asbestos worries

[unsure_about_this]

I read somewhere we are all exponse with asbestos (in air, water etc) sometimes in our life.

I know we had some work in the loft ages ago, i dont remember what we moved down, some white foam pipes just left up there) I dont think the plumber would have left us in danger as we known him for years.

We dont have anybody who works with this stuff. I read that people who work with the stuff for years have the risk of getting certain type of cancer and other diseases

I am scared I have asbestos, I remember we could not go into a training provider because asbestos has been found, tutor should have not joked about the c word.



---------- Post added at 10:49 ---------- Previous post was at 10:30 ----------

We had work donw a couple of years because my parents wanted a shower in the bathroom as well as keeping the bath.

If felt soft not like rock hard as concrete,

[Elen]

Phil you are spiralling hun and looking for things to scare yourself silly about.

Why not look into some mindfulness techniques on line, they can really help to disrupt this destructive thinking pattern

[hanshan]

I grew up in a house with the back part all built of asbestos-cement sheets. The garage was built of unpainted-cement sheets. The water pipes - well they wrapped raw asbestos around them! And if you didn't want your milk boiling over, you could buy an asbestos pad to put over the burner.

I'm still here! In fact the house is, too, as I have inherited it, and all the asbestos is there still. And I'll be moving back in.

Basically, asbestos is only a risk if you have high exposure to fibres (mostly airborne). Asbestos in building products is very low risk (eg you take a risk maybe ten thousand times greater every time you get in a car or cross a street).

By the way - asbestos insulation wrapped around pipes looks like soft white string. If it's foam, it's unlikely to contain asbestos.

[Gary A]

For asbestos to do any meaningful damage you need to be exposed to airborne particles for many many years. I know a guy who worked in demolition in the 50's and he got lung cancer through asbestos exposure. Point is, though, he was standing in clouds of the stuff for most of his career.

Asbestos that isnt broken into breathable particles is not in any way harmful, so unless you're planning on smashing up your walls and snorting whatever falls out of them, stop worrying about it.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Drilling, cutting, etc disturbs the fibres so you breathe it in. But if you asked a doctor, or read NHS Choices, you would see it says what hanshan & Gary say - it's about prolonged exposure.

Also, white asbestos is by far the least dangerous. It was blue and brown that were the serious problem and those were used in industrial processes. People would come home with it on their clothes and it would expose their family to it e.g. The wife doing the washing.

Your plumber would be increasing his risk of an early death if he didn't take precautions. How likely do you think that is just for some cash? Those guys know what they are looking for and you can bet they would walk off the job straight away.

We all used to have them with our electricity meters attached to them many years ago. The distribution companies sorted that out. It was rare after that to find them, I've done studies which revealed some of those cases over 12 month periods in my last job (hundreds of thousands of site visits by engineers) and there were a few and engineers would walk away from the job because of it until it was changed. These guys value their lives more than the work!

With this fear, you can never properly disprove it. It's very important to rationalise & accept here.

And yes, it's in the air we breathe. It's at negligible levels.

This one is a bit political so you find misinformation out there. I suggest you stick with what the NHS say.

[Nathand91]

Whilst being exposed to asbestos is dangerous in large measures it's quite rare in modern times to find asbestos wide spread. I used to be a plumber and the work we had to do had been checked for asbestos exposure prior to the start of works and there was rarely an incident where we had to take any action because of potential exposure. Even if on the off chance you were mildly exposed to asbestos, it is only asbestos dust which can be problematic, and even in these cases it takes a great deal of exposure to cause significant problems. Asbestosis generally only results from years worth of exposure to asbestos hence why it's only really seen in ship yard workers and lifetime construction workers etc. Even then mesothelioma is still relatively rare. In the unlikely event that you were exposed to it once, your chance of becoming ill is almost redundant. Take care and try to relax.