the divided cells.
And no, asbestos is worse than "something that will kill you after you're dead". It's not just an initiator of cancer, but also a promoter. If you have asbestos in your lungs and smoke, it will also significantly raise the cancer risk from smoking, more so than either risk taken on their own, for example.
America is a nation whose national religion is the worship of the demon Mammon. You can see this from their fake priests "send money now!" to their warped morality (dollars is the only value that exists in their world)
An asbestos fiber is gigantic in relation to a DNA molecule. It's the inflammation, not mechanical damage.
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Yeah, so you've got two workers who were exposed to LIQUID CCA. Seriously, I worked at a mill that made pressure treated lumber with CCA, you suited up when handling it. Your entire study has to do with direct exposure to CCA, not surface contact. You get more arsenic from eating hot dogs.
Not nearly as prevalent as they once were, although this was primarily market-driven.
True and give it another 10 years and they'll discover that maybe they weren't really as bad as they thought, just like butter, milk, eggs, bacon, and various other fats.
Correct. But remind me why R12 and R22 are being phased out? The Trump EPA could just as well allow the mass-manufacture of this stuff again because, you know, the destruction of the ozone layer is fake like global warming.
Well that's easy, because they were more damaging to the environment. Problem though, because the "replacement coolants" are smaller in size then R12 and R22 the devices they're used in(fridges, AC and so on), tend to have more leaks. Half a dozen of one, half a dozen of the other right? Don't forget that various cutting fluids also count as CFC and they're still in use in everything from milling to machining.
I'm not going to take a chance on something so easily avoidable. Wouldn't you?
It's not easily avoidable though, the stuff is everywhere. If you live within 70-200 miles of any type of open-pit mining you've probably been breathing in trace amounts all your life. There are ways to make it safer though.
Agreed. But until then keep that crap away from me. It's a known carcinogen when inhaled and I'm not going to sign up to take such a silly risk.
Then don't breath broken fibers, simple enough right? That's the thing, it has amazing, absolutely amazing industrial properties far beyond anything that we make right now. It's the decades of improper handling followed up by massive lawsuits that have caused issues. There's a very good reason it was used as a fire-stop between connected buildings, for example. Even the manufactured board that we use now that's absolutely permeated with an assload of toxic chemicals is shit compared to it. Oh and the chemical residue from it burning? More toxic and has more immediate health issues then asbestos, by more toxic I mean will cause immediate and permanent scaring of lungs, and can kill an unprotected person in 20 minutes. That's what we replaced asbestos with, which is perfectly fine unless you start hammering away at it.
Om, nomnomnom...
Not really the answer I'd want. Low? I'd want zero.
Then don't go outside. You're more likely to die from melanoma(skin cancer) then I'd die from mesothelioma(asbestos cancer).
Om, nomnomnom...
Asbestos is only not-important to those who didn't have to live with a close family member dying from it.
carcinogens are bad, and we as humans should work very hard to avoid using them, because it's the right thing to do, not because it's easy or hard or cheap. Its Right.
That's as embarrassing as a Birther seeing a picture of Obama eating humus and using it as proof that the man is a Muslim who was born in Kenya.