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Asbestos
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Asbestos was used to: <br /> <br />1. lag (insulate) boilers of almost all steam engines <br />2. insulate steam-heating pipes in practically every building bigger than something that could be heated with a coal stove, e.g., every building in a major terminal, almost every roundhouse and shop, insulated and heated water towers and treatment plants <br />3. insulate steam-heat lines on all the passenger equipment <br />4. in some types of composition brake shoes <br />5. as thermal and sound insulation in many passenger cars, cabooses, etc. <br />6. as thermal insulation in some applications in structures. <br /> <br />Railroads were in love with the stuff for good reason. Other than its carcinogenic properties, it's a fabulous material that's cheap, effective, and virtually indestructible. Too bad it's deadly if inhaled in large quantities. <br /> <br />The date 2002 isn't that important. It can be years before the effects of asbestosis materialize. That is WHY asbestos has proven so deadly. If it killed you on contact, humans would have learned 2,000 years ago to stay the hell away from it, or at least treat it with great respect. Asbestos is the mineral world's equivalent of HIV-II. The deadliness lies in the long latency and incubation period. The sad part is that the occupational medicine and epidemiology journals by the 1930s were publishing articles demonstrating that asbestos had deadly properties similar to silica dust, but there was so much invested into the use and production of asbestos by that point that no one wanted to change. The mines and factories didn't want to go out of business, the users didn't want to pay to remove and substitute, and the ordinary Joe making and applying the stuff didn't want to face getting a new job, or learning a new trade, or upsetting his paycheck. The government isn't going to do what people don't want it to do, so it sat on its hands. Not until attorneys uncovered the inconsistency between the use of asbestos and various Constitutional guarantees did asbestos use end, mostly because it got too expensive. <br /> <br />The one thing you might want to consider is that most asbestos (not all, most) remaining in the human enviroment is not dangerous. It's bound up in asphalt tile, or the form that isn't hazardous. Now we've swung the pendulum off the charts in the other direction and we're spending vast sums eliminating non-existent dangers. It would have been nice if people had simply done the right thing they day they first knew about the dangers of asbestos, but apparently that was too much to ask of the average human. <br /> <br />OS
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