A close relative worked for a company that made asbestos cement products in the day.
The factory contained an automated production line, about 100m long. The first step was a room into which the raw asbestos fibre was blown. From there it went into the main machine. The door to the room had a glass window, through which the "snow storm" inside could be seen.
One of the old hands in the factory related a story whereby new people would be locked in the room and their mates would crowd around the window to watch the snowman show.
A lot of the people I knew from that company died from mesothelioma, including the person who told me that story. (My relative was not one of them.)
The upper echelons of the company knew the true risk (as it emerged later) but it was downplayed, within the company. Most of the workers truly believed that the risk wasn't that great.
Have you read the Wizard of Oz books? Radium is presented there as a cross between a magical source of power (more or less correct, in hindsight) and a medical panacea (nope). This also occurs in old Conan the Barbarian stories.
Read old stories, and you can't help bumping into some very different worldviews.
The factory contained an automated production line, about 100m long. The first step was a room into which the raw asbestos fibre was blown. From there it went into the main machine. The door to the room had a glass window, through which the "snow storm" inside could be seen.
One of the old hands in the factory related a story whereby new people would be locked in the room and their mates would crowd around the window to watch the snowman show.
A lot of the people I knew from that company died from mesothelioma, including the person who told me that story. (My relative was not one of them.)
The upper echelons of the company knew the true risk (as it emerged later) but it was downplayed, within the company. Most of the workers truly believed that the risk wasn't that great.