Is asbestos dangerous?
C’mon. Asbestos Isn’t THAT Dangerous. Is It?
You Bet Your LIFE It Is
It turns out exposure to asbestos is a special, UGLY kind of dangerous.
Well, only if you value your health. Or your health care budget. Or your livelihood, your vitality, or your ability to do things like climb stairs or play with the kids or do household chores.
Or your life!
Now, I’m not saying asbestos can KILL you, but… oh, wait. Yes I am saying that. Asbestos can definitely kill you.
And here’s how!
Asbestos, when disturbed, breaks into tiny microscopic fibers which are really just invisible floating pieces of rock. Yes, rock. But don’t think of these fibers as friendly, round little pebble-type rocks. Think of them more like deadly, sharp tiny dagger-like shards of shrapnel. (Try to say that ten times real fast.)
Impossible to see, floating around there in the air. But VERY easy to inhale.
Ugly!
The Ugly Stuff Asbestos Can Do To Your Body
It’s probably not hard to imagine what inhaling deadly sharp tiny dagger-like shards of shrapnel can do to your body. It ain’t good. It’s downright ugly!
In fact, here are some of the ugly things asbestos exposure can add to your life:
- Mesothelioma. This mean-spirited disease is a cancer of the lining of your lungs and other vital organs. It’s characterized by fluid build-up around the lungs, and you start getting ugly symptoms ranging from difficulty breathing to constipation. The symptoms can be treated in many cases, but mesothelioma can’t be cured or reversed. It can take years after exposure for the symptoms to show up. And if you smoke (which irritates your lung passages and makes it harder for your lungs to expel the little rock-daggers), your risk of contracting mesothelioma goes up.
- Asbestosis. This is a condition that attacks the lungs themselves, and causes some symptoms similar to the ugly things mesothelioma brings you. It also takes years (sometimes decades) after regular exposure for the symptoms of asbestosis to appear. Again, smoking increases your risk of asbestosis, for the same reasons as above. And people who contract asbestosis are much more likely to get:
- Lung cancer. You know just what this is… no need to describe it in detail. You can get it from a variety of sources… and asbestos exposure is definitely one of them.
Okay, That Does Sound Kinda Bad. Am I Doomed?
It IS bad. But you’re not doomed.
It’s true that asbestos is likely everywhere around you, as part of the manufacturing process that brought you everything from the materials they used to build your home or workplace to that old electric blanket in the closet downstairs.
It’s even in the soil out there in the back yard, probably!
But you don’t have to worry too much about it under most circumstances.
For one thing, the human body is pretty good at getting rid of most bad stuff, including asbestos fibers, and especially if you don’t smoke and you try to stay in decent shape.
Also, it takes a fairly sustained pattern of asbestos inhalation to cause the dreadful things described above. A little bit isn’t likely to hurt you.
Finally, the big thing about manufactured asbestos is that it isn’t dangerous in its undisturbed state. So as long as you aren’t around a building demolition or home improvement project that breaks up the asbestos into those little shrapnel-shards, you’re likely okay.
That said, you should probably get your property checked for asbestos, and have the stuff removed by professionals who can make your air shrapnel-shard free. Asbestos can get disturbed in a number of ways that’re beyond your control (including having pipes burst)… and when it does, your life is likely to become quite disturbed, too. So get in touch with a professional asbestos abatement firm today! It isn’t going too far to say your life might just depend on it.
