Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gtvwill 825 days ago
You ah wanna go roll that dice for that 5 percent exposure risk? Or are you just willing to pay me to roll that dice? Because if it's the latter we'll guess what I value my life fairly highly so you can pay up the high rates. I find most of the folks whinging about the costs are rarely involved in doing the work or taking the risk.
1 comments

Yeah, I will roll those dice. I am steeped in the literature of asbestos demolition, exposure, health hazards etc.

The current policy around ACM and its handling makes you _LESS_ safe because everyone looks the other way. It could be easily, cheaply disposed of by relaxing a number of protocols on how it’s handled during demolition.

But because everyone has to follow the crazy moonsuit protocols, which improves the safety of the general public by absolutely zero, contractors just go find unknowing immigrant labor to blitz in and tear shit up.

“The current policy around ACM and its handling makes you _LESS_ safe because everyone looks the other way.” is your own personal view, based on a hypothetical. You can be as steeped in the literature as you want. If you’re unable to separate the “I think”s from the “I know”s then you’re untrustworthy, no matter how knowledgeable you are.
My opinion is largely in agreement with many in the policy community.

You are mistaking the opinions of a government regulatory body with that of expertise.

The literature on risk is very clear. Occupational level exposure is the critical hazard. Transient exposure is meaningless.

And of course you are missing my central argument. People are at more risk today because existing policy makes asbestos a taboo. Everyone is afraid of it and no one wants to talk about it on a construction site because it screws everything up. And so lots of construction workers, mostly immigrant labor etc pay the price so that some soccer mom can feel certain her kids didn’t get exposed to 0.1fcc hours of asbestos.

That's your opinion and definitely not fact. I talk about asbestos on site. Hell I've even called work cover and reported the company I worked for, for improper handling. Some of us take safety seriously. Even if we come across as cowboys I'm not gonna risk your future just because some office monkey chose the wrong product. They want the risk, pay the hell up.