This wall was to the supply room with all of the uniforms and PPE. The building was constructed in the mid-20th century so it turns out it’s full of asbestos. Thanks mole man.
Over 80% of all mesothelioma cases are caused by asbestos
Asbestos fibres are 10x thinner than fibreglass fibres (N95 is useless) and can stay airborne basically forever, we spray what’s called a “lockdown ecapsulant” in the air that basically just grabs every fibre and bit of dust in the air then glues it to the floor.
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Asbestos fibres are 10x thinner than fibreglass fibres (N95 is useless) and can stay airborne basically forever, we spray what’s called a “lockdown ecapsulant” in the air that basically just grabs every fibre and bit of dust in the air then glues it to the floor.
My big fear with this is that it’s almost certainly flooding the HVAC system now, but there’s no official posting beyond this sign and the office staff seem to think it’s fine. Who would I anonymously contact in the US for an inspection? Is that regulated at the state level or by the EPA?
Always start with OSHA for anything in a workplace
OSHA (https://www.osha.gov/form/osha7) and/or the EPA’s Asbestos Ombudsman (https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/forms/contact-us-about-asbestos)
I live in Canada unfortunately so idk
Talk to your union, generally before any government org
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Asbestos, much like jigsaw in the movie saw, doesn’t kill you. It makes your body kill itself just by being indestructible. Your body sends cells to break it down, the cells die and turn into scar tissue. The asbestos just wants to live in your lungs.
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The asbestos just wants to live in your lungs
i’d be very chill and simply accept my new lung roomate
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A company mining the vast majority of vermiculite at the time, an ostensibly safe loose fill insulation product, “accidentally” mined an asbestos vein at the same time so now all vermiculite is considered asbestos contaminated because as a loose fill product you can’t get an accurate reading of the concentration of a foreign substance
Uhhhhh wow wish I knew this earlier.
As a pool guy in a previous life I really fucking wish I did too
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Asbestos was open pit mined with dynamite meaning our atmosphere has a small amount of ambient asbestos fibres still and meaning that a clean air clearance for abatement is not 0 fibres/cc it’s 0.02
This is like listening to a goopy-doopy gory details crime podcast that’s been pared down the bone to be 15 second chunks.
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If you eat asbestos, it gets into your bloodstream and lodges itself wherever it feels like. You may think “who would eat asbestos?” But in my training I’ve seen pictures of old school insulators sitting on asbestos blocks with hands covered in asbestos based mastic eating a sandwich bare handed.
Bonus: there is a town in Quebec that only VERY recently changed its name from Asbestos to something lame idk what honestly. They stopped mining asbestos in 2019 or maybe 2016 i forget
They almost reopened the mine in Asbestos, the Quebec Liberal Party had a deal all ready to reopen it with government money in an attempt to appeal to blue-collar workers. But the Parti Quebecois (the socdem party) won the election before they could implement it and diverted the money to economic diversification programs.
i can’t believe you’d slander a tasty snack like this
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The world trade centre building’s structural steel had sprayed on fireproofing made from asbestos up to the 50th floor I want to say. Making the 9/11 attacks the largest asbestos exposure in history lasting days and days because of how long the dust took to settle
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Canada historically was one of the largest exporters worldwide. Until 2020 Canada still exported asbestos to India and China where it’s still used in industrial applications. I saw video of people unloading fluffy asbestos with shovels wearing paper face masks in India This was 2019. Asbestos fibres are approximately 50x thinner than a human hair so a pair mask may as well not exist if you have even the smallest amount of facial hair stubble
Holy shit death to Canada
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Asbestos still accounts for the majority of workplace related injury and death at least here because of the long delay (10-50 years) between exposure and asbestosis/mesothelioma
All your PPE is considered contaminated now. Was it just the drywall mud containing or was the insulation behind the wall containing too
I know so much about asbestos
Moleman has now begun the process of transforming into a being of pure scar tissue. Takes about 20-30 years
The supply room and everything in it was immediately blocked off. But now we have neither uniforms nor full PPE for our outdoor jobs with hazardous conditions.
I’m not sure where the asbestos was exactly, only that it’s a giant maintenance garage built in the early 1970s. They probably heavily fireproofed the whole structure. It’s nasty shit but I kind of want to make a little hole in the wall to get some for one of those magic Roman bags that cleaned itself.
If you want to be more Roman just wipe your doodoo ass with a vinegar soaked sea sponge. Avoid the magic bag of doom.
I exclusively tradshit in public bathrooms with no stalls, but asbestos bags show the brilliance of Greco-Roman culture. Imagine the convenience of tossing your clothes in the fire after a long day of watching slaves murder each other for sport. They come out perfectly clean without any washing or drying. Why would the gods make this magic if it wasn’t good for us in moderation?
I was going to argue with you but after drinking a lead flagon of wine I can see the merits of your argument. Praise the gods. If it wasn’t good for us why would they put it here for us to use it? If the gods want to fuck with us they’d do something much more direct like turn into a goose and bang our wife.
And to be clear, banging my wife isn’t a total deal breaker
One guy actually observed the slaves mining asbestos dying of respiratory problems more frequently than other slaves back in like year 100 or whatever
Just one more tally on the slate. Gotta hit my marble block quota this anum or I’m going to be mining it myself
Important distinction: annum, unless your quotas are measured in assholes (which, depending on the line of work…).
If the fireproofing spray is asbestos that’ll be a high risk removal so expect to see orange plastic on your future
They’re breathing the cleanest air of anyone in the 1960s. The asbestos is like a force field protecting them from plutonium, lead, and cigarette smoke.
EDIT: oh shit we’re in the same thread where you were talking about this so you probably saw it. ignore me
My wife: what are you typing so fast on your phone
Me: someone mentioned Asbestos on the internet
Oh. The blue asbestos is the worst.
The left doesn’t want us to have this
🎶If I work all day on the Blue Sky Mine🎵
🎵(There’ll be food on the table tonight)🎶
You can’t even have two doors anymore because of woke.
See I don’t know. Apparently the patriots are still in control and you can spontaneously decide to destroy a wall in an office without any kind of oversight. The woke mafia is persecuting asbestos traditionalists but I think I can still dig into a clean wall if I get my own office.
Look, all I know about asbestos is that Dick Cheney did 9/11 so he didn’t have to pay for abatement.
Where the fuck do you work that employees can just start demo’ing the office?
Critical support
One of the last places you’d expect for that to be the case. I’m trying to start a pollinator garden and it looks like I have to go through multiple departments and potentially different committees just to put a sign in a garden bed which saves us money.
oh so all of the sudden it isn’t cool to tunnel?
It’s only a tunnel when it’s underground. This is a sparkling passage.
Lmfao why, just why. I can’t imagine just being like ME WANTT DOOR and tunneling through a wall of a building i don’t own. And he tunneled into the supply closet?? did he not… know what was on the other side of the wall???
I think his new role involved overseeing the supply room but I don’t know who mole man is/was, just some admin. The walk between the two normally takes 20 seconds.
Ironic, appointed to oversee the protective equipment closet when in fact the closet needed to be protected from him. Truly poetic
It’s crazy to me that there are still a ton of buildings with asbestos in them. Can we please have a functional society with a government program to tear down and replace asbestos filled buildings
That doesn’t sound like an optimal use of labor even if we had a functioning society. Leaving sitting asbestos lie is pretty stable and doesn’t sound like a high priority.
The problem is with known and unknown unknowns. It’s stable until a mole man burrows through the wall or a car hits it or a fire breaks out in the old structure. You can’t renovate it or service the things inside the walls. A tornado or heavy wind storm, both possible here, would cause similar damage. Wildfires have destroyed an entire town in the same area without any warning, and one happening here would leave a big pile of asbestos in the open air. To me it’s like having radioactive waste or chemicals that can’t be mixed in that room. Perfectly okay until suddenly it isn’t.
I work maintenance for a school board with over 80 schools. Every single one has Asbestos containing materials.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a massive investment to remove it all. At the same time though most if not all of the water pipes in the country were once made out of lead. If we don’t remove those pipes then any town can become Flint, Michigan if the water chemistry changes. There’s a public health imperative to clean it up before a freak accident happens in one of 80 schools in your district alone.
It’s a slow process for sure and if someone has to nail a picture to a wall they have to call my boss with 2 days turnaround time for a test
Yeah, it sounds weird, but critical support to asbestos in highly specific occasions.
At least a mandatory marking of every wall containing asbestos so mole man can be contained
Turns out Mohammad Atta was just trying to get rid of asbestos in New York
9/11 was just a public demonstration on the failure of asbestos as a fireproofing material that got out of hand.
Popping a VHS into the slot labeled “The Brave Little Tester” and its footage of the second tower getting hit. Goddamnit I thought this was the cartoon about talking appliances and now the entire classroom is crying.
The only materials you can safely assume are 100% NOT ASBESTOS are wood glass and metal.
It is fireproof, waterproof(amphibole asbestos is anyway), resists electricity, is the best insulation material on earth still used in space applications, it’s lightweight, it comes from the earth as Asbestos it needs no processing other than like grinding it up, it’s indestructible, easy to work with, as it “deteriorates” it keeps its fibrous shape just gets longer so it lasts forever.
If it didn’t kill you slowly it would be the best material known to humankind.
The cost to safely abate the least dangerous forms of asbestos are massive. Not even just in money. The amount of poly plastic needed, the wasted coveralls, the duct tape. It’s an environmental nightmare to make a high risk enclosure but even in a moderate risk you’re using like 3 coveralls per person per shift
Wait until you learn about lead paint, and lead plumbing, and leaded AV gas, and leaded soil, and leaded wire coatings.
Love living near a small airport where petit bourgeois fucks can spray aerosolized lead on me from their planes. Hope they don’t Harrison Ford into my (landlord’s) house.
Mole Man follows his instincts. Mole Man has lymphoma.
Worked with a guy who didn’t want to wear PPE because it was uncomfortable. We were demolishing a building and he was sawing thru old insulation tubes. We had to wear PPE because the tubes were full of asbestos. He didn’t wear PPE, he understood what asbestos was. I still can’t figure it out.
i’m pretty impulsive sometimes, but arbitrarily making a hole in the wall is beyond my powers
On three separate occasions this past school year, some contractors were removing asbestos from one of the labs in the basement. The only notice was a paper sign posted very inconspicuously on two of the building doors, the day removal started.
They did some sealing on the hallway that room was in, but otherwise no precautions were taken. My office was two hallways down, and all classes in the building ran like normal. Very safe, very good
I see we have a resident asbestos expert. A few years ago I was responsible for removing some equipment that was mounted to the drop ceiling before they demolished a room to renovate. A few days after my part while they were mid demo the asbestos remediation signs showed up and big tubes were strung through the hallways. I didn’t work in that building so I’m not worried about what was disturbed by demo and spread around but have to wonder how much exposure I got being in the plenum space for about fifteen minutes.
That’s a great photo. I also like how the yellow tape is made by Body Guard
That rules
