Asbestos in electronic components

You best tell them this subject needs some research in the order of a few months.

Rene

On 07/03/2006 the venerable Deefoo etched in runes:

. .

. .

It sounds to me as though your equipment has already been in contact with a management turkey! >:-}

Yep, before it goes to the dump, I'll pay the scrap value.

Rene

asbestos.

exist

whatever),

People have been afraid of asbestos for a long time, and with good reason. However the idea that there might be asbestos in electronic components is bizarre, if not just patently absurd. Plenty of other lethal crap, as someone pointed out, but not that one.

Ken

How confident are you that fiberglass is safe?

I don't particularly care to be around when it is cut, drilled, or especially routed.

No one gives a toss how SAFE it is, just whether it's legal and not on the list of banned substances. It's not about safety, it's about protection of someone's arse.

Paul Burke

reason.

is

Why is that relevant?

Ken

Oh, bullshit and bullshit. Unless you're so young that to you, "10 years or so" is a "long time". As recently as 30 or 40 years ago, whole theater curtains were made of asbestos, and they were proud of it - if there's a fire in a crowded theater, you don't want the curtain contributing!

The asbestos hysteria has the same roots as all the other boogeymen, like global warming, the ozone hole, smoking, terrorism, drugs; anything they can scare children with.

But it has nothing whatsoever to do with common sense.

Cheers! Rich

There is rather more too it than that. The theatre curtains, in common with the oil lamp wicks used by the vestal virgins, used the long strand asbestos form (commonly crocidolite). This is the least problematical form, and indeed in some circumstances (wet in particular), may be considered fairly 'safe', if handled with care (I'd personally still want to use a mask, but the risk is several orders of magnitude 'below' that from the other forms). Unfortunately, in insulation applications, the relative cost of this, led to much of the short strand forms being used. The worst of these, was amosite, and this stuff really is foul....

Best Wishes

They used to use asbestos-insulated wire for high temperatures (eg. for thermocouple extension wire in industrial furnaces). I think it's mostly ceramic fiber these days, but I bet there are a bunch of dusty rolls of it around.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Also on the theater curtains, likely not the curtain you see, but rather a special fire curtain that stays rolled up out of sight, until someone pulls it's deployment rope in an emergency. The idea is to isolate the audience area from whatever light/special effect/etc just blew up on stage.

The implication is that the asbestos fabric curtain isn't getting waved about opening and closing on a daily basis - it's rolled up fairly safe and immobile until needed... or accidentally deployed.

I've been told that there are asbestos beaches on Corsica. People get killed on these beaches, not because of the asbestos fibers, but because they get slammed on it when the sea is high...

--DF

Bullshit and bullshit. Okay, so I'm under 90 and 10 years isn't too long, but when I entered the workforce about 30 years ago buildings were being stripped of asbestos *very carefully* back in Australia. The effects of asbestos were well known by then - the result of studies of the effects of the stuff on miners and people living around them. (This in Australia - I can remember even earlier than entering the workforce seeing a BBC documentary on the effects of asbestos on people in a manufacturing plant in England, and how it was affecting people in the surrounding towns.

"Common sense" isn't.

Ken

But it IS/WAS hysteria. INSTALLED asbestos poses virtually NO threat. However it is potentially dangerous to mine workers and installers.

...Jim Thompson

It's hysteria if taken to extremes (and maybe it is in places), however down this way (Australia/New Zealand) the reg's say leave it if it's there, remove/replace it properly/safely if it's damaged or has to be worked on. The stuff is dangerous if buggered about with, which is unfortunately what people love to do with things, so it makes sense to get rid of it in an orderly fashion.

OP's post indicates a nonsense reaction by clerical arse-coverers and he's lumped with the impossible task of saying something is 100% safe. Not my pick of jobs. :(

Ken

Yep, if you just leave it there, it is great, environmentally friendly, and a good fireproof insulator. From what I understand, the really carcinogenic stuff was only from a few places in Africa, but the stuff normally used is safe. However, when it came to legislating about it, it was too difficult for the congress critters and envirowhackos to understand that there were DIFFERENT KINDS of asbestos, so they just banned all of it...

Charlie

Arizona is full of "flocked" ceilings (asbestos mixed with plaster) with excellent thermal and acoustic insulating properties. It is easily 'neutered" by spray-painting it, but you lose some of the acoustic noise reduction in the process.

...Jim Thompson

I disagree. Coincidentally I just found this by accident yesterday, its a good read.

Talks about the many poisons of the modern age and the many decades it usually took to realize the damage and ban their use.

Talks about azbestos, PCB, DES, hormones, ozone hole and other topics. Contains a nice historic overview, I just skimmed through it for an hour or so. Plenty of references, too.

Probably due to the appalling working conditions in South African mines and mining towns.

"The dust was everywhere. It lay up to an inch thick. There were no warnings, nothing. Children played in it. I lived half a kilometre from the factory but in order to drink I had to scrape a layer of asbestos off the top of my water jar."

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany