I remember preparing a partition wall prior to tiling it. Where there had previously been a doorway there was a panel I assumed had been faced with hardboard and painted so I began to vigorously sand it down. It seemed very resistant to sanding so I resorted to a scraper and then back to sanding before revealing enough of the surface to realise it was NOT hardboard. Even more scary than my mother’s asbestos oven mitts.
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At the factory my dad worked in during his early days they lagged the pipes with asbestos while he was there. He watched them blowing the asbestos slurry onto the pipes, with a gentle shower of escaped asbestos strands coating everything (including them), with drifts of asbestos building up on their shoes.
Still on the bright side - regular chest x-rays for life.
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Remember these. My high school used these tiles in some rooms.
I’ve seen the same tiles in ambulatory for cancer patients, the building was built in the '60s and part of the room used regular linoleum rolls, but other used vinyl asbestos tiles. They also found that the glue that was used was with some asbestos. As far I know they decided that was more safe and cheap to move the ambulatory and the x-ray machines in another building that was built in '700 and had marble and bricktiles as floors…
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Incidentally, the Asbestos Ranges are about a ten minute ride from my house.
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“Asbestic” sounds like the subdivision next door to Agrestic.
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Mostly it was a cost thing. Apart from the backing of fuseboxes most brick houses only had the stuff in the eaves where other materials were available, but weren’t as durable.
Down here (Australia) there were shortages of building materials after the war, so asbestos cement sheeting was the cheapest and quickest way to get a nuclear family housed.
We now have the highest per capita rate of asbestos related deaths.
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So the sheathing is asbestos set into cement, or cement with that fiber reinforcing and a little exposed to weathering from death to death?
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I never realized the titular mine in this song was an asbestos mine. TIL
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It’s specifically about Wittenoom, the subject of the vid I linked upthread.
These days, Wittenoom is the ghostiest of ghost towns. They’ve even removed it from the maps and taken down the road signs in order to discourage daft tourists from going there.
It isn’t just the mines that are dangerous; the entire town and surrounding area is covered in asbestos dust. Just walking around is enough to stir it up to lethally dangerous levels.
The mine owners’ (CSR) response to the issue could be summarised as (1) bribe politicians and regulators to keep the mine open, despite being fully aware of the danger, and (2) delay the claims for compensation as long as possible so that most of the workers would die before the cases were adjudicated.
Asbestos was a sideline for CSR; their main business was sugar. Much of which was harvested by slaves.
The company is still in existence and highly profitable.
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While we’re discussing Midnight Oil…
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Quite the documentary. And I’m not totally surprised that there is one person living there still, wearing no mask.
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Yes, the fibres help hold the cement together.
It’s pretty safe like that, until someone cuts, drills, sands, or breaks it up.
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