I was researching the health risks of this substance, as my garage roof has a covering of deteriorating corrugated asbestos cement panels when I came across an article from the British Drinking Water Inspectorate.
It surprised me to read that asbestos fibres are ubiquitous in the environment. They are in most tap waters, in soil and dirt, and in outdoor and indoor air. Apparently, there can be up to a million or more fibres per litre of tap water, with even higher levels in some parts of the world.
With everybody bathing, showering, washing clothes etc. in this water, is it to be assumed that everyone’s skin, hands, clothing and everything they touch (basically everything that we touch throughout our daily lives) is contaminated with these fibres to a small degree? If so, it seems a bit pointless worrying about the objects in my garage being contaminated with fibres from the failing roof.
What you want to be worried about is getting asbestos in your lungs. That means that disposing of fibers requires careful work and breathing protection. Embedded asbestos in cement is not a danger. However, deteriorating or abraded cement can release the fibers. This page discusses many dangers, although I can’t tell how alarmist it is.
I don’t know how bad your roof is. You should talk to an expert.
But you shouldn’t worry much about ubiquitous asbestos. 1 million fibers per litre sounds like a lot until you realize that a liter has 3,000,000,000,000,000,000 million molecules. A small amount of everything is everywhere. Asbestos, yes, but also gold. You’re as likely to become rich by ubiquitous gold as sick from ubiquitous asbestos.
I think this line of thinking is missing the crucial concepts of amount of exposure and type of exposure. You don’t say “Sunlight is everywhere, therefore I’ll lie naked on the beach all day without sunscreen.” You also don’t say “I can swim in the ocean without dying, so salt water should be safe to drink.”
Sometimes maybe the confusion about it is because people assume because it’s so dangerous, that it must’ve been one of those things that was “man-made” for certain purposes and later found to be not such a great idea. I didn’t actually know until relatively recently (~10 years ago when I was looking to buy a house and an inspection of a prospective house found “vermiculite” insulation which may contain asbestos) that it’s just a regular mineral mined out of the ground and thus, like other minerals, actually occurs in some concentration just about everywhere. I guess I just never thought about it; just imagined it as some kind of fiberglass-type concoction.
I probably should have quoted the OP, because I was definitely replying directly to his remarks rather than yours. No disagreement here with what you said.
There are six types of asbestos, and the danger varies depending on type. I believe crocidolite (“blue asbestos”) is considered the worst, while a large majority of the asbestos used for insulation is chrysotile (“white asbestos”), which is potentially less harmful, but certainly not harmless. When they have to do construction, it is all treated the same.
Furthermore, the word “abestos” is not a magic word. There are other similarly dangerous mineral forms (which I can’t be bothered to look up the names of) which we don’t hear about as often because (1) They were not as widely used, and (2) they aren’t mineralogically “asbestons”.
Thanks very much for the replies. Perhaps I should have said leaking garage roof. There are several holes that allow rainwater to run onto my car and onto the floor. The asbestos panels look sound from underneath and aren’t actually crumbling.
I suppose I’ve developed a bit of an anxiety issue over this. I imagine that there are asbestos fibres on the floor of the garage and on my hands from touching the car, and that I will transfer them to the house if I don’t wash my hands and wipe my feet thoroughly. Rationally, I know this is illogical because the water I use to wash my hands probably contains some degree of asbestos fibres. I still wash my hands and wipe my feet though.
In any case, asbestos fibres are ubiquitous, as I read. They are already in the house and everywhere else for that matter.