That's the modern risk, right? Taking into account all the things those professions do to mitigate the risk? If you've seen someone remove asbestos in the past 20 years, it's obviously not as if they're just wearing jeans and a t-shirt and hauling armloads of the stuff.

That's the risk deduced from the study of cohorts going back to at least mid-century. But it's specific to mesothelioma, not all cancers resulting from exposure. Mesothelioma seems to have a long lag time between exposure and presentation, suggesting to me that many of the cases being studied would relate back to exposure before modern occupational safety regulations.

Also, there are several kinds of asbestos fibers (broadly serpentine and amphibole), and the most lethal kind seem to be present typically as only a small fraction. Which makes it harder to relate risk (typically in units of f/mL.yr of a specific fiber type) to occupational exposures (often, AFAICT, in units of f/mL.yr of mixed fibers).

I suppose some of the horror stories about insane cancer incidences are from areas with peculiar asbestos deposits. Most of these studies I found were looking at averages of various cohorts (based on occupation, mix of fiber, etc), so wouldn't reflect those peculiar environments. Which I think is fair when comparing to CTE, otherwise you can cherry pick to exaggerate or minimize the relative harm of CTE. Ultimately there's a limit to the comparison.

But be skeptical. I'm gleaning this from some some quick Google searches and a superficial parsing of research papers, trying to create a 10,000' picture from claims and statements that are couched in very specific and narrow terms.

Now we have ceramic wool which doesn't have regulations like asbestos does but is still a known carcinogen and the handling of it is done without any PPE.

Right, but the comparison being made here is between football and asbestos removal, which is a profession people have today.

The subtext was, "even asbestos removal has a lower risk of health problems than football".

But I think that comparison may be confounded by the fact that the modern asbestos removal profession is organized around safety. In other words, that asbestos removal is not a good comparison point for high-risk professions.

I was specifically thinking about historical methods for asbestos installation. I don't know the numbers exactly. I know that modern methods for handling hazmats like asbestos are good enough that it's basically not a risk factor. However, I suspected, based on the lack of "My grandfather got X and died" stories, that even old-timey asbestos handling protocols did not have a particularly huge rate. A visible rate, yes, but not something like coal mining sans PPE, mercury, or tritium, where the occupation effectively guarantees your cause of death. I chose asbestos because it was the most visible example that came to mind of something that had a relatively low rate but that most people would agree needed to be shut down for the health and safety of the workers involved with it.

I'll note that the "lifetime risk" numbers in the first response are almost certainly historical. I'd expect the studies he's looking to have been published around the time modern handling standards were developed, and they may have even contributed to their implementation. The symptoms also take decades to manifest, so I'd expect modern rates to be good indicators of the safety of the industry circa 20-30 years ago and nearly useless for indicating modern standards. 50 years ago probably not, but 20 years is probably still good.