Paul Brownjohn @Paulos_the_fog@qoto.org

@Nigel_Purchase

Only Americans fail to see the absolute imbecility of the USA's attitude to gun ownership.

Everyone else in the world laughs at the 'ammosexuality' of the US male!

@Nigel_Purchase

Only Americans fail to see the absolute imbecility of the USA's attitude to gun ownership.

Everyone else in the world laughs at the 'ammosexuality' of the US male!

@mikejackmin

In 1966, I was an apprentice motor mechanic. There was a guy called 'Snowy' who worked in the service bay, whose job it was to pull off the brake drums and blow out all the dust in them. He also blew any dust from the disk brake assemblies but there weren't that many Fords with disk brakes back then. Of course back then he wasn't provided with a mask or any protective gear!

He was called 'Snowy' beacause he was permanently white with the dust from the brakes of the era. I rememeber meeting him some 15 - 20 years after he had retired and he was still going strong then.

@louischance

Steady old chap - I have only just, finally, closed my account on Twatter or Swastika or Z or whatever it's called now!

@vfrmedia

You'd need to be a really shit doctor to conflate lung damage due to smoking with asbestosis or mesothelioma. In any case the "boomers" were far from being the 1st generation to be exposed to high asbestos content brake dust! Asbestos was the dominant materiel for friction linings/pads from the early 20th century. One would thus anticipate a high level of asbestosis and/or mesothelioma in workers on the deeper lines of the 'tube' in London and other enclosed underground railways as the dust released would be not only stirred up by the movements of the trains but would be contained within the underground tunnels thus concentrating the dust and trapping most of it within the tunnel system.

So far as I am aware there has been no such increase in those illnesses observed amongst such workers.

I would suggest that the answer is that asbestos is not toxic in the chemical sense (like arsenic, lead or cyanide) but does it's damage dues to its physical characteristics (size and shape of particles). I would therefore suggest that it is no more dangerous than any other inert powder if ground finely enough!

@wdlindsy

It's very ironic that Trump's own businesses are/were known for employing huge numbers of undocumented migrants as they can pay them a pittance!

@wdlindsy

It's very ironic that Trump's own businesses are/were known for employing huge numbers of undocumented migrants as they can pay them a pittance!

@vfrmedia

Asbestos is not 'toxic' in the same way as for example: lead, arsenic or cyanides. The silcate family that make up the overwhelming bulk of natural deposits of asbestos are chemically inert and generally completely insoluble in water or other solvents. However, so far as I can establish, it is the physical characteristics of asbestos that make it dangeous; notably the size and shape of the crystals which make it impossible for the human lungs to remove it using the same methods they use to remove the huge quantities of dust that all human beings inhale most days.

The thrust of my questioning is therefore given that asbestos causes its effect on the lungs through its crystalline structure, did the fact that brake dust was invariably ground to a very fine power render it harmless?

Now here's a question for any medical experts out there. From the early 20th century until about the 1990s, almost all brake shoes and brake pads on all vehicles on the road were made using asbestos. Inevitably, as the brake pad or shoe wears, whatever it is made from is released into the atmosphere as dust.
People living in large urban conurbations like say, for example, London, will have been exposed to truly vast quantities of this dust as each time a large vehicle like a London bus moved along the road on a dry day a cloud of invisible dust will have been stirred up into the atmosphere.
So, my question is this:
as asbestos is now considered to be deadly dangerous, how come the healthcare systems throughout the world are not seeing hundreds or even thousands of patients suffering from asbestosis and/or mesothelioma, given the vast amount of asbestos dust that all of us who lived in large towns and cities in that era will have inhaled?

@Thebratdragon @auschwitzmuseum

Well in this case, if it were huge piles of "The Art of the Deal" I'd probably be quite happy about that!

@Gustodon

As people very much more intelligent than I, have very frequently said - there is not one jot of evidence to suggest the existence of any god(s), in the sense of a sort of creator or of any sort of omnipotent being; absolutely none.

My personal conclusion is therefore that all 6000 or so god(s) in which people currently believe or in whom they believed in the past, are man's invention not any sort of overarching superpower!

@MEActNOW

The 9/11 hijackers demonstrated what asymetric action against the USA can look like!

@TimWardCam

Hmmmm - I receive numerous completely unnecessary bits of paper from the DWP (printed on something resembling yellowing blotting paper) regarding the niggardly pittance I receive as a UK retirement pension. I can imagine a "Sir Humphrey Appleby" style civil servant have apoplexy should anyone suggest that such communications be sent out by electronic means rather than wasting their nasty cheap paper not to mention paying postage fees on sending it .

However, on the only ocassion that I really want them to send me something (an annual statement of pension paid) they respond with a 'snot-o-gram' saying broadly how DARE I ask them to do something useful: "Go through your bank statements like everyone else" they replied; oblivious to the fact that some authorities in some foreign countries demand an official statement of pension and will absolutely not accept bank satements as proof of pension paid or pension entitlement.

@gentlegardener

Trump hates California as it is solidly Democrat!

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