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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.
Actual statistics are radically different, and actually prove that "mesothelioma deaths decreased among persons aged 35–44, 45–54, and 55–64 years". It's really a concern for a tiny sub-population over the age of 75 who tended to work with raw asbestos insulation before its dangers were well known.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If there is no alternative to asbestos in the chlorine industry then why are most plants moving to an alternative method of production.
Many have already converted from either mercury cell or asbestos to a newer, safer option called the membrane cell process. Short of a complete conversion, many other plants switched from dangerous asbestos diaphragms to those made of polymers, that show no dangerous health risks.
https://www.maacenter.org/blog...
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ah yes, the stereotypical right-wing attacks on experts who have data and know what they're talking about.
I sometimes wonder how many of these ACs actually believe the nonsense they spout or whether they're some loser sitting at a desk in China or Russia being paid peanuts
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
Asbestos is a unique health threat. Unlike arsenic or radium, the physical shape of an asbestos specimen affects its toxicity. Large fibers and any amount of asbestos embedded in a matrix get filtered out in the nose and throat. Really small fibers don't cause damage as they pass through the lining of the lungs and exit the body. Its the three to ten micron fibers that will kill you by turning your lungs into scar tissue.
Asbestos embedded in pretty much anything is rarely dangerous. Even the mountains that are very high in asbestos content in California and Colorado pose little health risk. Asbestos processed for use as insulation is the most dangerous, asbestos on wear surfaces like brakes are also something to worry about.
BTW, I used to work in the asbestos removal industry and I have given training on the health effect of asbestos. For a few years, I worked as a lab tech determining if material was asbestos containing. We did low tech analysis where we verified that nothing existed in a sample that was of the correct morphology to be hazardous asbestos - in which case the customer could forego the expense of determining if it really was asbestos. We did high tech analysis where we used an electron microscope to determine the exact crystal structure of an item under study to conclusively determine if it was or wasn't asbestos.
Yeah not quite true. Asbestos was used in a lot of stuff, brakes for example. It was still mixed as a "semi-metallic" brake pad/shoes right up through to the late 90's as well as the industry(automotive and truck) were weaning off of using asbestos. Pretty much anyone who was an apprentice during those times(they'd be in their very early 30's to 40's now) has a chance for it, we already knew it was an issue though so the idea was to limit breathing the dust by hosing down the brakes, drums, pads, shoes, with water before you started hammering away with a hammer to pull it all apart. These days? You'll be lucky if your car brakes are anything but ceramic, it's only the cheaper models that don't use it. And semi-metallic pads don't contain any asbestos after the phase out. But let me tell ya, I've got the tools, brochures, promotional materials, toolboxes, and all the rest from the 60's,70's, 80's and 90's on the benefits of using "genuine asbestos brake pads" made by lots of companies. Probably the best known aftermarket was raybestos and they manufactured pads and shoes that were pure asbestos based right up until 1989, which means those shoes and pads were probably still in the market until 2001 or 2003.
Asbestos pads, tape, paste, wrap, and such were used still in the 90's as well in the collision industry too. Asbestos wrap was very popular with mechanics when you needed to heat up parts and hopefully avoid lighting the vehicle on fire, of course now the only real option you have is soaking shop rags in water and with luck that'll get you through whatever you're heating up. Also, lead used as a filler in body damage was used right up until the mid 1980's for anyone who's curious.
Om, nomnomnom...
And yet the death rate by fire has steadily fallen since asbestos was banned in 1970.
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, we don't ban the existence of asbestos, in the same way we don't ban the existence of mercury. But the use of these substances is heavily regulated so that they are either illegal or impractical.
Asbestos use is limited under three major laws: (1) The Toxic Substances Control Act, (2) The Clean Air Act, and (3) The Consumer Product Safety Act. A number of other federal laws ban asbestos in places like schools. Asbestos is banned in the manufacture of a wide variety of products such as flooring felt, and use in commercial developments has been forbidden under the TCSA since 1989. However concrete-asbestos insulated pipes continued to be used in some niche industrial applications for some years after that.
Deregulating asbestos is something which the Executive Branch cannot entirely do without new legislation. Even if it had the federal legislation, there'd still be local laws and building codes forbidding its use. Even if you got rid of those, you'd have civil liability. And if you could get rid of that, you'd have the fact that installing asbestos lowers a building's market value.
The idea that federal bureaucrats can reanimate the dead corpse of asbestos insulation is even dumber than the idea they can win back the market share coal has lost to natural gas.
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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.
When you go to work and put in your hours, you are not risking any money. You will get paid. 100% chance.
Unless you're working on a construction project for Trump.
You can buy a welding blanket at HF for about $20.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You forgot that mesothelioma is just one way asbestos can kill you.