Comment on I feel like if asbestos was banned today there'd be a huge pro-asbestos movement
Agent641@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Asbestos must have seemed like a fucking miracle material. Suddenly, our tinderbox world was fireproof. You can build bricks, lightweight cladding, roofing and fences for houses, car parts, curtains, electrical switchboards and protective clothing out of it without the incessant fear of a house fire. It wasn’t synthetic or petroleum based, you could just dig it out of the ground. Yeah it would absolutely have supporters. They would be dumb, but they would exist.
I remember my dad being angry that they were phasing out leaded petrol and he had to buy a seperate additive to put in the Datsun fuel.
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Still used in a lot of fireproof applications. Lab tables you see in chemistry and biology classrooms are a good example, most of those are made out of asbestos. Really, as long as it’s well bonded and handled appropriately, it’s perfectly safe. It’s just costly to do so, and greedy companies don’t care if their lax standards cause cancer 20 years later, so it really can’t be trusted in the hands of private businesses.
Reasonable_Guy@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Most lab tops today are not asbestos based. There’s plenty of 40 plus year old ones still around that are and as long as you don’t break them they’re perfectly fine. But newer tops are all either epoxy or phenolic resin based.
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 1 week ago
That’s probably the case. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a chem lab, and even then the tables and equipment weren’t exactly “new” lol