Hi everyone.
Today I was working at a construction site and there was a small shed with asbestos material. Three guys came to remove it and they did in like 30 minutes and quickly hosed the area. Surprisingly 1 of the guys that was doing the removal was not wearing a mask or any protective clothing at all. The other ones just had ordinary masks on.
I had to work near that area and sometimes had to walk past there. My question is if I should worried about it?
Thanks in advance.
Asbestos dust can be harmful. If they kept it wet there will likely be no dust.
To be honest, I think the risk approach is overblown. In the past many, many people had occasional exposure to asbestos fibro, but you would be amazingly unlucky to contract asbestosis from such a fleeting exposures. If you worked with it day in, day out, however…
The risk management approach is to treat all exposures alike, because it is technically possible to inhale a dust fibre that lodges in your lungs on the first exposure. But that is a bit like treating someone who has smoked a pack a day for 40 years and someone smoking their first cigarette as being equally likely to contract lung cancer. It is technically possible to contract lung cancer from a single cigarette, but it would be amazingly unlikely.
+1. Interestingly (or bizarrely) when my dad was a kid, it was normal for children to play in bombed out houses and play with broken up asbestos board. This was in England during the war.
The kids would break the broken board into smaller pieces, or simply throw the broken chunks into fire and watch it spark/crackle for fun. Innocent amusement back in those days, I suppose. But they did it often enough by the sounds of it. I was pretty horrified as he told me this with a little nostalgic smile on his face. They obviously had no idea of the dangers, so the dust/particles would've been easily inhaled.
My dad is now 77. Has had enough chest x-rays for other reasons (also long term smoker). Not a single sign of asbestosis. Crazy.
I concur with mskeggs… I wouldn't be loosing sleep over it if I were you, but I'd still be annoyed at them for not taking the proper precautions. Apparently there is a tonne of asbestos floating around our neighbour hoods, as pretty much every old house has used the stuff.
Rip op