Frustrated Again-Sanitizing

[Defenestrator]

Originally Posted by wetzk

The mains probably were made of transite, cheaper than copper, longer lasting than iron and a lot of legacy water distribution still have transite pipes. Transite is an asbestos-cement mix.
Use was common in western states as the mines were nearby but Florida has a lot of it. Back when I was a cable splicer we used to run into it all the time in Older parts of Sarasota, Bradenton and Anna Marie and the older parts of Palmetto

The pipes coming into your home if they were copper had lead solder. If iron pipe an asbestos gasket or caulk containing asbestos was used.

Most fireproofing was made of it as was the fake snow put on Christmas trees for you who are older than me.

The blankets we used when we were working were asbestos, we preferred them as the fiberglass ones made you itch and your skin sore if you were in contact with them.

They used to encourage us to eat salt tablets while we worked.
Mercurochrome was the most common antiseptic. It was a mercury compound.

And I'm sure you played with mercury as a kid. My worse butt beating was because I rubbed my moms gold ring with it after I heard it turned gold silver colored.

So why is the average lifespan increasing?

Lifespan's increasing thanks to improvements in medicine, safety, and nutrition. For example, we learned that working in areas with a lot of asbestos dust gives you lung cancer, so we don't do that anymore. Minor to moderate lead poisoning doesn't significantly reduce lifespan per se - just damages your nervous system.

Some if the dangers might be overblown in some ways. Asbestos is fine as long as it's contained and doesn't get inhaled as dust. Salt, it turns out, is not as bad as we thought for a while. Mercurochrome is a molecule containing Mercury, but that's not the same thing as elemental mercury or methylmercury. Depending on how it reacts with other compounds and how it's metabolized, it might or might not be perfectly safe.

Lead, though, is still pretty nasty stuff. Nerve damage, mood disorders, and developmental/learning problems.

[War Eagle]

Originally Posted by Defenestrator

... Some if the dangers might be overblown in some ways. Asbestos is fine as long as it's contained and doesn't get inhaled as dust. ...

Growing up in the country, I recall custom-cutting 1/4" thick sheets of asbestos with a little hand-held jigsaw (for heat deflection around engines in farm equipment) and drilling small nail holes in asbestos shingles for house siding (on my grandmother's home, they are still there). I most likely inhaled some of the asbestos dust. A former family doctor once told me I probably still have walled-off pockets of asbestos in my lungs and it's a good thing I never smoked cigarettes that would have irritated and possibly released asbestos particles to do nasty deeds. Who knows. I also had an uncle who worked a lot with asbestos as a Navy Seabee (Construction Battalion) during WWII. He never smoked and never developed any lung problems. Maybe we were both lucky....

[Defenestrator]

Asbestos doesn't lead to lung cancer nearly as reliably as cigarettes. It drastically increases the chances of getting mesothelioma, but the base (that is, without asbestos) occurrences of that are so infrequent that it's still a relatively low percentage. Something like 4% of people with chronic exposure is the best I can find. It requires long-term exposure, so it takes 15-20 years to really show up. It'll still do a fair amount of lung damage over the long term even if no cancer develops, though. With luck and shorter exposure, you just get moderately reduced lung capacity and probably never really notice.