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READ MOREAsbestos, America’s Legal Killer: 31,000,000 metric tons of asbestos have been consumed in the United States since 1900.
October 3, 2014
| Mesothelioma
31,000,000 metric tons of asbestos have been consumed in the United States since 1900.
That’s equal to over 6,213,027 elephants.
You know what else that’s equal to: Way too much.
Asbestos is consumed in a number of ways.
The important thing for you to know is two-fold.
One, asbestos use has declined since the 1970s — meaning the asbestos used in homes pre-1980 are much more likely to have asbestos in them than homes built after 1980.
Two, despite the decline in asbestos use, it is still used today. In fact, the rules are that anything can be made with asbestos in it, as long as it only has one percent of asbestos or less.
One percent may not sound like a big number.
But think about this: asbestos hides throughout a vast range of materials used in homes, in automotive parts, in industrial and commercial goods, shipyards, power plants and places where construction takes place (— yeah, that means pretty much everywhere is subject to being contaminated with asbestos).
Let’s think about what one percent means when you are talking about one percent of a serious cancer-causing carcinogen.
One percent of arsenic?
One percent of formaldehyde?
One percent of the anthrax virus?
Yeah, just one percent can hurt you — and the 31,000,000 metric tons of asbestos that have been consumed in the United States since 1900 matter just as much today as they did yesterday.
We mean, let’s think about that other one percent for a second.
Because who knew that those in power might be killing us with a #LegalKiller, with 6,213,027 “elephants” of asbestos.
That’s serious.