I am brilliant. I'm probably the smartest person on the globe. I've only made about four mistakes in my life, unfortunately they all culminated this morning into near disaster.
Mistake #1 - This summer at field camp in Colorado I noticed as I was walking across a hydrothermal deposit a piece of asbestos lying on the ground. And this wasn't your run-of-the-mill asbestos either, it's a mineral called tremolite, which of course is highly carcinogenic. Most industrial asbestos is made from a more common mineral called chrisotile, which is not carcinogenic. Naturally I took the asbestos back to camp.
Mistake #2 - I took the asbestos back to Minnesota, wrapped in a shirt.
Mistake #3 - I threw the asbestos-in-a-shirt into the same corner of my room as my dirty cloths, and left it there. When I was unpacking my bag, I was scared to unwrap the shirt, since the asbestos was probably mashed around alot on the trip and would probably send up all sorts of particles into the air. Hence my solution.
Fast forward ahead 3 months
Mistake #4 - I put the asbestos in the washing machine. I was doing wash this morning and I totally forgot about the asbestos shirt and threw it in the washing machine. As I was unloading everything, I found the piece of asbestos at the bottom of the wash.
Ok, so I'm pretty sure alot of the asbesots got on my cloths. The real problem is the nature of this asbestos. It's not that hard to get this stuff to circulate in the air. Tremolite is made of micron-ish diameter fibers packed together which can splay off very easily. These little fellows can pierce your cells and cause all sorts of problems. Why do I think they got on my cloths? Well the cement keeping the tremolite rods in place is probably carbonate, which is prone to dissolution in water. And I can't imagine the spinning and whirlling the washer did helped much either. Plus, the shirt origainlly holding the asbesots contributed its load of asbestos to the wash. I know I'm probably overreacting, but I'm still a little nervous to wear those cloths again.
On a completley different topic, if anyone is looking for a really sweet paper weight I have one I'm trying to get rid of. It's very clean...
Ed
Mistake #1 - This summer at field camp in Colorado I noticed as I was walking across a hydrothermal deposit a piece of asbestos lying on the ground. And this wasn't your run-of-the-mill asbestos either, it's a mineral called tremolite, which of course is highly carcinogenic. Most industrial asbestos is made from a more common mineral called chrisotile, which is not carcinogenic. Naturally I took the asbestos back to camp.
Mistake #2 - I took the asbestos back to Minnesota, wrapped in a shirt.
Mistake #3 - I threw the asbestos-in-a-shirt into the same corner of my room as my dirty cloths, and left it there. When I was unpacking my bag, I was scared to unwrap the shirt, since the asbestos was probably mashed around alot on the trip and would probably send up all sorts of particles into the air. Hence my solution.
Fast forward ahead 3 months
Mistake #4 - I put the asbestos in the washing machine. I was doing wash this morning and I totally forgot about the asbestos shirt and threw it in the washing machine. As I was unloading everything, I found the piece of asbestos at the bottom of the wash.
Ok, so I'm pretty sure alot of the asbesots got on my cloths. The real problem is the nature of this asbestos. It's not that hard to get this stuff to circulate in the air. Tremolite is made of micron-ish diameter fibers packed together which can splay off very easily. These little fellows can pierce your cells and cause all sorts of problems. Why do I think they got on my cloths? Well the cement keeping the tremolite rods in place is probably carbonate, which is prone to dissolution in water. And I can't imagine the spinning and whirlling the washer did helped much either. Plus, the shirt origainlly holding the asbesots contributed its load of asbestos to the wash. I know I'm probably overreacting, but I'm still a little nervous to wear those cloths again.
On a completley different topic, if anyone is looking for a really sweet paper weight I have one I'm trying to get rid of. It's very clean...
Ed
posted by where's my ed? at 5:20 PM
6 Comments:
What do you say to the potential of cancer?
i put a sock on my hand when i handled the the cloths the second time...
i don't think it got in the air so i'm not too worried
that's not the only thing you've been puttin' a sock on.
ed,
I really like your stories. please tell the random fellatio story.
yikes. maybe in person.
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