In this whole thread there is a lot of fear - over a tiny piece of asbestos, which is inside an enclosed motor control, that hasn't been opened in how many years and won't be opened again for how long?
Your allusion to cyanide was pure hyperbole, intended to instill fear in others.
Yep. Just looking at asbestos in a photograph behind glass is enough to cause mesothelioma and you will immediately die a horrible death and your loved ones will be cast away like leaves upon a stormy sea.
I see the same kind of fearsome talk on the tractor boards and it makes me wonder how some people can get out from under their bed in the morning...
The thing that strikes me as worthy of worrying about harmful substances is the situational awareness someone brings to the hazard as it is presented. And since
most people suffer survivor bias, and therefore do not worry about such matters until they need to, it seems worth pointing out to the general public that - in certain situations - asbestos is harmful to humans under certain circumstances.
I know a lot of people who used to wash their hands and lunch utensils in
tricloroethylene after their breaks. I know a lot of those people are still alive, but I also know some of those people who died of cancer. Does that mean triclor killed them? Maybe, maybe not. But now that we know the hazards of triclor, it really doesn't make sense to accept the risk does it? It's a great degreaser and general solvent; unfortunately for the manufacturers people are worth having around more than having a good degreaser handy. The same can be said of asbestos.
I know a little about this not because I'm smart, but I'm smart enough to listen and of course, Google. Also, experience. Asbestos must be abated wet, not dry. A few years ago, we had to pave our parking lot that was decades overdue. We are located in Burlington, Vermont. You can imagine the environmental regulations that everyone invokes and makes up when somebody wants to build a tree house in that city. The local fox can come out of its hole and start a petition saying the tree house will block its view of the sunset. I digress. Upon digging up the storm water drains and fixing the grade for drainage, we discovered an 18" asbestos lined stormwater pipe. Why was it lined with asbestos? Nobody knew. We were just left with a problem to deal with. We could have left it there according to asbestos abatement law. But our flooding would continue if we did so. The law also dictates how asbestos is abated; simply stated, it must be done so the asbestos does not become airborne. That requires basically two options, a) wet handling or b) encapsulation. Basically, the way we approach and handle asbestos is dictated by the law. There is no getting around this.
In Braeden's case, I would have left it alone. Of course, if you are worried about it - and it would be unnecessarily worrying
given the situation - then spraying the coating over it works too. It is just an extra measure. I see no harm in that. And Braeden would have been absolutely fine removing the asbestos using a wet removal method. And if he chose to remove it with an orbital sander, he would probably be "fine" for the foreseeable future, but now that we know the risks associated with that method, why risk it for yourself and others around you?
The creeping harm that I do see is when we are made aware of things that are harmful and we willfully ignore them - unknowingly playing to our
cognitive biases and ignoring reality. Especially if the machine is sold to someone who is willfully unaware or reckless when it comes to handling hazardous materials in the future.
