Sunday, March 12, 2023

25 Ways in Which We Use Asbestos (and Dangerous Things made of Celluloid!)





I think these are absolutely gorgeous! I've tried cutting them up into little pieces, but it takes forever. So I just enlarged a couple of them. Aside from marvelous life lessons on how to and how NOT to play cricket, we learn that while celluloid is horribly dangerous, asbestos is just fine and is in fact a miracle fibre that can be used to fireproof, insulate, make oven mitts, etc. (until miners began to die in appalling numbers due to asbestos-choked lungs). I myself played with asbestos back in the day, with a type of modelling clay not unlike papier-mache. You took this powdery grey stuff and mixed it with mucilege (what we used to call "school glue"), and behold, a nice mushy modelling material out of which you could make nifty things like ash trays. Speaking of dangerous! I remember grey dust flew up out of the powder and drifted and hung in the air, where we undoubtedly inhaled it without a care. Reminds me of how medical science is now discovering that talcum powder isn't good for you. OH REALLY? For generations, newborn infants inhaled this powdered mineral stuff, and no one even thought about it. Johnson & Johnson is now facing zillion-dollar lawsuits, and their baby powder is now made of cornstarch. But why was it ever made of a toxic mineral in the first place?