Do you know what asbestos is, and what happens when you’re exposed to the substance? Depending on when your home was built, it may use asbestos as insulation or a building material. Unfortunately, asbestos can provide serious risks to your health. Here’s what you need to know about asbestos exposure in Erie, PA. What is asbestos? Asbestos is a flexible mineral fiber that’s resistant to electricity, heat and chemicals. It sounds ideal, but there’s a reason it’s now banned. Asbestos was used for years in manufacturing textiles, automotive parts and construction materials like insulation. For example, your vinyl tiles, siding,... View Article
Exposure to asbestos can result in a health condition known as asbestosis, a lung disease caused by scarring from asbestos fibers that get lodged in the lungs. This scarring makes it more difficult for victims to breathe, and can interfere with oxygen passing through your body into your bloodstream. Other common names include pulmonary fibrosis and interstitial pneumonitis. Today, most asbestosis cases stem from workplace exposure to asbestos in the years before federal laws regulated the use of asbestos (regulations became prominent in the mid-1970s). However, there are still many older buildings that have asbestos in them, and when that... View Article
For years, asbestos was the premier standard in fire safety equipment. Unfortunately, the adverse health effects of this ubiquitous material weren’t correctly understood throughout much of the 20th century, and countless homes and commercial buildings were constructed using the now-banned fire-retardant building material. Today, we know that asbestos is responsible for a number of fatal health conditions, including mesothelioma, a type of rapidly metastasizing lung cancer, and asbestosis, which is the direct result of exposure to the chemicals. If your home was constructed before the 1980s, chances are that it contained some amount of asbestos at some point. Contrary to... View Article
