Asbestosis killed over 3,600 people in 2015. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestosis
Asbestos has affected all sorts or people, not just in the Navy. A close relative of mine who was a plumber has been diagnosed with it and it is an awful disease.
This woman is dying from cancer caused by inhaling asbestos dust while washing her husband's work clothes. https://www.thompsonstradeunion.law/news/news-releases/asbes...
My house has never burned down, therefor firemen, smoke alarms, and extinguishers are a scam. Got it.
You conflated the two.
Making harsher laws doesn’t seem to reduce the murder rate. Having a death penalty doesn’t seem to stop the murders.
The only reason asbestos is becoming less and less deadly is that we banned it decades ago.
Even if the husband took off his clothes, separately bagged them and then handed them to his wife to clean, it's hard to see how his exposure is less to the point where only she was diagnosed.
Different people can have dramatically different reactions to identical things. Totally insane, right?
Smoke usually means fire yes, but not always - could be someone heating oil on a pan.
I'm certainly on board with the belief asbestos increases likelihood of cancer. But so does driving through a dirty tunnel in peak hour traffic every day of your life. Quantifying which one were more likely to 'cause' your cancer is a not a straighforward thing.
I’ve heard of a number of these cases of wives of construction workers contracting these asbestos related diseases, it’s a population that had a higher chance of contracting them (just like construction workers themselves exposed to asbestos, of which there were many in this country). As I understand it, none of this is disputed by any of the medical science, epidemiology or experts in those fields…
Since asbestos is still around in various (mostly old) materials, it is possible to have additional exposure unknowingly, but it’s quite rare to contract something like asbestosis or mesothelioma without known exposure.
So over a population you'd generally expect to see the incidence correlate to the level of exposure, but not in a way that precludes unusual shit like this.
As an anecdote, you could even die from asbestos from working at a TV station... The Spanish public TV station used asbestos as insulation in stages and apparently, when there were vibrations from loud sound, applauses, etc., dust particles fell on the workers and public. A famous TV anchor, José María Íñigo, died from that, as well as other workers from the station.
Western European countries (including Spain, I am guessing) and Australia tended to use the most dangerous varieties of asbestos - crocidolite and amosite. By contrast, North America and ex-USSR countries used the less carcinogenic chrysotile.
There were (and are) still many mesothelioma and asbestos deaths in tradesmen building with chrysolite containing products here, as well as people whose only known exposure was renovation of houses containing it.
The general feeling was that every asbestos removal company goes out of business (dissolve, chapter 7) in order to escape the permanent liability of the stuff. At which point it now becomes a SuperFund issue.
I don't know how true that is but I've heard the same exact story from several different contractors. I do know that getting those linoleum/asbestos floor tiles ripped up will cost you a lot to get somebody to do it for you, but there aren't any real safety precautions you need to take since it isn't getting airborne, it's basically just pure profit for the contractor.