Posted on 08/25/2015 3:20:05 PM PDT by SMGFan
The way that asbestos works to cause cancer and emphesyma is not chemical - except to the extent that it is not broken down. The effect is from its physical properties. Most any sufficiently fine, edged or pointed dust will have the effect if inhaled. Most things that are that small or narrow will corrode and blunt. Some types of silicates and asbestos are both narrow enough to penetrate cells and mess with nuclei, and chemically non-reactive enough to survive long enough to do so.
Early sandblasters would rarely survive a year, until they figured out to wet the air down and wear face masks.
There were also a lot of things in that WTC dust which were never meant to be powdered or burned, or burned together in that kind of heat, and then located where they could be applied to people.
There are.
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