John Whitworth wrote:

Sorry - only just managed to plonk myself in front of the PC. Was
finishing part of the garage conversion yesterday - spraying the walls
with a fire-retardant mix of asbestos. ;-) Oh - OK - painting it with
Dulux emulsion! Anyway - thanks for these links.


Paint in the garage? Isn't that a fire haz... oh. conversion _from_ a
garage?

Haven't read them properly yet - though a brief look at the first one
shows me two things that I immediately find questionable:

- the study was limited to women, to eliminate workers in the asbestos
industry
- [JW] so it would likely also eliminate anyone doing DIY asbestos
removal too? Surely factors like DIY working with the stuff should be
taken into account in any environmental assessment, as that's day-to-day
usage?

- The results of this study are reassuring with respect to lung cancer,
but there were significant excess numbers of deaths due to pleural
cancer (seven deaths) and asbestosis (two deaths). The instances of
pleural cancer suggest an excess risk of mesothelioma. However, since
historical death certificates reflect the incidence of mesothelioma
poorly we have launched a separate study based on a province-wide survey
of hospital records.

On the second article, much of the summarising at the end simply sounds
like the "yes, we as the asbestos industry know that blue asbestos is
really bad, and so by getting rid of that, we have cleaned up the
industry".

I haven't scoured each article properly, as I said, and so I haven't
found evidence of "_all_ types were banned is so that someone could make
a quick buck".


I haven't found evidence of white asbestos being a significant risk
outside some production facilities - and even then it looks as though
contamination with other types may be involved. Certainly smoking is
strongly linked.

I guess it depends whether you want to be precautionary safe and ban
everything that isn't proved safe, or ban only things that are proved
dangerous.

Andy