Asbestos in 1930s house

Ben84

jack_pott wrote: »

You should worry, back in the 1950s my parents lived a few hundred yards downwind of here.

Sounds bad! I hope they weren't adversely affected.

Blow dryers are hardly on that scale. I have made some effort to check out the risks though. I mean, what happens happens, nothing is guaranteed to happen or not, but for curiosity I looked a bit. I didn't find anything relating to domestic use of hair dryers, but what about hair dressers? They use hair dryers extensively, and they're commonly used in their workspace by others. A typical working day for a hair dresser is likely to contain a lot of time in the vicinity of one that's in use. So, do hair dressers have higher rates of lung cancer:

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article-pdf/178/9/1355/201658/kwt119.pdf

To broadly paraphrase the points I took from it, the answer appears to be yes, hair dressers have a higher risk - but adjusting for smoking bought it down to no longer statistically significant. Also, No trend in relation to duration of employment was observed - although time of employment (prior to 1954) did show a higher level of lung cancer for both smokers and non-smokers.

Meanwhile, other materials used by hair dressers, like hair dyes are also suspected carcinogens.

So, hair dressers who have a lot more exposure to blow dryers than I ever have (~5 minutes most mornings) seem to be getting away with average lung cancer risks compared to the general population. Although we don't know how many used asbestos containing dryers, they were commonplace so I'm sure many did.

Sure, it's easy to discover you used an asbestos containing hair dryer for years and hit the panic button, but really, the chances of my blow dryer making me sick or worse killing me appears to be insignificant. Of course I wouldn't knowingly own an asbestos hair dryer again or recommend anyone else use one, but I don't live in fear that I did. Personally, I worry about heart disease, it seems to kill all the older people in my family :eek: So, no butter for me!

My personal opinion on the commonplace, but occasional or low level exposure most of us have had? Try to avoid it in the future, but the past stuff, don't stress it, this general panic about asbestos is probably causing a lot more harm and anxiety than the little bits we've all been around at times ever will.

Incidentally, my father worked with asbestos rope and gaskets in a factory years ago. He died of heart disease, but never had lung problems. He was also a smoker. Risk is one thing, individual outcome is another.

PhilE

Doubt it, its usually artex ceilings that would have low content asbestos and even if that were to break off it wont kill you, though, you'd want to out some filler on it ASAP.

The high content asbestos is the biggest concern, and that would usually be found as insulating board around a heat source; say a flue or old boiler.

Easy way to put your mind at rest, get an asbestos company to do a survey for about 40-50 quid. They should also be able to advise you with your renovations with regards to asbestos.

We breath asbestos from car brake pads everyday, along with carbon monoxide. Most of us are ok.

Davesnave

PhilE wrote: »

We breath asbestos from car brake pads everyday....

We don't, but we did. Now only classic cars are likely to have any in their brakes and clutches. However, back in those days there were fewer diesels spewing-out particulates.....

OP you have described this board as very wet, so even if it had contained asbestos there would have been no significant dust floating about when you removed it.

However, as reasoning isn't helping here, why haven't you contacted testing companies to see if dust samples from that room can still be analysed, say from behind the skirtings etc?