Can you smell asbestos?
Whatever You’re Smelling, It Isn’t Asbestos
… You Can’t See Or Smell It, Which Is What Makes Asbestos Sinister
I’d love to be able to tell you that you could detect an asbestos problem in your home or business the same way you’d be able to tell if you had a gas leak.
The natural gas that comes into your property is mixed with a sulphury-stinky substance you can smell, and that odor would instantly alert you to a dangerous gas leak… which is the precise reason they mix otherwise-odorless gas with that sulphury-smelling stuff in the first place.
Because a gas leak is pretty urgently dangerous. Any time you have a problem where “kaboom” is a possibility, well, that’s a problem you want to deal with right away.
I’d also love to say that, in a perfect world, asbestos-containing products would also be mixed with something stinky, so you could smell it when there’s a problem.
Actually, though, in a perfect world, there just wouldn’t be any asbestos at all.
You Mean, There’s Still Asbestos Out There?
Asbestos is potentially dangerous, just like having your gas lines hooked up by your untrained knucklehead brother-in-law would pose a potential hazard.
Because it’s a potential hazard – and because it’s proven to cause deadly diseases, such as mesothelioma – asbestos was outlawed in the United States for a very brief time, about a generation ago.
And many people think asbestos is still illegal in the U.S.
However, while you can’t manufacture the stuff here, it’s long been “re-legalized” for companies to import, and tons of it are imported into the U.S. every year, as a component in everything from building materials to jewelry (yes, there’s even some asbestos-containing jewelry out there).
You may wonder, “How can they get away with that?”
The full answer is somewhat complicated, and certainly involves industry lobbying groups… but the short answer is that asbestos is not urgently dangerous in its undisturbed state.
As long as the asbestos-containing product is intact, the asbestos in it (which is basically just a solid “rock”) is nothing to worry about.
From Harmless Rock To Microscopic Shards O’ Death
If asbestos is disturbed, by anything from a flood to a house fire, well, that’s when it goes from potentially to urgently dangerous.
When disturbed, asbestos breaks apart into microscopic little shards which do more than just irritate your nasal passages… prolonged or heavy exposure to these invisible little bits of shrapnel can create health problems from which you can’t recover.
And you can’t see, smell, taste, feel, or hear asbestos in the air.
The only way to know there’s an asbestos problem at your property is to have the place properly and professionally tested.
And if the test finds you DO have asbestos floating around you, solving the problem with a professional expert abatement is less expensive than you might think.
It certainly will cost you less, in the grand scheme of things, than NOT getting the problem solved.
Get your property tested today! You can’t control whether a disaster – a basement flood or even a small house fire – will strike your property. So don’t you want to know if there’s asbestos contained in any of the components of the building, before such a disaster comes your way? Testing provides inexpensive peace-of-mind… and that’s probably something that never occurred to your brother-in-law.
