Asbestos was highly popular mineral in the last two centuries. It was mined in big volumes and used for strengthening cement compounds for building, as well as in insulation, pipes, especially for plumbing. The problem of asbestos was that the influence of this mineral for health was not studied properly before it came to wide use in industry, building, household and farming. Due to its suitable characteristics and cheap price manufacturers invented a lot of applications for asbestos, up to producing crayons and gardening compounds.
Later, in 70s of the last century it was banned for use in many spheres because asbestos released its fibers into the air and affected people’s lungs. Its use was seriously limited, removed from everywhere where it was imposed to heating. In 1989 the Environmental Protection Agency prohibited to use asbestos in any new directions. The companies began to reconstruct old buildings that contained it with asbestos-free materials to reduce asbestos exposure in the air. The USA governmental and scientific organizations are highly sensitive for such ecological problems and reacts on banning not only obvious, proven facts of damage, but also to potential risks that hasn’t been studied properly yet.
The example of such reaction was banning using crayons that contain asbestos by children, even though the risk of asbestos exposure consequences for health was proven to be extremely low. The crayons contained talc, and from that moment (2000) it was eliminated from crayons by US manufacturers.
The risk of asbestos exposure is thoroughly studied in laboratories all over the world, and relying on those studies it becomes clearer how the material behaves in different conditions. Asbestos can cause serious health problems that mostly affect lungs and airways. The most dangerous display of such exposure is lung cancer, an asbestos-specific form called mesothelioma. It is caused by asbestos fibers that a person inhales near the source. The fibers damage lung tissues and doesn’t reveal any symptoms for decades, until healthy cells turn into cancerous tumor. The absence of symptoms highly complicates diagnostics and therapy in future.
The risk of asbestos-related lung cancer is about 1% in case of occupational exposure and about 2.8% in case of environmental exposure. Besides mesothelioma there is a range of other conditions that may be caused by this mineral. According to statistic information the total risk of health problems is 8-9% that means each 11th or 12th person exposed to asbestos has related diseases.
Each location and organization where the cases of asbestos exposure took place is included into the list, and the information about such locations can be found online or in printed sources. Such publicity is aimed to minimize the risks of future exposure and make the companies to take all possible steps for removing the sources of exposure.
Moreover, the victims of asbestos exposure are eligible to file a lawsuit for compensating all expenses and moral damage. As a rule the respondent in such cases is the company that produced the source of exposure or employers who imposed the person for such risks by the working conditions.
While the wide use of dangerous forms of asbestos has been banned about 40 years ago, the problem is very up-to-date for now. And the best way to fight it is to be aware about its reasons, consequences and protective means.