If you come in contact with asbestos, you just gotta deal with it asbestos you can. Hey there guys, Trace here for DNews. You may have heard of asbestos as this hazardous material that can be found in old homes and buildings. It's been used commercially in North America for over a hundred years, but now, in 2016, the EPA is evaluating the material as a quote, high priority risk with the potential to ban it entirely.
So what the heck is this stuff and why is it so dangerous? So first, I'm guessing you, like me, have no idea what asbestos actually is other than a scary carcinogen that's in old buildings, right? Asbestos was first identified in ancient Greece by one of Aristotle's students in 300 BCE.
He noted it looked like rotten wood and had a remarkable resistance to fire even when doused with oil. Asbestos isn't a chemical or a human-made substance, it's stone. Actually, it's a group of six naturally occurring silicate minerals found in rock and soil in 900 different regions of the US alone.
Asbestos is a stronger-than-steel, soft, fire-resistant mineral that doesn't biodegrade, decompose, dissolve in water, or evaporate. No wonder asbestos is in everything, it's a freaking wonder material. But not all asbestos-es-es are created equal.
Amesite is brown asbestos, chrysitilite is blue asbestos, and chrysatil is white asbestos. The other three types come in a variety of colors and are actinolite, anthropolite, and tremolite. According to Scientific American, the strongest and stiffest are brown and blue asbestos, as well as the other three.
But the white asbestos is special. It's softer and more flexible. Because of that flexibility, the white asbestos is used in 95% of products you think of as asbestos. Even though it looks like wood or fibers, again, asbestos is technically a mineral. It's made of chains of silicon and oxygen atoms, with other elements, calcium, iron, and magnesium, incorporated in, which change the properties slightly.
Because of these amazing properties, the asbestos family of minerals have been used in heat-resistant fabrics, paints and plastics, paper products, car brakes and clutches, and in building materials such as roofing, siding, flooring, and insulation. And this is where we get to the problems. While asbestos is basically indestructible under normal circumstances, human bodies, not so much. If asbestos crumbles and gets into the air, it breaks into tiny thin threads, which are still indestructible, just smaller now. If those threads become air or waterborne, they can get swallowed or lodged in the lungs, causing problems.
This is why people who work with asbestos-containing products, say in building construction, run risks. They're dealing with a high concentration of the material and they're more likely to get it into their body. You'd expect that inhaling fibers would cause symptoms like coughing, sneezing, or itching, But, and this is the scary bit, asbestos inhalation doesn't really have any symptoms.
It doesn't dissolve, melt, or evaporate. And minerals don't have odor. So you can't see, feel, or taste asbestos fibers.
This is why people who work with asbestos have to take special care and use protective equipment. You don't want this stuff in your body. According to OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, asbestos exposure is a hazard for about 1.3 million construction workers in the US. The EPA describes asbestos as a quote, known carcinogen. That is, a chemical that can cause cancer after exposure.
The health effects from these indestructible fibers entering the body include several types of lung cancer, mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer that develops in the lining of the lungs, and asbestosis, a serious, long-term disease of the lungs. According to a meta-analysis from the journal American Family Physician, there are approximately 200,000 cases in the US of asbestosis annually. and over 6,000 deaths from asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma combined related to asbestos exposure. We've been regulating asbestos in the United States since the 1970s. We check for it in drinking water, schools, some consumer products, and workplace air.
A few uses of asbestos are even banned under existing regulations, like certain paper products and spray-on materials. But even if the EPA does decide to ban it entirely, there still will be asbestos in places like old buildings. It's pretty incredible that this naturally occurring ancient material has been used in so many things over the centuries and it turns out It was killing us the whole time.
We just have to keep looking for it out there as best as we can. I had to. I had to. If this doesn't cement the myth that just because something is natural means it's safe or good for you, I don't know what will. I mean, what's really the difference between natural and artificial flavors, for example?
Find out here. Any other science mysteries you want to know about? Tell us in the comments, make sure you subscribe, and thanks for watching.