What are the health hazards associated with asbestos?
What we learned about asbestos, is that in the workplace where we've had experience with shipyard workers in particular, where they were putting asbestos in to boats as insulating material, around the boiler of the boat for example. They developed a high rate of lung cancer and it wasn't just any kind of lung cancer, it was a particular fingerprint kind of lung cancer for asbestos called mesothelioma. That signal from the workers led to sudden concern in the 1960's to 1970's that maybe we're doing the wrong thing with this mineral, maybe we're putting it into too many places were humans can break it down, interact with it, and breathe it in. The concern with asbestos is that, it can flake off of these kinds of insulating materials and form very thin fibres and we're talking about 1/20th to 1/100th the width of a hair strand. That's how thin they are, they're like javelins, they're like spears that can be inhaled and penetrate deep into the lungs and turn your deep lung into a pin cushion, so that's the image that we have from breathing in asbestos. The problem with asbestos fibres, this is different than fibreglass, you can also breath fibreglass fibres let's say you're working in your attic and you're tearing up some old insulation and putting it down. You will be breathing in some fibreglass fibres but those fibres, when they get into your deep lung, they are water soluble and they degrade, they don't stay there. Asbestos is a mineral from the earth and it doesn't degrade, it stays as a javelin in your deep lung or like a needle pricking and irritating your deep lung causing an inflammatory reaction that eventually leads to a real problem, lung cancer.
