Posts Tagged ‘Dangerous Levels’

Working with steel

Before asbestos was found to have such dangerous repercussions to humans being exposed to it, the material was used by many industries and with many different applications. Asbestos can lead to many asbestos related illnesses as well as the rare form of cancer mesothelioma. Asbestos has many desirable qualities in many different applications as well as asbestos having the ability to be manufactured and refined into any number of products. Mesothelioma, the rare form of cancer caused by asbestos, has a long incubation period and can lay dormant for decades before a host has visible symptoms. This is one reason why asbestos was able to gain such wide popularity of use before realizing it’s deadly affect on human beings. The steel manufacturing industry worked very closely with asbestos due to it’s amazing heat resistance properties. Asbestos is a very good insulator and served in many steel manufacturing and refining plants to protect workers from dangerous levels of heat exposure. In fact, asbestos probably made working in the sweltering heat of the steel mills tolerable. Asbestos was also spun into thread and used in different clothing applications throughout the steel industry. Due to its fire resistance it might have saved many a life, although it still exposed people to asbestos, possibly causing other illnesses or mesothelioma. Luckily now we have newer materials that are not toxic to our bodies as mesothelioma is, yet still give us the same useful properties that asbestos is known for.
Courtesy of XViD

Asbestos exposure in ships

There are a great many ways to utilize the desirable properties of asbestos. Asbestos has a resistance to heat and fire and can be molded and manufactured into many different products for useful application. The Navy made use of asbestos in many different applications on their ships. Every ship from a Navy destroyer to cruisers and aircraft carriers at one time used some asbestos containing product. Asbestos is the number one cause of mesothelioma, which has caused a great deal of veterans to have been afflicted with mesothelioma, a terrible form of cancer. There have also been a great deal of other asbestos related illnesses reported in the past due to the exposure to asbestos on old Navy ships. The Navy used asbestos in many different forms. Boiler and engine rooms tended to have a high exposure risk to the mesothelioma causing material. The Navy also used asbestos based adhesives, valves containing asbestos, and even cables and gaskets that contained asbestos. Navy submarines also had a great deal of risk in the crew being exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos. As the Navy renovated and demolished ships, workers in the shipyards were also exposed to asbestos, perhaps at an even greater risk due to the dust and debris that is breathed in during a typical demolition. The Navy has since renovated their fleet to greatly reduce the risk of asbestos exposure, curbing the rate of seamen diagnosed with mesothelioma. It is a costly and difficult undertaking to update the world’s largest navy in order to safely reduce asbestos exposure to a ships crew, but this was most certainly a necessary task.

  • Carbon Nanotubes Could Have Asbestos-Like Health Complications A recent laboratory study has shed new light on the possibility of a nexus between carbon nanotube exposure and the asbestos-like health effects. Carbon nanotubes are molecular-level structures that
  • Links Between Taconite And Mesothelioma The Minnesota Department of Health is launching two major studies to answer long-simmering questions about taconite and human health. The agency says men in northeastern Minnesota have twice the expe
  • Looking Forward To Asbestos Ban A deal is near on legislation banning the use of asbestos, a fibrous mineral often used in brake linings, gaskets, cement products and even yarns and threads imported into the country despite its dea
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