Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Asbestos

Episode Date: September 1, 2018

Asbestos has gotten a lot of bad publicity over the last century, but isn't that just because it's so incredibly dangerous for humans to inhale? Isn't that just another case of bias? As the current American administration seems to be clearing a path for asbestos to return to the spotlight, Justin and Dr. Sydnee looked into this misunderstood extremely hazardous substance. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saw bones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. All right. What's wrong with these about?

It's a book. One, two, one, two, three, four. Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, a metal tour of Miss Guided Medicine. I'm out for the mouth. Wow. Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, a Marital Tour of Miscite and Medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy. Getting top all the days. Yes.

Yeah, we're breaking the chain though. You know me, I'm all, uh, that is sad. So let's take a moment. What a great chain. There's only three. Three chain memorialized. Omnestylence. Yeah. One, two, three. Okay, good. You know, you already did a moment of silence for that. And I was going to do a

moment of silence for the fact that today is the day in history that plenty of the elder perished while trying to rescue people from out of Suviess. But not when people hear this. Oh, that's true. It'll be well after. Well, I never mind. What a, so we're, we're going to remember that you forgot. Remember that I forgot. So we're, we're getting a little timely today. So what, what we talking about? Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about asbestos and the illnesses that can be caused by asbestos, because there's been a lot of, uh, talking to media and we've gotten a lot of emails and, and tweets and questions, uh,

regarding the changes in the way that the EPA is going to regulate as best as moving forward. And it sounded pretty outrageous when I first started reading about it. And usually when I hear that, I think, well, this is probably not as outrageous as it sounds. I'm not understanding something.

And I think it almost is as that radius is it sounds actually. So I thought it would be helpful for us to kind of look into what is bestest is and what kind of health risks there are from it. And the history of that, how did we figure that out? You know, why do you even know Justin what is bestest is? Well, it's a... I didn't, so don't feel bad.

I had no, I mean, I knew. It's like I didn't so don't feel bad if you I had no I mean I knew it's like fireproof dust Yeah, that's fairly close fireproof like fibers. I think yeah, that's pretty good That's it. That's a good. That's a good. I really had no Concept I mean I learned in medical school. Of course what it can do and so I knew to ask the question You know if I saw certain like symptoms or patterns on X-rays or that kind of thing, have you ever worked around as bestest? But if you if you broke it down to like what actually is this mineral, I was very clueless to that, to that end of it. Asbestos is actually the term for six different silicate minerals. They're just naturally occurring. They're just crystals like you can mine them anywhere on earth, actually.

Asbestos occurs naturally all over the planet, every continent has their, you can dig down and find asbestos. So what are we wasting our time podcasting for? Let's go get rich. Let's go get asbestos. Well, what? Let's go get that asbestos. It's waiting out there for us. Do you asbestos, Ratchet, 2018? Let's go get a spestus. Well, what? Let's go get that a spestus. It's waiting out there for us.

Do you get a spestus rush of 2018? Let's go. Do you, you know that like, I'm going to get to that it's, like it does bad stuff. We've got masks from when you had the flu. Well, okay, but no, no. And I mean, what are you going to do with it? Oh, sell it to the highest bidder, I guess.

I don't really, I haven't really thought through it. No, let's not mine as best as this. Let's not even mine as best as this. Let's not do that. Nobody's doing it in the US anyway. Okay. There are other places. There are other pioneers.

No, no, no, we stopped doing that. You're getting ahead of us. So these crystals are made of long thin fibers. And they can break easily into many, many, many little teeny fibers whenever it's agitated. So when you try to break the rock apart, or break the crystal apart, right? So mining it, for instance, chipping away at it

would be a great way to basically turn this into a particular dust that's flying through the air that you're breathing in or building with it cutting it. Yeah, pretty much interacting with it in a destructive way. In any way. Yeah. There are various types and we usually identify them by color. There's blue as best as white as best as sprang green. And it exit, like I said, it exists on every continent and it has been mined since ancient times. We have known about it for a very long time. Way back in 4,000 BCE as best as was used for wicks in candles and lamps as best as fibers. Wait, I thought it was fireproof. Or is it just fire resistant?

It's extremely fire resistant. So it can kind of like, yeah, I'm like- So it's great for a wick. It's great for a wick. Right. They actually used to make burial shrouds out of its bestus. For two reasons. One, they preserve the body pretty well.

They're pretty everything proof. Like, because it's such a thin, crystal, fibrous thing, you can weave it into cloth and things, or like mats and that kind of thing. It's a very flexible, adaptable material. So you would put it over the body of an ancient pharaoh. It used to be part of clay pots. You would make it into clay pots in order to make them more resistant to heat.

So you could heat things in them because of the as best as fibers in them. You could also put them over bodies on funeral pyres. The idea being that because they were so heat resistant, at the end you would have separate ashes of the deceased and then the fire itself so that if you wanted to save the ashes of your deceased loved one, much like we do today. That's separate from everything else. And the asbestos cloth allowed you to do so. Supposedly, Charlemagne had a tablecloth made out of hisbestos.

Oh, great. And you can hear stories of great rulers who would have their cloth made of hisbestos that they would clean by throwing into the fire and then removing it. That sounds okay. Listen. It sounds pretty cool. That sounds awesome. Yeah. It sounds so easy. The name is bestus. I wonder what you know what would be amazing. What? Kids clothes may have a bestus because that they're so messy all the time. Imagine the convenience. I'm gonna look into this. The managing convenience being on a furrow your kids close to a fire. Well there are some obvious problems with that, but I will say that a lot of baby clothes, especially sleepwear, comes with a tag that tells you how flammable it is.

Yeah. So it would solve that problem. At least it solves that problem. It may create others. Yes, as we will get to. The name is best is probably comes from Arle Powell in Moriam, plenty of the elder. Oh my dude. Yes, who he used the term as best in on in his natural history. It actually means unquenchable or inextinguishable, so it's in a reference to the fact that it was very heat resistant, fire resistant. And he talks about how he resistant it is, and also that it was really good to like wrap it around a tree before you cut it down.

Because it was very quiet. It would dampen the sound. It's also very soundproof. It's great for soundproofing. This is a great building material. He also thought it was a vegetable. Ah, plenty. Plenty. He did so good. Except for that one. The one thing you beef. There aren't a lot of documented. Maybe it is a vegetable though. It's hard to say. But like most toxic substances,

somebody usually tries this kind of thing for medicine at some point. There aren't a ton of documented medical uses. Well, I mean, there are no real ones, but usually I list some fake ones. People try to use this for ABC. There was some scattered use of it for skin conditions sometimes, like to put on skin lesions, like it's especially stuff that itches to try to call me itch. That probably doesn't work. But largely as best as from its, you know, discovery was used mainly for things like clothes or paper, jackets, helmets, money, there were some money purses. You could maybe wrap flaming pitch and tar in as best as something catapulted over a wall at your enemy,

you know, those kinds of things. You see this sometimes though, if something's already very useful in other contexts, a lot of times people don't try to find other meta-indicent uses for it. It's like, you see this assumption that like, I think it's part of why like you see feces you so often, it's like everything should be pulling its weight. Like what are you doing? Like, asbestos, you're good, you're very useful. Um, cow turds, like what's going on? What do you got? You must do something. What are you here for? Um, so his best is was known to be useful for a very long time, but the mining of his bestos really picked up in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution.

I mean, that was as the Industrial Revolution occurred, that's where you really see this bestos being used widespread and mind widespread because it was great for building applications. It was very good insulation. It was very heat resistant. Like I said, it was soundproof. You could mix it with a lot of different stuff. You could weave it into fibers. You could mix it into cement. That was done a lot to be used during construction. It was great insulator for steam engines and turbines and boilers and ovens and electrical generators. It was used in shipbuilding. Obviously, it was used in all kinds of building building, you know, because we know that because it is so often now

Removed very delicately from buildings that it has been used in the past. But there were just so many different applications for it. It was a very adaptable material. It was good for the things that we were using it for. You know, I mean it did the stuff that we needed it to do. And the industry grew until over 30,000 tons were being produced annually by 1900. And because of that, if you start to think about asbestos was being used all throughout the world in these different applications, people were being exposed to it that way. But because the demand for it was so high, the first thing that changed was how many people were being exposed to it in the processing.

So you have the people who are mining these bestos who are all obviously being exposed directly to asbestos as they're chipping it out of the earth, right? And then you have all the people who are involved in the processing of his bestos It can actually be like carted kind of like you think of like wool like woven and you know put it on a card. Yeah. And you could employ like you not just usually men were used in the minds, but you couldn't you didn't just need men for this. You could use women and children.

So you start to see women and children exposed to his best is because they're being used in the factories to collect these bestbestos and process it and cart it and we've been into whatever and then sell it. Shipp it out for whatever you're gonna use it for. So a lot of people are now involved in the asbestos industry at this point. A lot of people are being exposed to Raw asbestos constantly.

Now are we seeing a, is it sort of like where you saw the advent of Black lung where it took like a long time before people sort of accepted like, oh, this is having an effect or is it like a one-to-one Like is everybody getting sick? Everybody isn't getting sick, but a lot of people do start getting sick But it it's exactly like you said it takes a while while. It's, I think occupational illnesses like this, comparing it to co-workers, pneumoconiosis, or black long, is a good comparison because it seems like in retrospect, you look back

and obviously inhaling cold dust all day seems like a bad idea. It seems like it should be bad for your lungs and of course it is. Inhaling is best as fibers. When you look at it from the surface, you go, well, obviously that's going to damage your lungs. It makes so much sense, but it took a while. One for everybody to realize that's what was happening.

And two, for industry leaders to acknowledge it and for yes and for governments to regulate that. Because as I've already mentioned, it was a really great product for so many things. If you were making asbestos, if you were selling asbestos, you really didn't want it to be dangerous, especially as dangerous as it ends up being. So in 1858, Henry Ward Johns founded the HW Johns manufacturing company in Lower Manhattan when he was 21. And he, because of him, when we talk about like the US story of subestos, he greatly expanded the uses of his bestos.

That was a lot of the more like in different building applications, a lot of the ways that his bestest started being used in the US after that was because of this industry, because of this guy and his company. He actually merged with the Manville Covering Company to form the largest manufacturer of his bestest in the US. and he would later die of what was diagnosed as dust, this is new monitis at age 61. So he probably was one of, and we'll get into some of the earliest cases of pulmonary asbestosis. So, you know, the destruction of the lungs that occurs because it was best, he's probably one of the earliest cases of that.

And he was one of the founders of one of the largest asbestos companies in US history. As early as 1897, we started to see that maybe this was dangerous. Like, like you said, 1897. So before we reached this big boom, we were already starting to suspect that maybe the mining of his bestus could cause some problems for the people who were mining it. There was an Austrian doctor who was examining one of his patients who worked in the his bestus mines and said, you know what, I really think all these lung problems he's having

might be due to the asbestos dust. And there was an 1898 report that regarded the asbestos manufacturing process in England where factories had been routinely inspected since 1833 and said basically there is widespread lung damage because of this is the asbestos mill because of the dust. We don't know exactly what's happening, but we know or we really feel that all these people working in this asbestos factory have lung damage And this is why okay, so we have some reports that are saying like, you know, we think this is bad Of course, this isn't slowing anything at this point Asbestos was listed as a harmful substance

By Adelaide Anderson, the inspector of factories in the UK in 1902. It was like the first female to ever hold a position like that. I think that's cool. And she was one of the first to like say, you know what? Asbestos is probably dangerous. It didn't, again, didn't change anything yet. And in 1906, we have the first documented death of an asbestos worker from pulmonary failure by Dr. Montague

Murray at London's Charing Cross Hospital. And there was a 33-year-old in the autopsy showed all of these large asbestos fibres in his lungs. And the thought was, you know what, maybe this fibrosis that's occurring, maybe this is related to the asbestos. And this was in the UK and that started to be understood there, but other places in the world, the US, for instance, was not ready to accept that or acknowledge that. So it was so hard to protect workers from stuff like that back then, the gears turned so slowly.

It seemed like. No, it's a proper protection in place. And you're also looking at a time when it took a long time for information to spread. So if we're talking about isolated case reports and you have a lot of people with a lot of money who have invested interest in keeping that quiet, it can be very hard to get that research out. It's very easy for me to go back in history and kind of see the case building. But at that time, these would have been isolated blips all over the world where doctors were for me to go back in history and kind of see the case building. Right.

But at that time, these would have been isolated blips all over the world where doctors were finding this and the pathologists were looking at these fibers and the lungs and saying, I think something's going on, but not everybody was communicating. It's on BuzzFeed. Exactly. Exactly. The high profile- Because they didn't have internet.

What really? Yes. Yes, honey. That's, there you go. It's different. You got it. Then it was. The really high profile case that probably changed a lot of stuff in the UK was Nelly Kershaw.

This was a young woman who started working in his bestest, like manufacturing companies and factories when she was 12. She was employed by Turner Brothers' bestest. And at age 29, she started showing symptoms of pulmonary fibrosis, which is odd in a 29-year-old woman. By 31, she was so debilitated she couldn't work. So she went on leave. She tried to file for workers' comp. And the company basically said, no, this has nothing to do with hisbestos. And we are never going to acknowledge anything otherwise

and you'll never get a penny because as soon as we acknowledge that, we probably owe a lot of people money. Yeah. So, no way. She fought, never got any workers comp, died at age 33 of what we now know is pulmonary asbestosis.

And even after that, the company still said no, they actually employed somebody to do an autopsy and say, oh no, it was just tuberculosis. A second autopsy by a different doctor, Dr. William Edmund Cook, later looked at her lungs again and said, no, she did have tuberculosis and there was scarring, but that had resolved what caused her death were these big pieces of his bestest that I found in her lungs that definitely caused the fibrosis and resulted in her dying. He published this in the British Medical Journal, which is what led to parliamentary action to start to list as best as a dangerous subject or substance and regulate it.

That was really the beginning of the end of his bestus across the Atlantic. Was this case? This was a big, high profile case. In England. In England. In England. Yeah. She has a monument to her memory, to her, as well as every other

worker who probably died of his bestus exposure without it being recognized. It was finally erected in 2006. Oh, that's fun. Yeah. And alongside this, before we get to what happened in the US, alongside this was this new concept, this new disease that was starting to be recognized at this time in history called

mesotheliuma. Now, doctors had been debating for a while whether it was possible for cancer to arise from the mesothelium, which is this lining around our lungs and our abdomen and our heart, it's just a specific kind of cellular lining, right, specific kind of cell. And they had found tumors there rarely before. It was kind of a rare cancer to find, largely on autopsy, but it was always assumed that it had metastasized from somewhere else. This was a cancer that came from somewhere else that just ended up in this lining, but it didn't start there. It was not the primary cancer. It was very rare.

It was very aggressive. There were some case reports, but not enough for anybody to piece together exactly what this was or why it was happening or was it its own entity or just, you know, a progression of another kind of cancer. It was finally proposed in 1935 by London pathologist Steve Gloyne that maybe the asbestos is connected somehow, and this is a distinct entity. This is a cancer unto itself, not just a progression of another cancer, but it really

wasn't accepted until 1960. There were two guys, Wagner and Sleggs, who were observing these South Africans. These are good names, but I don't want to pass that by without saying that Wagner and Sleggs is good. They were observing these South African mine workers and they started to notice how many of them who worked in these, asbestos mines had these plaques, these big cancerous plaques forming on the linings of their lungs. And they started to study them and unfortunately a lot of this was autopsies because people were dying of this.

And they published their findings in the British medical journal in 1960 and said, look, almost all these people got mesothelioma. This is a cancer and it's asbestos. And that's the problem. It's not coincidence. No, it's not coincidence. And this was supported by a researcher in the U.S. Dr. Irving Selikoff in 1964, who started following all of these different union asbestos and rubber company workers in New Jersey, over a thousand workers, and found that the mortality

rate among these employees was 25% higher than you would expect, than statistics would suggest, and that they died largely from asbestosis, asbestosis related lung cancer, other types of lungs, stomach, colon cancer. Basically, asbestos is killing people, it's destroying their lungs and it's definitely causing cancer. This in 1964 is when we figured all of this out, that mesothelioma is its own thing and it'sbest is It seems like there was a time I mean it seems like there was a time period Maybe where we were kind of turning a bit of a blind eye

Into this route. So what you would expect is after I read these sentences for me to say and his best This was banned and we've never used it again short episode, but a great one. Thank you Sydney and thank you here for listening That's gonna do it for us for this week Short episode, but a great one. Thank you, Sydney, and thank you here for listening. That's gonna do it for us for this week. No, wait, so you're probably wondering why I'm still talking about as best as right now, then. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna tell you, but let's head to the Billion Department first.

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right now, get started. You can keep all five items you receive and you'll get 25% off your entire purchase. StitchFix.com slash saw bones. So, Sid, you're about to say that the story of asbestos continued against all odds, inspirationally. That's right. So, all this that's happening across the pond is not stopping anything in the US at this

point in history. I was thinking, I read the lyrics of the girls recently and I thought we were big green and big green are as best as us, just big green and big green. We were a country on the grow and we were using 60% of the world's production of asbestos in 1942. So that was only growing. We used, you know, World War II thousands of tons of asbestos was used for ships to insulate piping and boilers and steam engines and things like

that. And for every a thousand workers in the shipyards, about 14 died of mesothelioma, and who knows how many had asbestos from that. The peak of our use came in 1977. That was when you really, and this is long after, we have all these documented cases and regulation that was happening. We know it's bad. We know it's bad. And you can look all over. I use the UK as an example because there were a lot of high profile cases there.

But there were other countries that were already, like Canada was already figuring this out. Australia was already figuring this out. There were a lot of other places that were already like Canada was already figuring this out in Australia was already figuring this out. There were a lot of other places that were already regulating the use of his bestest a lot more tightly than we were. And we knew we shouldn't. Right. We just looked at it. We're like, you know what?

It's been a stressful week. Let's be bad. Let's just, you just spend this one time. Let's just keep you as a bestest. And this is not, this is not conjecture. I'm not saying this from from from like a political standpoint. We documented there there was a lot of

litigation about this and There are court records that prove The asbestos industry knew what it was doing. They knew people were dying. They knew asbestos was causing asbestosis and lung cancer and mesotheliuma long before It was released and revealed and regulated The way that it was so there there was this was this was a conspiracy and it was covered up and a lot of people were harmed Because of it and there's not this is not me saying that there's documented evidence It was one of the largest class action lawsuits

in American history. And you still see the ads today, right, on TV? Like this is not news. I mean, you still see the music, really? If you know the term Mesotheliuma, it's almost certainly because you're watching Judge Judy. I was remembered the woman says, my husband worked in a factory

where these bestes fell like snow. Yes, I do remember that actually. Yeah, you still want to. I think they also used to use this vests for fake snow in Hollywood. I've heard that, yes. I love it. Anyway, so after the awareness of his vests related long as he started spreading among the public, and especially among unions, a lot of unions started to demand action to protect

their workers and their members because the big companies were not. I mean, they had a lot of money invested in using it. And at that moment, we didn't have other things to use to replace it. Now, of course, now we do, but at that moment, we didn't have better substances than that. The US started to pass legislation to limit the use of his bestas in the 70s, but not banning it. They just started limiting it and regulating how we use it. And again, I just want to reinforce, we knew it was dangerous since the 30s. It was linked to me, Zothelium in the 40s. It was definitely dangerous in the 60s The 70s we start to regulate it. We don't close our last last is bestest mine in the US until 2002

It must be so good Like I'm almost sorry. I missed the heyday. I suppose it's been awesome This was the best what's not what I mean? It's been awesome. Like, that was the best. What's not? What? That means bad. But that's so great, because it took us literally a half century to stop, to quit it, to finally give it up. Although, it can be difficult to quit things, even if you know that they're toxic. That's the human brain is not necessarily wired to avoid things that it knows is dangerous.

And I think, I mean, and I think if you blow that out to a societal level, then it becomes even more challenging. Well, and it took us a long time to stop using it despite the fact that we knew it was definitely linked to lung disease and cancer. And I think with that statement, you could see a very clear parallel that you could draw. Well, with perhaps another giant industry that is still just fine. Yeah, you could also make the argument that like,

I don't know, should we stop using this? I don't know, it's already in everything. When we already used it to build pretty much everything in America. So I don't know that we're gonna do much good. Like you could only use so wet, like we should just keep rolling with it. I don't know. Well, it's really everything already. It's really the, I mean, the agitation of the fibers is the really big risk. So the thought

that it's in this insulation in this building isn't necessarily dangerous, but it can be. I mean, stuff to grades over time stuff gets damaged. So the risk is there, but the high risk is when it is actively being Right, so like removing asbestos from a building is much higher risk than it just being there at that moment, right? Although is it greater in the long run to get it out and dispose of it safely? Yeah, probably. I mean It's just expensive and time consuming There is no safe form of asbestos. I say that because that's being called into question consuming. There is no safe form of asbestos. I say that because that's being called into question now. There is no safe form.

There are ones that are not regulated to the same extent, but they're all recognized as being carcinogenic. Every form of asbestos, period, that's it. And there's no way to make it safe through mixing it with other substances. There was an argument for a while that you could put it in cement.

And that even after, like even when the cement was, chipped away at later, or, like, began to break down or whatever, it would be safe, like, it somehow made the... Stay bonded to it. Yeah, and that's not true. Once you start to break that cement apart, the little fibers that are released are identical to the original fibers that you find in nature. So, that's not safe. There is a big, high- related to hisbestos and tauke you may have heard of, because this just happened on July 12th of this year, that a Missouri jury ordered Johnson and Johnson to pay 4.69 billion to 22 women who alleged that the tauke-based products from the company were infested with asbestos and

gave them a varying cancer. And Tauk, naturally, where you mind Tauk, it can easily be contaminated by asbestos because they're close underground, like seams of one or close to seams of the other. Does that make sense? There was actually, for a while, we were worried that crayons were contaminated with its bestos because crayons can contain tauke. Now, they never proved any danger to children,

but in response to that, US crayon companies all remove the tauke from their crayons to be on the safe sides. At least the crayon industries are responsible. So, we know we've established as best as exposure can cause fibrosis of the lungs, musylyoma, it can cause lung cancer. It's worse with some types of asbestos, certainly than others, but it's all are dangerous. Longer exposures tend to be worse like people who were mining it and working in the factories,

smoking with asbestos exposure is way more dangerous than asbestos exposure alone. But it's all dangerous. It's dangerous. And the treatments at this point are great. Treatment for pulmonary asbestos is mainly supportive. We do things to improve symptoms Supportive care for you can if you have enough lung damage it can result in heart damage over time Whatever the lung damage is from This very similar to you drew the again black lung co-workers pneumoconiosis very very similar to that

We do supportive treatments to try to prolong life, but it's a progressive disease And and there's no cure so so to speak, for it, other than new lungs. Right. That happened. It's a good tongue. New lung transplant. So I didn't know.

Mesotheliomas, a very aggressive cancer, the prognosis is still not great. Treatment over decades has kind of evolved. We tried surgery for a while. We tried radiation for a while. We tried chemo. Now we know that combinations of these things work best for most patients. Our surgeries have advanced a great deal, what we can do with them. And usually it's a tricky cancer because it's a little different in every person. So you have to kind of find

what combo of these treatments works best for each patient. So it's a very challenging disease to treat. 125 million people around the world are still regularly exposed to his bestest in the workplace. So there's still a lot of exposure, and it's still very dangerous. So with all this in mind, did we recently legalize as bestest? That's a question. That's what I've been let to believe by the media. So not I mean we sort of not exactly so

the EPA under President Obama was already involved in this huge overhaul Obama did it. Okay. That makes sense. No all right No, we got him folks. We got him. President Obama tried to save us from this issue. He under his administration, the EPA was involved in this huge overhaul of what's called the Toxic Substances Control Act. So what they were trying to do was streamline the way we regulate toxic substances and chemicals in the workplace in an effort to protect workers better. It provided a framework that would have allowed us to ban.

Because asbestos is not technically banned. It's just like we kind of all stopped. We can't. We can't. Yes, and we can't. There are certain uses that it's banned for. But like asbestos as a product is not, it's not a, it's not a banned substance.

As it is in other countries, there are other places where it is, the US hasn't done that. It's just very rarely used. We use very little. But this would have provided a framework to ban any new uses of asbestos. And that's a way of phasing it out of existence. So basically, we stop using it completely.

And then we start the very long, as you said, arduous process of trying to remove all the oldest bestest, right? Because there's this bestest in so many buildings and things that already exist. So first we stop using it, then we very slowly over the next, I don't know how many years, decades, hundreds, I don't know, remove all the old asbestos. However,

as we are aware, there are new sheriff's in town. And under Trump and especially, Pruitt, the EPA has taken this overhaul in a very different direction. Once you kind of, and I think that makes sense, if you have legislation that you think needs fixed, and so you start opening it up to try to change it, it's like there's a vulnerability right now. And you could have used it to protect workers, or you could start skewing it to allow for businesses to perhaps decrease safety protections in order to make more money. Yeah, right.

And you could probably guess what direction we're going. So they have sought and knew what's called a significant new use rule for his bestos, which means this is a way of evaluating and regulating a toxic substance by the EPA prior to its induction. And this is being billed as, look, we just want to do this so that we can regulate his bestos more closely. But underneath it, they have opened the door to use asbestos in new ways, which wasn't the plan. The plan was to not use any more asbestos. What they're saying is, no, we're going to use asbestos maybe in new ways, and the EPA

will be in charge of regulating that. We have a formula that we'll use to regulate, to figure out is the risk worth it, and if it's sufficiently minimal, then we'll allow for a new use of his bestus. The problem with that is how do they decide if it's risky? How do they decide if this new use is risky or not? Well, they don't need you because there's all this research that says it is. Well, they're not going to use any of that research. Ah, no.

Because a document that was published in May called the problem formulation of the risk evaluation for his bestus outlines how they're going to evaluate the risk of new uses of his bestus. And it specifically prohibits the use of any legacy research, meaning all this giant body of evidence that we have that says as bestus is dangerous in all these different applications, we're not going to use any of that to decide if it's safe or dangerous in this new application. So all the research we have for all these decades, all the people who have become ill or died from exposure to asbestos, none of that is going to be used in this new risk calculation. You're just going to throw it all out and start over. And obviously that leaves the door open to lower that risk and use asbestos in new ways,

which I think could be very dangerous for workers in this country. Why would we do this? I don't know. Well, one, money, I mean, right? Like there's got to be, there's money, there's money somewhere. Somebody, somebody's going to benefit from this,

somebody's going to profit from this. Somebody wants to use this bestos. Somebody wants to buy it, somebody wants to sell it, and somebody wants to put it in something. I don't know what new use, but something. I would say part of it too is the fact that Trump does not necessarily believe that his bestos is dangerous. Oh, yeah. In the art of the comeback, he states, I believe that the movement against his best

of was led by the mob because it was often mob related companies that would do these best of removal. Great pressure was put on politicians and as usual, the politicians were landed. So I guess if you didn't believe as best of was dangerous to begin with, it would be easy to see why you would do this. Yeah, why you be pretty amps about it.. You'd also be wrong though, because whether or not you believe asbestos is dangerous really doesn't matter, it is. You don't have to believe that. It is. It just is. Truth is truth. And it is. The other thing that I think is worth

mentioning is as of 2015, over half of the world's bestest supply was mined in Russia. Whoa, we got him. That's it folks. That should wrap it up. I'm just saying that's a bad, that's just smoking gun right there. Finally got some evidence. Asbestos is dangerous, asbestos, if I mean inhaled, obviously you have to inhale it for it to be dangerous. It's existence on Earth. It's an intrinsically dangerous, but once you inhale it, it can cause lung disease and cancer and death. And we have lots and lots of evidence and lots of lots of doctors and scientists who say that.

Lots of former EPA employees who are outraged and speaking out against these new these new regulations. So there it is. It is kind of as outrageous as it sounds. The previously banned uses of asbestos are not unbanned. That's the only part that isn't true. They're not unburning. Like if you couldn't use asbestos for this particular building thing, you still can't. They're just okay. But maybe there's a new way we can use it. They're not like, they're not going to revert to shared custody, but maybe asbestos can come by on weekends and holidays.

Right? There you go. Something else asbestos, maybe asbestos can like drive you to the part. That's a weird analogy to use. I'll come up with a better one. Next. I mean, there is, this is opening a door to introduce more asbestos into our, I mean, I was going to say into the marketplace into the economy into our lives, into our lungs.

Yeah, there are human bodies. Into our bodies. Which we have one. I know that it's a very useful material, but since it kills us, I would for I am not a builder. I am just a doctor and my advice would be we keep it away from our human bodies. Done. Okay, good deal. Uh, folks, that do for us this week. Thank you so much for listening. I was going to say I hope you've enjoyed yourself. I hope you're sufficient. Who motivated to vote, I guess. I mean, I think Poo it's already out now, right? Hey, we did that. I mean, that's done. But, but this is, I mean, I think this exists around him and beyond him and outside of him. So, um, we would ask that you share the episode, this episode share with some folks.

I, hey, if you want to know what's going on with this bestus and that it is for real, totally bad, listen to this episode, read us on iTunes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Thank you to the taxpayers for you. We use the far-song medicines as the intro and outro in our program and thanks to you We really appreciate it. We I shouldn't mention we are gonna be trying to do Friday releases as much as possible

We know so I've been so has been a little bit inconsistent because we're both parents of the same kids So the trouble seems to have come by simultaneously. We are gonna make an effort though To release on Fridays, so look for a new episode next Friday until that time though. My name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy And as always don't drill a hole in your head Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone, Listener Supported. or comedy and culture, artist owned.

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