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@amberage @luckytran fwiw macho posturing around asbestos goes way back. Going back to when it first started to be regulated I can remember contractors & maintenance guys [it always was] being conspicuously cavalier about the risk. In some cases I'd know these guys to have relatives with emphysema or even asbestosis/silicosis.

@FeralRobots @amberage @luckytran My brother is one of these people. I am renovating an old house, and work was really slow at first because I kept finding new tile under old tile and having to test it before I would continue work. He's in construction, so I was asking him for advice, borrowing tools etc. His reaction to hearing about the tests was to laugh and say he's done jobs where he's been covered in the stuff.

I think people like that think that the long look you give them when they say stuff like that is... respect? But I'm just wondering how long it will be until the lung conditions start kicking in.

@blackstampede @FeralRobots @luckytran in my experience, people who work in a certain field often tend to think they're better, or that their knowledge of something makes them immune and exempt. Maybe there is some "what do those pencil-pushing scientists know, I'm the one who works with this all day" in it.

In my old job, I had coworkers who would weld without goggles and apply extremely damaging glues without respirators. Once, coworkers welded something indoors without masks and then tried to loosen something by spraying WD-40 on the still-glowing-hot area and didn't care about breathing in the burnt WD-40 vapor.

Unfortunately, that sort of "I'm protected by virtue of Doing This A Lot" mindset seems to be very common is what I'm saying.

@amberage @FeralRobots @luckytran oh yeah. I've noticed that too, and it is probably mostly that.

@FeralRobots @amberage @luckytran My son is helping me work on this house, and three times now, I've had to set down my tools, tell him to get out, collect a sample, and then leave until the tests came back. By the third time, I was so sick of it that I almost kept working.

But there's no rule that says the third type of tile has to be negative just because the first two are.