Many would deny the sky was blue is some book they place all their faith in told them it wasn't.
And ya know? To a point, I respect that.
But I'll trust the evidence of modern day scientists rather than that of a book written 2,000 years ago for religious purposes.
This is usually where I say "But thats just me", but obviously its not.
ah yes--the same science that brought us lead paint, carbon monoxide, asbestos insulation etc etc. Trustworthy charactures for sure. They never would steer us wrong
Scientists and insurers were the ones that alerted us to the dangers of asbestos nearly 100 years ago. Those who stood to make a lot of profit off of the use of asbestos were the ones that prevented measures from being taken then that would have prevented many hundreds of thousands of unneccessary deaths.
Occupational Respiratory Diseases: Asbestos Associated Disease
by Dr. Irving J. Selikoff
Reprinted from:
Maxcy-Rosenau
PUBLIC HEALTH AND PREVENTIVE MEDICINE 11th ed. (John M. Last, Ed.)
_ 1980, Appleton-Century-Crofts
HISTORY
In 1906, H. Montague Murray, a physician at Charing Cross Hospital, London, testified at an inquiry of a British governmental commission into occupational disability compensation that he had seen a man in 1898, very short of breath, who had worked in an asbestos factory. The man's lungs were badly scarred at autopsy. Murray considered that the workroom dust produced the scarring. He also predicted that, since the possibility was known, such cases would be unlikely in the future. With this sanguine projection, the committee did not see the need to provide compensation.
Perhaps because the death was recorded in a governmental commission hearing, it did not arouse medical concern, nor did other scattered references in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and France. It was not until 1924, when Cooke published a clear-cut case of a woman who died with pulmonary fibrosis after working for 20 years in an asbestos textile factory, that attention was attracted to the disease potential ofthe dust. Even then, because tuberculosis might have produced this scarring, there were misgivings. Identification of other cases, in which tuberculosis could not have explained the findings, resulted in the entity being accepted. Cooke named the condition pulmonary asbestosis. in line with the broad category of "pocumokonioses" introduced by Zenker 60 years earlier. There followed a series of clinical, epidemiologic, and industrial hygiene studies in Britain by Merewether, Burton Wood, ElIman, Gloyne, and others.
In the United States in 1918, Holfman of the Prudential Insurance Company referred to the adverse health experience of asbestos workers. (He stated that the company would not issue life policies for asbestos workers). Radiologic changes in the lungs of asbestos workers were also described in 1918. However, additional studies were not undertaken until after the British reports. A series of papers in the first half of the 1930s demonstrated the frequent occurrence of fibrotic lung disease among workers in asbestos textile plants. These clinical reports were followed by two industry-wide studies. In the first, undertaken at the request of the asbestos industry by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Lanza and his colleagues reported in 1935 that two-thirds of the x-ray films of 126 persons selected more or less at random among those having more than 3 years of employment in the industry were not normal. Dreessen et al reported in 1938 on findings among 511 employees in asbestos tex tile plants. Unfortunately, many were relatively newly hired, and the investigation omitted many who had left for disability or for other reasons (Lynch and Aycr of the USPHS have written that prior to the survey ". . . the plants discharged ISO workers suspected of having asbestosis")," and there was limited opportunity to see what happened after the passage of time.
The White Lung Association
