So people kind of knew asbestos was harmful wayyy before it mostly stopped being used in 1979 (USA). But, it was still used constantly in many industries and ended up everywhere. What do you think is an example of something we find out is DRASTICALLY harmful 10-50 years from now? My guess would be screen time.
For all the panicky people:
Microplastics are bad, but they’re not remotely close to asbestos bad. Nobody is dying horribly from emphysema because they accidentally contacted microplastics two decades ago. The effects absolutely exist, but they’re quite subtle and do not involve suffocating while you cough your lungs out in small pieces.
Gylphosate is bad, but it’s mostly bad for the people working directly with it and ignoring every safety precaution (the Venn diagram of those two groups is pretty much a circle). Eating food that was once treated with gylphosate will not be remotely bad for you on any measurable scale.
Source: am chemist, work as a safety professional (independent, no large company is paying me for anything but an occasional audit that is mostly unrelated to chemistry)
But, I’ll happily add something that’s bad, but not on the level of asbestos. Indoor cooking on fire and/or with poor ventilation. It creates combustion products, releases particulate and smoke and many complex volatiles that are just drifting around in your house for pretty much the entire evening.
Edit: and growing your own food on local soil in a city. That dirt has been collecting pollution for a century, and the odds are pretty decent that it might actually qualify for remediation if you live near anywhere industrial or a big road that’s been there for a while. Get your soil tested, or use raised beds if you’re growing food.
Microplastics get smaller and likely more dangerous every year. We don’t know how much present day cancer can be attributed to microplastics, there is no control group.
I feel bad for the poor humans on Sentinel Island that, despite being completely isolated from industrial society, still have our microplastics in them.
That’s okay they don’t wear polyester, use teabags, use plastic pellet fertiliser or prepare food with plastic so their exposure is probably super low
Aren’t the vast majority of people suffering cancer from asbestos exposure the people that worked with asbestos for years? From what I understand, you’re very unlikely to suffer from a single exposure.
That being said, asbestos is fucking everywhere. Veritasium recently did a video on it, and a lot of the soil around Las Vegas just naturally contains it, and gets kicked up by vehicles, construction, wind, etc.
Sorta kinda. It was much easier to get prolonged asbestos exposure than repeated glyphosate exposure. We used it in everything, including carpets and roofs. The asbestos fibers in those roofs are fine, but the glue holding them together isn’t. It’s been falling on the ground since forever, but it’s accelerating more and more.
Meanwhile, the only people working unsafely with glyphosate are basically a subset of farmers. Now, I’ve basically NEVER seen a farmer handle chemicals according to the instructions, so within that group unsafe exposure is basically 100%, but it’s a much smaller fraction of the population.
I’m not panicking, I just had my daily inhaled dose of asbestos dust today, doing a front end alignment. What do you think most brake pads are made with?
Source: Am mechanic, and know what the smell of freshly wet road consists of, which is all sorts of toxic substances, including asbestos dust. And we’ve all smelled freshly wet pavement before…
Today I learned the US allowed asbestos brakepads till mid 2024. Jesus fucking christ people.
Yup, sad world we live in.
But I have no lung problems… cough cough…
43 and already got toes in the grave…