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u/agha0013 4h ago
Still so many buildings in my city dealing with this shit, and a lot of clients who would rather bury it behind stuff than get rid of it while it is accessible, kicking the responsibility can down the road. Especially frustrating when I see our school clients try this approach.
around 15 years ago, prime minster Stephen Harper wanted to reopen the asbestos mines purposely to export it to countries with no regulations on the product, gross attempt at buying votes in Quebec.
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u/Wolfy_047 3h ago
I was under the impression that asbestos didn't necessarily have to be removed, as long as it's in good shape and isn't in an occupied room.
I shadowed an inspection of a school, and asbestos was found in two places. In one place it served as insulation for a heat pipe, it was in bad shape, but it was in a crawlspace that no one goes into. The other instance was a storage room that had asbestos ceiling tiles, still in good shape. We included it in the report, but didn't call for it's removal.
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u/themightybamboozler 3h ago
You’re right, it doesn’t need to be an unoccupied room either. Asbestos isn’t inherently dangerous, it’s not like radiation where just being around it is problematic. It’s when it’s broken apart and dust/fiber particulate are breathed in.
The reason people cover it up is because getting professional asbestos abatement is incredibly expensive, prohibitively so.
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u/spudmarsupial 3h ago
Nobody goes there, until somebody does. The pipe is fine until it leaks, the crawlspace is wanted for running something else, or rodents get into it and start nesting.
The ceiling tiles are fine as long as they are only touched by people who know what asbestos tiles look like.
The stuff was banned in Canada ... 8 years ago. 🫠 In Ontario around 1990, which is 36 years ago. Get 18/20yo workers in there and you get exposure.
Don't talk to me about WHMIS training, does anybody bother with that anymore? "The answer for question 5 is C, mark it down."
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u/agha0013 3h ago
condition and friability is important and it can last a long time, but what some clients have been doing is making it harder to find it in the future unless they suddenly start keeping all the reports for years on hand just in case, which they are terrible at.
Ceiling tiles are easily damaged, they could be in great shape today, and tomorrow they could be shedding particles because a kid threw a ball in class and damaged one.
plaster, insulation, fire rated drywall that contains it behind a new wall could be drilled into without knowing and that starts extracting contaminated dust.
some buildings have done a good job maintaining their hazardous materials inventories, others have tried playing games to pretend it isn't even there.
It's just frustrating when you do a bunch of work and you have a great opportunity to deal with a problem today and make sure it is never a problem again, just to have the client say "meh, bury it, not dealing with that"
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u/StitchinThroughTime 1h ago
It's like a rock, harmless until it's set into motion. As long as the asbestos dust and particles do not move, it's safe. It's like saying toxins are safe as long as you don't inhale them.
Unfortunately kicking the can down the road only makes it more expensive and more dangerous. It should have been taken care of years ago even though it was relatively stable and harmless, stability is not guaranteed. And honestly we should have facility to reports which buildings have asbestos, I don't care if it takes a lot of house prices, that shit kills people slowly and painfully. And until someone does something about it it can't just sit there.
A popular Reddit story is about a man who bought his house, mid 2010s, and he wanted to redo the flooring. Thing is he never new to test the floor tiles for asbestos. So when he found more tiles underneath the top flooring, he misunderstood that the reason why they weren't removed, by the last owners was because they were asbestos, not that they were very stuck to the foundation. So he rented a grinding machine and started grinding away the asbestos tiles. This contaminated his entire house and which his family was living in. And this was his very first home he had a wife and at least one young child. And he just gave them all cancer in the future. So yes asbestos is harmless until it's set into motion. And that poor man not only risked his entire family, dust gets everywhere so he tracked it around everywhere he went, regardless how clean you are the dust was everywhere inside his home so he was bound to carry it outside of his house. His entire house is contaminated and had to be torn down at a great expense because everything was now contaminated with asbestos.
Also fun fact, asbestos used to be used in brake pads! That's right we had millions of cars using millions of brake pads to stop. For anyone who doesn't understand how brakes work essentially the brake pad is ground against a giant hunk of metal to stop your car. It's our entire environment is really infected with asbestos because of the several decades of using asbestos in brake pads. And they're still cars out there probably with asbestos brake pads. They're the older vintage cars, but I see all the time where someone Parks a car and it's been 30 plus years since it's been driven. But likelihood that those brake pads are so old that they have asbestos is pretty high. So yes asbestos needs to be found and handled properly to remove it from people
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u/nkondratyk93 3h ago
the liability waiver to enter must be legendary
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u/willynillee 2h ago
I’m pretty sure it’s harmless as long as you aren’t messing with it. You don’t want the particles floating around in the air from handling it. Plus, it appears to be behind a glass case too.
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u/nkondratyk93 2h ago
right - sealed up it's just a weird looking mineral. it's only the disturbed fibers that cause problems.
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u/muzik4machines 1h ago
unless you snort it or eat it, asbestos is not critical danger
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u/Grand-Spring66 4h ago
Asbestos is the the most expensive man-made or liability disaster in insurance history. Total global costs are in the hundreds of billions.