Is Asbestos hormetic?

["Richard L. Hess" <lists@richardhess.com>]

I've been reading a lot of articles on the Web about asbestos as I found that a

town in northern British Columbia, Cassiar, that my wife and I had visited in

1989 had become a ghost town three years later. It was a major asbestos mining

town.



I came across this:

"The history of asbestos as a carcinogen is an interesting saga-- one that is

clearly not complete....



"*****As one example,  McDonald and others (1980) found that for men exposed to

chrysotile dust averaging 20 fibers/cm3, the total mortality was less than

expected in a population of workers not exposed to asbestos. *****



"Exposures to 20 fibers/cm3 are about an order of magnitude greater than those

currently experienced in asbestos mines and mills; thus, chrysotile miners

working a lifetime under the present dust levels should not be expected to

suffer any measurable excess cancer. It turns out that about 95% of the

asbestos in the current US market is chrysotile. Given these data, has our

recent concern about asbestos in schools and homes really been justified?



"At the present time it seems that many of the benefits obtainable from asbestos

may be retained with minimal health risk through utilization of the common

chrysotile form of asbestos, provided that dust emissions are controlled. It

appears that instead of treating all asbestos minerals as equally potent

carcinogens, each mineral should be examined on its own merits with regard to

its usefulness to society and its potential to cause disease."



from: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jrice/geol_311/Asbestos.html



An interesting comment from the http://www.cassiar.ca Web site:



"on Sept. 11, as with so many things, the EPA's world changed. Faced with a

public health scare that could have sent thousands in Manhattan fleeing the

city or jamming hospitals, the EPA decided to cough up the truth about

asbestos. Its officials bent over backward to get out the message that asbestos

was harmful only if breathed at high levels and over sustained periods of time.

When reporters pointed out that some of the tests had exceeded the EPA's safety

levels, the agency hurried to explain that this was a "stringent standard based

on long-term exposure" and repeated that the public was not at any real risk."



http://www.cassiar.ca/cassiar/archives/archive.htm



quoting



 http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/kstrassel/?id=95001337



Just some interesting thoughts for the new year.



Happy New Year,



Richard



--



Richard L. Hess

http://www.richardhess.com/









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