I must respectfully disagree with anyone that says danger from Asbestos
is over rated. In Australia we had two of the largest miners/suppliers of
asbestos, James Hardie and CSR and we have seen at close hand the
devastation that mining and exposure to asbestos has caused. The
suffering and agony has been played out in our courts and on TV - enough
to scare anyone who might have or had exposure to asbestos products. In
Australia we now take asbestos exposure very seriously.

The NSW Governor, and ex-Navy Rear Admiral, Sir David Martin, died of
Mesothelioma, contracted by incidental exposure to asbestos lagging on
Navy ships during his service. We watched him on TV, suffering and
struggling to breathe, to perform his public duties, till he took
early retirement and died 4 days later. It was a salutary warning o
what asbestos does to you.

    http://www.warmemorialsnsw.asn.au/martin.cfm

The worrying thing about asbestos related disease is that it can take
exposure to very few fibres to cause it and it can take many years to
surface - and it is absolutely guaranteed fatal.

I suggest you search the Internet to see if it is all bunkum. Here are
a few suggested sites.

    http://old.smh.com.au/news/0105/22/national/national23.html

No-one has a reliable estimate of how many tens of thousands of
asbestos disease cases - cancers, asbestosis and other life-threatening
conditions - have already occurred in Australia.

CSR's blue asbestos mine at Wittenoom in Western Australia alone is
expected to eventually kill 2,000 former workers and their families.

CSR said it had 538 claims pending in Australia and had resolved 1,057
since 1989.

    http://www.mesothelioma.net/Exposes.html

    http://www.mesothel.com/pages/deaths_pag.htm

So, if you come across asbestos products I would think you have a moral
obligation to warn the customer of the potential hazard.

If you value your own wellbeing, I'd suggest you get someone else to
remove the asbestos, it's not really worth the suffering if you are
blase and think it can't get you.

If you decide to get rid of it yourself you should wear a face mask and
disposable overalls and minimise movement of the stuff. I think you
will find specifications for safe removal on the net, particularly on
Australian govt. sites.

Have I given you cause to think? I hope I have shown that asbestos is
not something to take for granted.

Colin MacKinnon