When I was a student I spent a summer working at a "waste transfer station" (i.e. the council tip).
At this tip we had an asbestos disposal facility. Basically just an ISO container so someone could come along, say "Here is my asbestos", pay at the desk and bring it up to the container. It was never clearly defined as to who puts the asbestos into the container so I thought "better keep safe" and avoided ever going anywhere near that damn box.
One day the foreman came up to me, said it was only white asbestos concrete so was perfectly safe. Yet strangely, despite being generally hands-on with the job HE refused to ever go in there.
One of my fellow tip-workers who was a bit simple (and amusingly called Simon
) used to just stroll in there, dust and all. He would always come up with skin irritation not long after, looked like he had been rubbing his arms with fibreglass insulation or something.
So I would say "bo**ocks" to anyone who claims it is safe. It isn't, it never was. And it isn't even a recent discovery that asbestos kills, the Romans used to send people to work in the asbestos quarries as a punishment that would ensure a long painful suffering before death.
Asbestos is never safe. Ever. There is always an increased risk over alternative materials. OK, statistically asbestos concrete is probably as dangerous as smoking and people still smoke, but why risk it?