There are plenty of things that you deal with on a daily basis that are significantly more dangerous than asbestos. And if it had been treated like the hazardous material that it is as soon as we knew it was hazardous, then it would still be used just like all the other hazardous shit we deal with daily. However, as is the usual story, companies not only hid what they knew, but outright lied about its dangers. They called it a miracle material with no downsides. And it is amazingly good at what it does, so it was put in fucking everything, much like AI is today. And so people died for profit. A lot of people.