Soldato
- Joined
- 7 Jul 2009
- Posts
- 16,234
- Location
- Newcastle/Aberdeen
Comes in a blue form too, which is the most dangerous too(IIRC).Correct me if I am wrong, but I think asbestos is either white or brown.
I'm colourblind so don't take much notice of colour, but I think that's right.
Yep, it's wood!
Only testing will tell, colour is irrelevant Asbestos was used in everything and age discolours it and the materials it surounds.
If you don't know it isn't you are legally required to assume it is and act accordingly.
Given it is around steel column it is fireproofing of some sort and if it is over 20 years old theres a good chance it could be.
HNNNNNNNNNNGGGGG.
Then get one fibre in a lung and develop mesothelioma. Super sweet!
Health and Safety Executive asbestos ads were wilfully misleading.
The HSE's radio advertising campaign was designed to promote panic in the pulic, says Christopher Booker.
By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:09PM BST 03 Oct 2009
One of the more disturbing stories that this column has followed over the years is that of the Health and Safety Executive's co-operation with two professional lobbies which stand to make billions of pounds out of promoting a confusion between different forms of asbestos. The HSE used to be quite clear that two forms of asbestos – blue and brown – are genuinely hazardous, but that white asbestos, by far the commonest type, poses "virtually zero" risk to health. It is a quite different mineral, usually encapsulated in cement for roofing, guttering and so forth.
As happened rather earlier in the United Stated (as recounted in Scared to Death, the book I wrote with Richard North on scares), the confusion deliberately promoted between these different substances has given rise here in Britain to two amazingly lucrative lines of business.
One is run by those law firms which, as we see from the way they tout for business with regular advertising campaigns, make fortunes chasing compensation from insurance companies on behalf of people who can claim to have been exposed to any type of asbestos at work. The other is run by those specialist contractors, licensed by the HSE, which are able to grossly overcharge homeowners, businesses, churches and housing associations for the removal of harmless white asbestos cement.
The HSE has been shameless in conniving with both these rackets, not least by putting out advertisements designed to panic the public into falling for the wiles either of the lawyers or of rapacious removal contractors. That tireless whistleblower on asbestos scams, Professor John Bridle (long championed by this column) was so incensed that he complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that five of the HSE's radio commercials were wilfully misleading. Citing only data previously published by the HSE, he showed that the figures it was now quoting for asbestos-related deaths were wildly exaggerated.
The ASA has upheld all five of his complaints and ordered the HSE to amend its figures. Despite this reverse, the HSE will surely continue to sow panic. And Prof Bridle, through his Asbestos Watchdog website, will continue to help members of the public (including many Sunday Telegraph readers) to escape the clutches of the racketeers, often giving free advice while saving them sums totalling millions of pounds a year
no, it's fiberglass foam.
asbestos is hard and comes in sheets/blocks - it doesn't crumble anywhere nearly that easily.