Industrial Asbestos Risks

If you have asbestos in various places at your workplace, such as in flooring, walls, raw materials, and even equipment and products, you might be at health risk and not even know it. The asbestos risks and dangers are real and knowing about them might help you with any problems down the road.

Mesothelioma injury is the main direct result of getting exposed to asbestos. This can easily turn into lung cancer which in most cases is deadly. But what is asbestos in the first place? Asbestos is a toxic substance made of a family of silicate. Previously it was used quite heavily in home flooring, in pipes, door gaskets, soundproofing, guttering, in ceilings and even ironing board covers and portable hair dryers. The problem with asbestos is the fact that it can be easily inhaled, and this is what causes the health risks.

While there are nowadays several global control measures for asbestos release, there are still several workers and employees that are in in constant danger of asbestos exposure. Most of the places with these dangers are mines, construction and demolition sites, shipyards, power plants, steel mills, car mechanic shops and also buildings that were made prior to the 1980s.

When it comes to mines, this compound can be easily found in ore, rocks and various manufactured products. It is very easy to inhale it by various regular mining activities such as blasting, grinding, crushing and even disturbing the area around where these particles are found.

For many years asbestos used to be the material of choice in construction of buildings. It is quite a durable and sturdy material that was used to make buildings up till around 1972-1975. The reason why it is still dangerous even today is particularly due to the release in air when older buildings are torn down, buildings that contained it in the first place. If you remember those prefab homes from several years ago, they also used to contain asbestos. Actually they were called asbestos homes as they contained this mineral that much.

When it comes to the shipping industry, asbestos has been used for many years as it was the material of choice to create many products. This is why even today shipyard workers are considered high level risk individuals due to the heavy work they are doing when they are performing various maintenance and cleaning jobs on older ships that still contain asbestos.

Also power plants are quite risk providers for workers there because asbestos is a good insulator and heat resistant so they have lots of utilities at power plants. Currently still many generators are lined with asbestos, which is quite dangerous.