Can we all agree asbestos brake dust is harmful? I'm not talking about the newer non asbestos brake dust, just asbestos brake dust.
Are we breathing in tire and brake dust?
- Thread starter -D-
- Start date
Yes.
show me the science and write a short story explaining it to me.
That's not my man date. #nohomo
kwtoxman
Well-known member
Yes, time to move on for me for sure.
I will note that the toxicity of brake dust has nothing to do with the price of tea in china, nor illness rates of pilots or truck drivers. That is a false attribution fallacy. I never said brake dust was acutely toxic, or highly toxic. Neither did I compare it to any other type of thing or toxicity. That is a separate discussion.
The point of the OP imo was that most people haven't realized that the toxicity of living near a road with tire and brake dust (amongst other things) has negative health effects. It becomes significant to sensitive populations (people intuitively can understand) as well as in chronic exposures (less commonly known). I know the research and results and personally made a conscious decision on where I purchased my home when in the GTA. It was 1 km off of a 400 series highway, whereas there were options within 100 metres. Be aware and YMMV.
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-D-
Banned
I pick KWtoxman for my team (first round draft pick).
@PP you can do a simple test...I am sure KW can find a way to finely ground up a few pounds of brake pads. We put you in a small space sealed in with plastic. We will pump in clean air and as well fill the room with small doses of brake dust,,, say a table spoon to start. You stay in the room for an hour. Then we monitor what happens to you over time. Each month we increase the brake dust by another table spoon.
@KW yes, that was the intent of my post, it was just a thought and observation that makes one go hmmm
@PP you can do a simple test...I am sure KW can find a way to finely ground up a few pounds of brake pads. We put you in a small space sealed in with plastic. We will pump in clean air and as well fill the room with small doses of brake dust,,, say a table spoon to start. You stay in the room for an hour. Then we monitor what happens to you over time. Each month we increase the brake dust by another table spoon.
@KW yes, that was the intent of my post, it was just a thought and observation that makes one go hmmm
Lets do the same "experiment" using, say, oven cleaner. Or some good old drain cleaner.
I guarantee that sealing yourself in a plastic room with the fumes from either for an hour every month will cause much more immediate and lasting effects than brake dust, yet in normal day to day use, they're all pretty harmless, right?
So, lets do the same thing with a teaspoon of drain cleaner, and just for ***** and giggles, lets add a teaspoon of completely harmless and inert sodium chloride (yes, table salt). Have someone report how that went for you. (Disclaimer: Don't do this, you'll probably die on your first ever attempt, nevermind month 2...)
And we come full circle to "the dose makes the poison". Your experiment is intentionally flawed in that it unnaturarally increases the dose into stratospherically abnormal levels in an effort to trigger a reaction that would never normally be caused. See where I'm going with this? Many things that are naturally harmless when used in a dillute or diffused way can be suddenly very harmful if you misuse them or expose yourself to unsafe levels.
Dihydrogen monoxide kills thousands every year, maybe our attention should be there instead.
kwtoxman
Well-known member
Wrong. Acute versus chronic toxic effects are often different, even with the same compound. It can easily extend to different toxicological mechanisms and target organs. So acute toxicity often has little to no correlation to chronic (aka long term) toxicity for any compound.
To use your analogy, oven cleaner and drain cleaner has typically short term acute exposure. I would not be as concerned over such exposures, and even less from the long term effects of such exposures. The toxicity testing will have been performed and has to show reasonable safety for use, such as an hour a month. And acute exposures especially of approved chemicals have wide ranges of exposure which are entirely recoverable from with no adverse short term or long term effects.
Yes brake dust exposure at an hour a month exposure would not be expected to be significantly problematic. But that is not the issue with brake dust exposure as noted in this thread. Unlike oven cleaner chemicals, which would have sporadic limited exposure under the intended use, if one lives next to a high traffic corridor people live there end up being consistently and chronically exposed to brake dust and traffic-related PM, for all hours of the day. Chronic long term exposure over years can have effects which generally are not near as plastic and easily recoverable. And chronic effects can tend to often become irreversible. While brake pad wear inhalation exposure has not been significantly tested, one can note from the science that short term acute exposure is of less concern, but decade to multi-decade long term chronic exposure to brake dust has toxicological indicators of significant concern. Note much of the issue here is that many of the things people are exposed to, such as brake pad emissions, have little chronic toxicological/environmental exposure assessment. Industry even now still trumps safety in chemical/environmental/exposure testing.
Toxicological outcomes vary from acute (to subacute to subchronic) to chronic. Acute effects are often short term and especially in approved uses are quickly reversible. Chronic effects by their very nature are often long term and become irreversible. So to compare acute toxicity directly to chronic toxicity is fraught with many issues.
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-D-
Banned
Citation? A non asbestos ones, that is.
I wouldn't disagree, but I was using the situation as an example to demonstrate that it's not a realistic nor scientific way to confirm something is bad for you. What he suggested in his experiment was basically taking a chronic exposure level dosage and making it acute level (based on rapid acute dosing vs the real world low level chronic level dosing) and seeming to suggest that the results from one are equal to the other in the end. Stick your head in the oven for the hour that the oven-cleaner is doing it's thing and chances are you'll suffer some immediate acute health effects (and perhaps some chronic ones as well), but use it as directed in a real-world fashion and you'll suffer neither.
The same can be said for long term minute exposure to brake dust, vs locking yourself in a confined area intentionally designed to increase the levels to a point you'd never typically be exposed to. Ever.
There are lots of typically safe or completely harmless products in which the same chronic vs acute meddling will yield much different results.
kwtoxman
Well-known member
Citation? A non asbestos ones, that is.
LOL. I show an acute study showing effects, so it seems to you that means chronic effects don't exist?
Let's look at supporting evidence. Look at the chronic toxicological exposure assessments of associated contaminants and metals found in current brake pads. As well as the environmental PM associated with high traffic highways, which include brake dust. There are reported and measured health impacts/effects, at exposure levels expected from brake dust. This is not rocket science.
The added effects of mixtures and environmental chemistry only make it even more potentially significant.
Again for the multiple time, the absence of completely direct evidence is not the completely direct evidence of absence.
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Environmental PM from highways is a bit of a catch all. Trying to pick out the portion of the issue caused by brake dust alone vs rubber (another original topic from this thread), vehicle exhaust, oil vapor, etc etc etc ends up leaving the picture quite fuzzy, making pinning anything on the brake dust alone challenging when it is, in the greater scheme of things, just part of the soup. And a tiny portion of that soup as well.
Again, I cite my example - mechanics, directly exposed to significant levels of brake dust. Yet, there's not millions of them suffering from chronic health issues (much less lung specific issues) based on my observations, despite plenty of searching online looking for evidence of such.
My searches also turned up a lot of data indicating that a good portion (yes, not all) of what constituted brake dust, at least so far as the typically most common semi-metallic pads used today, is FE. Good old fashioned iron.
kwtoxman
Well-known member
You continue to use bad anecdotal research to support confirmation bias. Simplistic assessments of mechanic exposure to brake dust is not representative of adverse health effects. Exposure will be very highly variable. No doubt it can be hard to find from such variable data. It took years of epi to find adverse effects from asbestos. Such a weak argument.
Duh, we're not talking about testing the majority which may be Fe or whatever, we're talking about testing the complete fraction, including some toxic metal constituents and in chronic exposure become significant.
And you continue to ignore the fact that the soup of materials has itself chemistry going on in the air. Brake dust will adsorb contaminant gases such as NOx, SOx, etc, making it more toxic.
Here is a nice statement from a comp review of traffic related air pollution.
Attack the "might" language if you want. That is typical. For a comp review early in the brake dust assessment process in fact the language is quite strong compared what has previously been seen with other air contaminant issues. LOL. For example it took 40-50 years for strong language to come out implicating smoking cigarettes with cancer. You appear more than happy to associate with such naysayers.
Duh, we're not talking about testing the majority which may be Fe or whatever, we're talking about testing the complete fraction, including some toxic metal constituents and in chronic exposure become significant.
And you continue to ignore the fact that the soup of materials has itself chemistry going on in the air. Brake dust will adsorb contaminant gases such as NOx, SOx, etc, making it more toxic.
Here is a nice statement from a comp review of traffic related air pollution.
http://pubs.healtheffects.org/getfile.php?u=553
Attack the "might" language if you want. That is typical. For a comp review early in the brake dust assessment process in fact the language is quite strong compared what has previously been seen with other air contaminant issues. LOL. For example it took 40-50 years for strong language to come out implicating smoking cigarettes with cancer. You appear more than happy to associate with such naysayers.
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If brake dust was such a truly large issue that chronic exposure was to cause major issues, it would have been a huge issue back during the asbestos years. It was not.
In researching some more this evening, I found a rather interesting study quite to the contrary, actually.
It further went on to state that the small increase in risk of lung cancer amongst mechanics was likely due to the pronounced higher smoking rates amongst them. Speaking of which, I wonder how many people flipping out about rubber and brake dust coming off cars....smoke..?
There's plenty of evidence to the contrary, and only a mixed bag of evidence, muddied with complicating factors (absorption of other materials as you mention), showing that brake dust in the post asbestos world specifically is a problem. Rainwater mixes with oil and crap from the road when it rains, but that doesn't mean the rainwater was inherently unhealthy or toxic up until that point.
So, it appears we're back at the agree to disagree portion of the discussion.
In researching some more this evening, I found a rather interesting study quite to the contrary, actually.
It further went on to state that the small increase in risk of lung cancer amongst mechanics was likely due to the pronounced higher smoking rates amongst them. Speaking of which, I wonder how many people flipping out about rubber and brake dust coming off cars....smoke..?
There's plenty of evidence to the contrary, and only a mixed bag of evidence, muddied with complicating factors (absorption of other materials as you mention), showing that brake dust in the post asbestos world specifically is a problem. Rainwater mixes with oil and crap from the road when it rains, but that doesn't mean the rainwater was inherently unhealthy or toxic up until that point.
So, it appears we're back at the agree to disagree portion of the discussion.
kwtoxman
Well-known member
Back to the stupid dose amount excuse. Irrelevant. Again, we're not talking about killing much of the population, it is about chronic health impacts and lost life years. FWIW the asbestos health issues were huge and terrible. Sad to see you negate it as minor because you choose the highly variable mechanic population as representative of exposure. Many populations exposed to asbestos significantly died in their 50's from it. Far from the population life expectancy at that time.
Again, I already noted the dose from which this discussion started, and roadway emissions (including brake dust) have demonstrated negative health effects (PM exposure around high traffic roadways).
I have seen little comparative exposure of mechanics to brake dust versus close proximity to high travel corridors. There is likely little correlation. Duration versus dose would be expected to be very different. PM from brake dust in ambient air will be very different from working on brakes. Duh. So your exposure assessment comparison is very very weak.
You are like the smoking deniers. They too said for decades that without direct positive proof of the contrary that smoking was safe. Then the science caught up. That worked out well.
On top of that you compare voluntary risk to involuntary risk. Do some reading. People and governments consider them quite differently.
I'm done here.
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Joe who? I wouldn't worry about it.
