There is also another indirect cost of removing Asbestos, which is what dictates its removal; human health!
We all know this is bad for us, but until I made my calls, I didn't understand how it works!
It seems that the guys who originally installed it, the laggers and so on, from the 1920s onwards, tended to suffer from asbestosis. All of them will have already passed away or will be centenarians with their telegram from the queen .
Apparently there are no records of their mortality rates, but according to the information transmitted, some, not all, died of asbestosis. We know that the miners were the biggest victims!
What's really strange, though, is that a lot of the wives of men who used asbestos died of asbestosis before their men! It is thought to have been from shaking out contaminated clothing! Apparently this caused a desperate headache, knowing that their jobs had killed their wives! I would do it!
Among today's guys who remove asbestos there don't seem to be any health problems – yet!
Asbestos by daryl_mitchell is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
It now appears that it may take about 30 years after exposure before asbestosis appears . In the 1970s and 80s, when asbestos removal became an issue, men wore approved respirators. They were rated to protect against 40,000 of any units used to measure air contamination. It seems that, today, these same masks have only been reevaluated for 4 of these units!
We could have a serious imminent health problem in the near future!
That leaves Public Joe. Asbestos removal is supposed to protect the health of householders, office workers and factories. The idea is that by removing it, none of us will breathe in the fibers that could eventually kill us.
We have a multi-million dollar asbestos removal industry (read part 1). We've just seen that we probably have a hidden cost of several billion pounds for its removal (read part 2) – the next crazy part is that I couldn't find a record of a single Joe Public dying from asbestosis! This is despite my hometown, a shipbuilding town, being known among Lung Consultants as “The Asbestos Capital of the World!” Apparently this is because most warehouses were erected during the 1920s, the great asbestos era, after the First World War. I was very proud to find out that all the asbestos removal people I spoke to worked there and thought it was a great place!
So after some research, it doesn't appear that actual asbestos removal costs much in the grand scheme of things. What costs a lot of money may be the indirect costs that removal imposes on companies! In terms of human health, its removal doesn't seem to have much impact, good or bad!
Something else came up from my calls to asbestos removal experts and this is something close to my heart for the sake of my own health! Everyone seems to view black mold spores as a greater threat to their workers' lung health than asbestos!
