Anyone know anything about asbestos?

[paintbattler]

Well..heres the story.
There is supposed to be this haunted old hospital in our town..so well me and my friends went to go check it out..wel walked through the whole place..it was scary, but not haunted..today i look in the paper, and i see it being bull dozed down.i read the article, and it says there was asbestos in it and was just cleared of it before the tore it down.

What are the chances I have it?

[drg]

How long ago did you enter it? Asbestos is taken out of buildings before they are wrecked, otherwise the dust would go airborne. There's probably not a lot of risk, generally health problems with asbestos only occur after working with it directly (i.e. being exposed to the dust) for a while, and still mostly do not manifest until decades later.

[Yogster]

Hey Bro

Asbestos is a non-flamable fiber that was used in older homes and building for insulation. Like drg has said unless you have been subjected to it for a long period of time you don't have any worries.

[PyRo]

Don't worry about it, you need to breath a lot of it over a long period of time to do any serious harm.

[Tunaman]

Don't worry about it, you need to breath a lot of it over a long period of time to do any serious harm.

ONE asbestos fiber, smaller than than the human eye can see, if ingested in the lung can (and will) produce cancer. This fiber can sit in your lung for 10-20 years before it happens(in can happen overnight too). Asbestos is VERY, VERY bad stuff. Absolutely positively stay as far away from airborn asbestos as you can.

[929RR-MAN]

asbetos

it shouldn't be harmful to you for the amount of time you were in there. best bet if you do encounter asbestos, don't stir it up, thats how it gets in your lungs, if you ever did have to work/walk around it, spray it down with water, that will mostly keep it from going airborn, i work in the trades and have worked around small amounts of asbestos and thats just one of the precautionary things we do. one littly handy fact that everyone might find interesting--if you ever encounter old 9" x 9" tile that has been laid down for flooring in any kind of building or house, chances are it contains asbestos,,so if you ever have to rip up tile from an older building and it measures those dimensions, have it tested,

i think you'll be just fine

[Thordic]

Actually there are different kinds of asbestos. Some are more harmful than others.

Odds are with short exposure you'll be fine. Most of the anti-asbestos movement was a knee-jerk reaction. We would have been far better off finding a safer way to manufacture and implement it, its one of the more useful substances on the planet.

[68bird]

well

were u hitting any insulation because it wouldent do any harm unless it is in the air it dosent realy fly around un less u hit it and the fibers can be harmfull if u breath them in. sence u were in an abandoned building there probibly wasent any flying aroung unelss u saw the stuff hanging out of the wall from some one hitting it befor u.

[brianlojeck]

if you live near the average major city you've breathed in more harmful stuff while reading this reply then you did in that building.

As for the statement that one strand can cause cancer, by that same logic so can one splinter from varnished flooring or one long drive stuck in traffic behind a diesel schoolbus.

Now, over long times, asbestos can cause some really nasty effects. My wife had a coworker who had been exposed so heavily during his military service that he had to go for treatments where he was submerged in a breathable fluid to try to release the stuff from his lungs, and despite that he knew he was soon to die of lung disease. (at least, that's the story he told her... he could have been full of it for all I know...)

[mwsriders]

my grade school had asbestos in it. they cleared it out the year i graduated and come to find out that asbestos if not moved around or made airborne is compleatly harmless. The removal of asbestos is much more harmfull than just being around it. Ceiling tiles were made of asbestos.

[Thordic]

The removal of asbestos is much more harmfull than just being around it.

Absolutely. If instead of removing it they left it alone, or sealed the insulation better, it would have remained harmless. Instead there was a huge knee-jerk reaction to how dangerous it was. Instead of it remaining harmless for decades, they yanked it all out, potentially putting thousands of construction workers and schoolchildren at risk.

Its amazing what ignorant people with loud mouths in sufficient numbers can accomplish.

[Hasty8]

Well..heres the story.
There is supposed to be this haunted old hospital in our town..so well me and my friends went to go check it out..wel walked through the whole place..it was scary, but not haunted..today i look in the paper, and i see it being bull dozed down.i read the article, and it says there was asbestos in it and was just cleared of it before the tore it down.

What are the chances I have it?

You have no risk whatsoever unless you were standing in a vast cloud of it. The people who eventually developed cancer from asbestos were those who originally worked with it, standing in huge clouds of the stuff for hours at a time, day in and day out.

The rants and irrational fears you hear about these days concerning asbestos are borne from a lack of knowledge.

Just to put it into perspective for you, of the thousands of relief workers at the WTC Hot Zone [rubble site], none has been diagnosed with asbestos poisoning.

Relax. You're fine.

[Hasty8]

ONE asbestos fiber, smaller than than the human eye can see, if ingested in the lung can (and will) produce cancer. This fiber can sit in your lung for 10-20 years before it happens(in can happen overnight too). Asbestos is VERY, VERY bad stuff. Absolutely positively stay as far away from airborn asbestos as you can.

Can you please post the link where you picked up this tiny gem?

You do realize that there are aceptable levels of asbestos based on time being exposed, right.

What was it Thordic said about stupid people?

[skooling of Tuna]

I had to add more insult just becuase this really was just about the stupidest thing I ever heard.

Asbestosis development begins when an amphibole is inhaled, and finds it's way into the lung. Amphibole travels deep into the lungs to one of the many millions of gas-exchanging structures called alveolus. Each alveolus has many cleaning cells called macrophages whose function is to destroy (eat-up) any particles that made it down to the alveoli. Unfortunately the macrophages are not capable to gobble-up the amphiboles. In trying to eat-up an amphibole, the macrophage essentially gets sliced open and the digestive molecules that are usually contained well-within the macrophages are spilled out into the alveolus. These particle-digestive molecules cause injury and scarring to the alveolus. This kind of scar formation is called fibrosis. The amphibole that remains so un-restructed attracts other macrophages, leading to further scarring of the lungs.

Considering that a typical asbestos exposure involves hundreds and thousands of amphiboles, the end result is usually a large-scale injury to the lungs. Such a large-scale asbestos inflicted injury involving significant lung damage (pulmonary fibrosis) is usually referred to as Asbestosis.

What is Asbestosis?

Now, please re-read that last paragraph Tuna.

Considering that a typical asbestos exposure involves hundreds and thousands of amphiboles, the end result is usually a large-scale injury to the lungs. Such a large-scale asbestos inflicted injury involving significant lung damage (pulmonary fibrosis) is usually referred to as Asbestosis.

An you think that just one amphibole is enough?

And it does not happen overnight you simpleton. It takes a very long time for asbestosis to surface due to the process of the destruction of the macrophages and the resulting scaring of the alveolus.

You seriously should check your facts before you open your mouth.

What you just posted is akin to yelling "Fire" in a crowded theatre simply becuase you see a bit of smoke.
[/skooling of Tuna]

[PyRo]

ONE asbestos fiber, smaller than than the human eye can see, if ingested in the lung can (and will) produce cancer. This fiber can sit in your lung for 10-20 years before it happens(in can happen overnight too). Asbestos is VERY, VERY bad stuff. Absolutely positively stay as far away from airborn asbestos as you can.

I'm screwed then my basement used to have asbestos insulation and they didn't remove 100% of it because it was above the sheetrock and they didn't want to rip out the ceiling. So my mothers smart boyfriend goes ahead and rips it all out raiseing dust through the house. But he is really screwed because he is the one who ripped it down and he smokes to top it off.

[PyRo]

One littly handy fact that everyone might find interesting--if you ever encounter old 9" x 9" tile that has been laid down for flooring in any kind of building or house, chances are it contains asbestos,,so if you ever have to rip up tile from an older building and it measures those dimensions, have it tested,

i think you'll be just fine

We never mess with those and most other companies don't either, the few that do use el salvadorians who don't know any better to do their demo. Most of the time it gets leveled and the new floor goes over the old. Some old siding also contains asbestos.