How many of you have asbestos related anxiety?

[LG18]

I thought I was the only one but I've seen a couple of posts on here already.

Mine started fairly recently.
I was fitting some new skirting boards in a room of our house, and the thought suddenly occurred to me, what if there is asbestos behind here in the plaster?
I read online frantically looking for parallels between my plaster and ones online, searching excessively through the original plans of the house looking for any reference to possible asbestos.

I then began looking around the house locating other areas I became worried about.
I then cast my mind back to when I was a baby and my parents and I moved into an ex council house.
My dad ripped everything out and replaced with new stuff - what if he moved asbestos unknowingly and now my whole family and myself have been contaminated from a young age? Or What if I've walked past somewhere in the past where someone has been moveing asbestos and I've breathed in the fibres?

I read it can sometimes take only minimal exposure to then get the deadly disease thirty or so years down the line, as little as a couple of diners.
I read also that 40% of people who contracted it didn't even recall being around any asbestos.

Given the fear surrounding this I wondered just how common a fear it is?
It sounds like the prime sort of thing for health anxiety to grab onto.
Would be interested to hear other people's struggles with the worry.

Thanks a lot!

[Stecakes]

it is up there on the (things to fear) list . but then if you look back 20 or so years how scary was it to eat beef in the uk?
there's been quite a few scientific studies into the effects of asbestos.
and they all seem to conclude that it takes repeated exposure over a long time to put you in harms way. also there are different forms of asbestos and not all of them are dangerous .
short isolated exposures aren't going to cause asbestosis. I know some people say it's possible, but some people say one cigarette can kill you,
highly unlikely

[axolotl]

Think of it this way, despite asbestos being a very common building material for most of the 20th Century, how many people have you ever known with asbestosis?

[conan]

a couple of fun facts about asbestos:
- the risks of asbestos-related illness increase with exposure. there is a common misconception that you only need to inhale one fibre to get sick. while it's possible to get sick from low-level exposure, it's very unlikely, in the scheme of ways you're likely to die.
- studies on lung tissue of older people who've died of non-asbestos-related illnesses have revealed millions of asbestos fibres per square inch of lunch tissue. it's probably safe to say everyone has some asbestos in their lungs. almost everyone won't die from it.
- studies suggest that "up to 10% of people" who worked in asbestos mines will die from asbestos-related illness. that means that at least 90% of people who breathed asbestos for their whole lives will not be adversely affected by it.
- asbestos in the walls is not dangerous. removing it is dangerous, if not done safely. there might be some in your walls, if they're old. if you leave them alone, you have nothing to worry about. if you need to remove them, get a licensed asbestos removal company to do it. then you still have nothing to worry about.

i went through a lot of these worries when we moved house a few years ago but it was a rare situation where actually the more i read about it, the less worried i felt.

[spacebunnyx]

I have had a fair bit of asbestos exposure in my life... Occasionally I think "hmm... I wonder if..." but I've never got anxious about it.

xxx

[nomorepanic]

Hi

This is just a courtesy reply to let you know that your post was moved from its original place to a sub-forum that is more relevant to your issue.

This is nothing personal - it just enables us to keep posts about the same problems in the relevant forums so other members with any experience with the issues can find them more easily.

[LG18]

Thank you for the comments everyone.
Going to go through and read in detail.

[goingoutmymind]

i have massive asbestos worries so much so that i moved house a few years ago and left all mine and my families belongings there. ive also just posted my lastest asbestos fear