Word: fiber
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even after these ambient fiber levels have been determined, control is prohibitively expensive. Workers must be supplied with respirators, and working areas must be enclosed to prevent the spread of contamination. Powerful ventilation must be constructed. Similar precautions must be taken wherever asbestos products are sanded, drilled, ground, pressed or even handled extensively...
...occurred to several research groups that much of what doctors have in the past decade assumed was general "mutagenic" cancer, cancer of unknown cause, may actually have been asbestos-induced. Recent studies have indicated that smoking may greatly increase the neoplastic effects of asbestos, suggesting that the fibers are absorbing large amounts of benzo(a)pyrene, the primary carcinogenic component of tobacco. Water commissions are beginning to have problems with asbestos contamination of their supplies. The prognosis for future urban communities is disquieting. As long as there are no substitutes to stem the increasing use of asbestos, nothing short...
...industrial fireproofing and insulation are those that make it a deadly irritant once inhaled. A crystalline mineral extracted from a host rock, asbestos is incombustible, and is impervious to bacterial, organic or almost any other type of corrosion or decay. Endowed with the tensile strength of piano wire, the fiber is extremely flexible, spinnable and absorbant. It is so fine--about 2000 times finer than human hair--that once imbedded in the lung tissue, a fiber of asbestos will remain there indefinitely, unless it happened to have settled high enough in the respiratory tract so that it could be removed...
...Irving J. Selikoff of the Mount Sinai School of Environmental Health has suggested that the persistence of the fiber once it comes into contact with lung tissue may result not only in asbestosis but in other sarcomas and cancers besides mesothelioma. Selikoff, the leading authority in this area of asbestos research, subsequently examined mortality figures for 18,000 American and Canadian asbestos workers. He found that the death rate among them from lung cancer was six times that found in the general population. Deaths from gastro-intestinal cancer or cancer of the esophagus were respectively four and six times more...
...process by which airborne fiber levels are measured is, unfortunately, enormously time-consuming. It requires the use of a complex air pumping device which, attached to a worker's belt, draws air through a hose connected to a filter pinned to his lapel. But even if measurement is taken over a two or three-hour period, it may not reflect the full extent of contamination, since the most dense exposure may occur only once a day or less when the substance is poured from shipping sacks into mixing bins, for example, generating huge plumes of dust...