r/asbestoshelp

This is a great sub with great advice from asbestos professionals, but it seems to be a common theme here for people unfamiliar with asbestos to post their anxieties about it. I was the same way. I was very afraid of just the existence of asbestos in my home until I learned more about how unbelievably ubiquitous it is and how common it is to live with it.

Asbestos was used in nearly every construction material besides wood and steel from roughly the 1930s through the 1980s, and much of that material is still around today.

There are roughly ~100 asbestos fibers in every cubic meter of ambient city air, and the average person inhales around 20 cubic meters of air per day. That means you already inhale roughly ~2,000 asbestos fibers per day simply living in a city. Less in rural environments.

https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp61-c1-b.pdf

That doesn’t mean asbestos is harmless, and it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t test materials or hire proper abatement contractors when necessary.

What it does mean is that if you come here nervous because you discovered an intact asbestos-containing material in your home, or had a brief surprise exposure, you should know that asbestos exposure is already a normal part of everyday life and that incidental exposures are often far less catastrophic than anxiety makes them feel.

Hope this helps calm somebody down a bit.

​

I apologize as i will see a doctor, but im curious if anyone can offer any comfort or words of wisdom from working the industry. NJ usa. Im 37 years old male, good health, non-smoker tho i did smoke 1 cigarette maybe a day arpund the time, and regularly smoked ciggarrets for 6 months 1 year after my exposure, and i smoked 1 or 2 here and there for a few years in my 20s.

When i was 16, i broke up this very thin extremely tough tile in a basement with a pickaxe -like hammer, which most likely to be asbestos.

I was in the dust cloud for at least 4 hours, some of the dust was concrete because i was chipping the floor as it was so tough.

I cant confirm it was, but all my research and description tells me it was, and my grandpa suspected it was so he had it boarded up, but he passed so i didnt find that out till later.

It looked exactly like this tile...

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1GLLfGYbAs/

Edited: i forgot to mention... guess where i grew up? :')

But i didnt see anydust or anything arpund as the big cleanup was started 2 years before i was born... but... my grandpa wprked at johns manville for 25 years, but i dont know if he worked onbthw upper (wet) floor, where they looked down over the dusty people below.

As far as i could tell our house was not clean, but not dusty. I only lived there a few years tho, and after that for 10 years i visited on weekends. I moved a town or 2 over.. which is also considered high disease rate.

He got a asbestosis but wasnt that bad early 1990s, but he died of emphesyma at 70 he was a smoker, so unfortunately still outside the latency period of mesothelioma.

Hey all,

I’m hoping someone may be able to provide me with some guidance regarding how to best proceed with a renovation project.

I live in a home built in the 1950s, in which my family previously had asbestos professionally removed from the property in the 80s. The location of the asbestos, kitchen, was then outfitted with vinyl flooring installed over particleboard.

Present day, we are embarking on a pretty thorough renovation and our plan is to install engineered hardwood throughout our kitchen and dining room. My concern is that it’s highly likely that black mastic was left behind during the remediation in the 80s, as it was not standard for this to be removed along with the tiles at that time. We do not want to disturb any possible residue by lifting the particleboard. However, it would be most ideal to install over a flat cement surface, per multiple contractors.

My question is, has anyone been in this situation and were you able to successfully navigate removing old flooring where asbestos had previously lived, without producing an unfavourable outcome?

I appreciate your help in advance!

I’ll start by saying a have a doctor appointment set up already. I’ve been having some symptoms that align with certain types of asbestos related issues and I’m trying to figure out how substantial my exposure was. Want to explain it properly to the doc.

In 2016 I went into an old sugar mill factory in Colorado that is well known to contain tons of friable asbestos in abatement bags scattered around the site. I didn’t know about asbestos at the time. I had no idea that all of the dust around us may be asbestos dust. I had no mask or anything.

The dust in the building was weird. It floated and did not fall down. It wasn’t insanely dense but I was in there a few hours just breathing all of this visible asbestos.

I know what’s done is done, but I just want to understand how substantial this exposure is compared to something like the 9/11 exposures. It seems different from typical occupational exposures since I was breathing a bunch of dust that they already bagged up. All of the fibers that the abatement people were trying to ensure no one ever breathed.

Thanks for any help.

Hi, I’m trying to estimate my exposure from a DIY incident where I used a power drill bit (~3/8”) to laterally grind a dryer vent opening in asbestos cement siding (20% chrysotile).

It was outside with light to moderate wind. Total active tool use was intermittent – no more than 5 minutes in total – though more time was spent standing around trying to fit the duct through, grinding again, etc. No more than ~ 1.5 square inch of siding was ground down.

When I use AI to research this, I get estimates that span many orders of magnitude – ranging from .000001 fiber years up to .001 fiber years. I think the primary issue is that there isn’t published task-based exposure assessments from using a drill bit this way, so assumptions about f/cc at tool vary.

Is hiring a CIH to provide a formal assessment for such a minor incident worthwhile or feasible? Or is the fiber year exposure so negligible that it’s not worth it, and if so, what would a worst case estimate be? Just trying to understand what my exposure was.

Thanks for opinions!