Party Vibe

anything built around that time often contains the stuff. Bathrooms and airing cupboards, boiler rooms etc are often full of it in both residential and industrial premises. When I was dealing with old telecom wiring at work there was the “a” marker everywhere in the old plant room and I was very wary about removing an old block terminal in case the Post Office chaps had put the mounting screw through the wooden meter board and into the wall lining (thankfully they had not). A lot of the older BT/Openreach engineers are on medical retirement and some are already dead from exposure to the stuff, as are many other sparkies and maintenance engineers, but it was used everywhere in all kinds of applications even until the 1980s… For instance Screwfix was not then a popular online DIY ordering website but a mixture of asbestos which was made into wall plugs for ragged holes, it was only banned in the 1980s….

Trade names of asbestos containing materials

@The Psyentist 556084 wrote:

Apparently homeless people in Finland use asbestos sheeting as duvets all the time, possibly true.

homeless people across Europe will use anything they can find for shelter. However their overall life expectancy isn’t very long out of their 40s and absestos-related health problems usually only present in the late 50s / early 60s.

it was also widely used as a safety measure, to prevent fire from spreading via heat sources in unwanted areas. I am fairly sure that even in my high school science classes during the 1980s, bunsen burners were still placed on mats of asbestos fibre on a metal frame. Similar asbestos sheeting was used by plumbers when soldering – also high power resistors in electronic components (which could get hot) were insulated with asbestos.

@thelog 556151 wrote:

They still use those heat mats today. I remember asking my chemistry teacher why they were allowed to use them and they said that they are treated in some way. Even if you snapped them in half they would be safe. I guess they wouldn’t allow them in schools if they weren’t safe in today’s health and safe mate culture.

modern ones have changed the material used in modern ones to calcium silicate, though the amount of asbestos in schools has been played down since the 1960s due to the cost of removing it. It is usually the teachers rather than pupils who are at major risk from exposure. Also in the 80s both pupils and teachers regularly smoked cigarettes, and if they continued to do so as they aged that didn’t improve their health either.

TBH I fully expect I have been exposed to a fair bit of the stuff over the years, it is all over North Europe to keep heat in as well due to our cold climate.

But in common with many people my age there are other things in my family medical history as well as lifestyle choices in earlier youth that potentially could could easily finish me off in my late 50s / early 60s if I am not careful (hence why recently I quit smoking and am carefull about diet, being active and very choosy about how I spend what little spare time I get these days, as it is around my current age group your past can catch up with you). A lot of my older friends from the electronics groups seem to have a season ticket to the local NHS facilities for all sorts of things (though not quite life threatening or life limiting).

All that said, abestos is actually relatively safe if left where it is undamaged, it is when its removed or work carried out around it you need the full Ghostbusters type outfits.

A lyric I remember from German New wave tracks in the 80s – “Nur die halbe Welt ist Teflon und Asbest der Rest ist brennbar” (only half the world is teflon and asbestos, the rest is flammable).