Asbestos:
Asbestos is the name of a mineral group of the type silicate that happens in the nature and which they can be separated in fibers. The fibers are strong, lasting and resistant to the fire. Also they are long and flexible and they can be woven to form fabric.
Due to these qualities, the asbestos in thousands of products of consumption, industrialists, marine, automotive, scientific has been used and of construction. During century twenty, 30 million tons of asbestos in industrial sites, houses, schools, astillerías and commercial buildings in the United States have been used.
Several types of asbestos fibers exist, of which three for commercial aims have been used: (1) crisotile, or white asbestos, comes from Canada mainly and has been used widely in the United States. He is target-grayish in color and serpentine is on the rock. (2) amosite, or brown asbestos, comes from the south of Africa. (3) crocidolite, or blue asbestos, comes from the south of Africa and Australia.
Amocite and crocidolite is amphiboles. This term talks about its geologic formation.
The other asbestos fibers have not been used for the commerce, and these are tremolite, actinolite and antofilite, although they are sometimes in products of the asbestos like polluting agents.
Which are the products that contain the asbestos?
What they have common many of these products is that they have been used to contain the heat (insulating thermal). It is impossible to enumerate all the products that contain, or that have contained at some time, the asbestos. Some of most common are linings of pipes, insulating cement, insulating blocks, asbestos fabric, packings, material of filling, thermal, insulating seals of refractorio and boiler, plates of journeys, cement-asbestos canes, product dewable to protect against the fire, glue for unions, floor tiles of vinil for floors, plates for fallen down, seedbeds, adhesives, coatings, acoustic, insulating texturizadoras for heating, exhaust fans and conditioned air, electrical product for the ceiling, cable and panel with insulator, and devices of brake and clutch of automobile.
Some of these products had much asbestos, whereas others had little.
Why is still a problem the asbestos?
The asbestos still is a problem because it has been used very many in the United States and other parts, because many products that contain asbestos remain in industrial buildings, compeljos, and other atmospheres where the fibers can arrive at the air, and due to the serious danger that human health represents it aspiring the asbestos fibers. Some of these materials exist in residences; there am a picture here preparation by the Agency for the Environmental protection that shows: Which types of construction equipments can contain asbestos? and a graph (85K) that shows: Where could I find asbestos in my house?
More Information
This electronic site contains information on the diseases related in contact with the asbestos and a history of the paper of the Company/signature in the litigations on the asbestos.
In order to obtain more compatible data on the asbestos and subjects, we invited to him to put themselves in contact with us or to consult the following sources of intelligence:
- Paul Brodeur - Bad Riotous Conduct: The Industry of the Judged Asbestos; New York, Pantheon, 1985
- Barry Castleman and Steven R. Berger - the Asbestos: The Medical and Legal Aspects; Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall, 1996, 4rta. edition
- Bill Ravenesi - Breathing Robbed: The Landscape and the Biography of the Asbestos; Boston, Center for the Visual Arts for the Public Interest, 1991
- Robbed breathing (photographic exhibition in the network)