Asbestos

[caryc]

On an episode of Emergency today, Roy and Gage used an asbestos blanket to put between a driver and a tiger in the back seat of a car to get the man out. I didn't know they were still using the stuff then.

One time when a buddy and I went to a welding shop they used an asbestos sheet to protect the paint on his bike while welding something up. That's the only time I've actually seen asbestos physically used. I know it was in a lot of stuff but I'm talking about an actual sheet of the stuff. That thin little sheet sure protected the paint though. This was back around 1966.

Too bad it's a killer, it was pretty neat stuff.

 

[bobski]

i still have asbestos shingles on my 115 year old carriage house. still working. hard as slate. law is i cant remove them without a permit and must pay to have them disposed. and i cant do it. i have to be licensed.

right.

lucky me, i have about 100 off an old house job decades ago to replace broken ones due to hurricanes.

odds are theyll be there until i die...the way they were meant to. (to last a lifetime.)

 

[steve8261948]

Several different type of asbestos all are some form of rock mined in Canada, still and still installed yet today.
I used to work in the asbestos abatement with a union.
bobski, last I knew anyone with asbestos in their home or private bulidings could abate it and dispose of it in the garbage??? I live in Illinois and don't know what other states laws consist of either, just licensed here( or was) and no where else.
Steve

 

[No-1]

last I knew anyone with asbestos in their home or private bulidings could abate it and dispose of it in the garbage???

Same here in Calif where it's the state rock. Work sent me to a asbestos abatement supervisor course - 40 hours of boring regulations. Some states have stricter rules than the feds. In CA min exposure is 1/10 of what the fed level is. We bought our house in the 70s it's got the typical popcorn ceiling - I know that stuff is full of asbestos so I need to get it down before CA changes their laws.

 

[gramps]

Back in the 90's my wife and I mined raw asbestos in Sapphire Valley, NC for a specimen to add to the collection. Wife trained as a geologist.
gramps

 

[Don Lovel]

I am a Federally certified inspector, field lab tech, professional air monitoring and Phase Contrast microscopy air sample analyst and a McCrone Institute trained Polarized Light Microscopist. trained to do all kinds of fun things with asbestos. I have run really large scale asbestos abatement projects all over the country. Worked in al the military installations in the Midwest at one time or another. I have been down in one of the weapon storage areas of Whiteman AFB where they keep things that make your world into glass. I have done abatement project management in the US Disciplinary Barracks and US Fed Pen in Leavenworth. Always hilarious way to spend your day. I have crawled through all kinds of cool architecture performing inspections, found cool treasures inspecting and abating demo structures and had some hilarious adventures working away from home with a wild and crazy bunch of abatement workers.
my favorite thing was that during the time I worked in the PCM lab I had people bring me an amazing plethora of stange items to try and identify for them. Coolest one was a 225+ Boone & Crockett measurement rack that was actually a fake and I identified it's construction of chopped polystyrene, chrysotile asbestos and even chicken feather meal in the mix (the carotene source apparently) It just looked too good to be true and I was right. When my boss saw the invoice of the billing for me doing that analysis (I padded the numbers a bit since the folks buying the inspection definitely had more money than common sense to spend somewhere around $30k for that fake rack and had to write it up suitable for court evidence) He gave me a pay raise, heck of an invoice !


Today's word is ASBESTOS, Let's use it in a sentence,
"As best us I can remember, she is the ugliest woman I ever met"

 

[Cracker-American]

Clerking in a heavy hardware store I sold 3'X3" sheets of asbestos to be used making gaskets. Owning a roofing company I mopped down acres of asbestos felt roofing, and trowled hundreds of feet of asbestos boosted flashing cement. Working as a consultant and project manager I oversaw the removal and abatement of the asbestos in high rise and school buildings all over Florida.

I feel lucky to be able to still breath.

In Florida a homeowner can abated his own asbestos siding as it is considered non-friable. A commercial property owner does not have the same privilege.

 

[Jeepnik]

The asbestos thing broke in '78 or '79. I was working in a shipyard at the time. Went from walking thru a space with a cloud of asbestos dust to moon suits in no time flat.

During the time Emergency was on, I was an Air Force fireman. We were most definitely still using asbestos blankets. We used to sit around the dayroom in the evening and have a good chuckle at the events portrayed on that show.

They did have better equipment than we had when it first came on. But, before I was discharged things were looking up. We went from this

to this.

The equipment mounted in the vehicle improve dramatically as well.

While the USAF had Pararescuemen, they really didn't have fireman/paramedics. The PJ's did mostly search and rescue. Sometimes medics would respond in an ambulance, but they didn't do any "rescue" type work.

Some of us went out and by attending courses at local colleges and hospitals eventually took state certifications. While we had no official standing, most base ER docs worked with us to bet the equipment we needed. There are things we did that even today's paramedics can't do. Think about what an army corpsman or a navy corpsman could do at the time, and folks never seemed to complain that it wasn't a degreed MD that kept them alive. But the military didn't have the same restrictions that the civilian world did.

It was sorta like the wild west of field emergency work.

 

[Jim Puke]

Jeepnik, don't care much for the Dodge in the picture...but I would love to have that Triumph TR6, that is in the background.

 

[steve8261948]

The thing to remember is asbestos has a 30 year latency period. No laughing matter.
Steve

 

[Rick Courtright]

The thing to remember is asbestos has a 30 year latency period. No laughing matter.

Hi,

Or longer?

A former co-worker is now suffering from asbestosis, apparently a pre-cursor to a number of ailments including possibly mesothelioma. At 73, he says it took nearly 50 years to catch up to him after exposure during his 20s in the Navy...

Rick C

 

[Busterswoodshop]

When I was in the Air Force I was a fireman. Our turn out bunkers were made out of asbestos.
When I got my discharge in 1984 they were still using them.

I have worked on many jobs the were abated for asbestos.
To dispose of it all we had to do was put it in garbage bags and wet it down with water. Then haul it to the local landfill.


That old Dodge in the picture above looks like the same one we had for a rescue truck.
When I first went in the fire trucks were O11A's and O11B's. Then they went to the P4's and P2's.

 

[caryc]

One of the guys I worked with had a father in law that died from mesothelioma. I don't know all the details but the wife was involve is some kind of law suit and did receive several million in a settlement.

When she got the settlement she immediately sent her daughter and my friend $180,000 to tide them over for a while.

 

[phonejack]

I'm retired from the Telephone company. We had an "asbestos blanket" that we draped over anything in close quarters to our torches. Unfolded it measures 12" x 40". We also had gloves made out of the same material.

 

[Jeepnik]

Jeepnik, don't care much for the Dodge in the picture...but I would love to have that Triumph TR6, that is in the background.

When those Dodge Power Wagons were new they looked better. If my fading memory serves, they were powered by the 318 cu in engine. Obviously 4 wheel drive, and a PTO winch. They were set up for a crew of three. Two in the back and the third behind the driver.

The rear passenger area held either a K-12 or a Quickie rescue saw. Among the tools available were a porta-power (precursor to the Jaws of Life), well stocked cabinets with other rescue hand tools (axes, saws and the like), a rack in the bed to carry a fair number (eight or ten) spare SCBA cylinders. Oh, and by the way the SCBA cylinders were the old steel ones, not the lightweight fiberglass reinforced aluminum ones for the physically challenged.

We outfitted them with work lighting, gasoline powered generator, gasoline powered air compressor, and later the high expansion foam generator. Depending on the crew, the "first aid" supplies ran from the basic to just about anything we could think of that might come in handy.

 

[Jeepnik]

When I was in the Air Force I was a fireman. Our turn out bunkers were made out of asbestos.
When I got my discharge in 1984 they were still using them.

I have worked on many jobs the were abated for asbestos.
To dispose of it all we had to do was put it in garbage bags and wet it down with water. Then haul it to the local landfill.


That old Dodge in the picture above looks like the same one we had for a rescue truck.
When I first went in the fire trucks were O11A's and O11B's. Then they went to the P4's and P2's.

When I started, on the crash side we had the 0-10, 0-11 A&B, P-2 and the 0-6. Structural side we had 530 A&B's, 750A's. We had a couple of 1500 gal water tankers, and a converted fuel tractor trailer for foaming runways and such. Our utility vehicles were the Scat trucks (which could be either a chevy or ford 1/2 tom pickup).

When I was discharged, the 0-10, 0-11's and 0-6 (though I think Eglin had one of the last operational 0-6's)were just about all gone. Crash side was the P-2, and the P-4 (that rig could scoot with that big ole rear mounted Cat diesel). Rescue was the already mentioned P-10. Structural side the P-8 and P-12 had just about replace the old 530's and 750's. Scat trucks were being replaced with newer pickup that had dry powder setups instead of the old chloro-bromo-methane units.

Speaking of the P-2, I wonder if they ever replaced those big in-line gasoline engines with diesels. They were originally supposed to be diesel, but some sort of contract dispute with the companies employees held back the delivery. Gen. LeMay want those trucks for his bombers and pushed to use the gas engines to speed delivery. Too bad too because those gas engines were a bit on the gutless side when they had to push that 8x8 down the flightline.

All that said, my favorite ride was:

It was a sad day when the last one was removed from service.