• Phantaloons@piefed.zip
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    18 days ago

    I learned there were asbestos tobacco pipes like a week ago. Humanity really didn’t see any of this coming.

    Asbestos tobacco pipes are insanely rare and collectible these days, though. No one dares smoke them, more historical discussion pieces.

    • Goun@lemmy.ml
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      18 days ago

      We never care of what’s coming, we invent/discover something and use it for freaking everything instead of studying long term impact. It happens all the fucking time.

      • Agent641@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        Asbestos really seemed like a miracle material. Its so easy to pull out of the ground and process into anything from tiles to fabric to brake disks. It’s abundant, cheap, and easy to mine. In a world where it seemed everything was always catching on fire, asbestos was magically fireproof. It was saving houses and children and housewives from going up in flames if they got too near a stove or fireplace. It was revolutionising industry, making workplaces safer and more efficient. I really don’t blame anyone for using it everywhere in those early years.

        But greed took over after asbestos products flooded the market and the major health hazards became apparent. The corpos and the govts were too greedy and scared to admit it was dangerous, because that would mean choosing to dismantle a billions-dollar value strong industry and start recalling everything.

        • MintyFresh@lemmy.world
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          18 days ago

          Exactly this. I knew this old retired fighter pilot guy, and he had asbestos gloves he held onto from his service days. He let me play with them at a BBQ once. You could straight up shove your hand into a pile of burning coals, hold it in your hand. Cool to the touch. It really seemed like magic. It really is a wonder-material. If not for the afromentioned cancer…

      • DaTingGoBrrr@lemmy.ml
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        18 days ago

        Like with aspartame. There was no legit long term studies done until recently and it showed that aspartame can reduce intelligence

          • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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            17 days ago

            There seem to be problems with their study

            Here’s the first glaring one:

            the mean consumption of LNCSs was 92.1 ± 90.1 mg/d.

            What an absolutely ridiculous range of consumption for a study population.

            Also the years they were collecting this data unfortunately had a whole pandemic occur. Covid is very well documented at causing long term mental decline. I’d like to see how many of their study group had confirmed covid infectious.

            Overall I’m not saying it’s not worth further investigation, but there are far too many unknown variables that the study did not control for. Rate and frequency of consumption are huge.

            • ඞmir@lemmy.ml
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              16 days ago

              Wait is this ± 1 standard deviation? So basically, it’s either 0 or 180 in a binary choice?

              • arrow74@lemmy.zip
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                16 days ago

                Basically, the fact that they allowed people consuming 2 mg and 182.2 mg into the same study group is insane.

                Also considering 1 can (12 fl oz) diet coke contains about 184 mg of aspartame, they didn’t even bother to study an interesting group. I’m sure you could find 100 people that consume at least 2 cans worth a day.

                Honestly I’m curious how someone consumes only 2mg of aspartame a day. That’s about 1 ml of diet coke

        • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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          17 days ago

          I had assumed people who drink aspartame products already have low intelligence. Are you sure it’s not selection bias?

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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      17 days ago

      Isn’t it asbestos dust that’s the issue? Like asbestos in the walls isn’t harming anyone, but if it gets demolished or destroyed then the dust is what causes issues?

      At least that’s what I heard, but it could be wrong. And I guess scraping the pipe might create some dust anyway…

      • Phantaloons@piefed.zip
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        17 days ago

        They all seem sealed with a black varnish, and I have personally never held one or been able to look at the bowl or stem to see if they’re coated as well.

        Naturally, both the stem and the bowl would lightly cake with carbon over time, 5-6 bowls before it’s on everything evenly.

        Find one and be the hypothesis lol.

        I’ll stick to briar

      • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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        16 days ago

        The dust is actually fine needles that cause chronic inflammation in lungs, which triggers cancer. But this can happen with any fibres. Lately everyone is using carbon fiber and it’s as bad as asbestos.

      • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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        18 days ago

        Ah the famous picture of a guy who’s lower jaw just fell off after he kept drinking this.
        Similarly well known ‘radium girls’.
        Horrific cases.

      • Phantaloons@piefed.zip
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        17 days ago

        Fun Fact!

        Pipe Tobacco is almost never inhaled by pipe smokers if they never smoked cigarettes beforehand, and pipe enthusiasts are more anal about natural tobacco and unnatural additives.

        This is one of the difficult parts of reading up on lung cancers between both groups. I couldn’t find any studies pointing directly at “pipe and only pipe smoking”, as the population pools for testing people dwindled rather quickly by the late 1980’s since pipe smoking was mostly gone outside of hobbyists.

        I’d pair this up with vaping/snus in the harm-reduction camp if that’s true. I wouldn’t consider any type of smoke entering your body as entirely harm-free… or vapor, or nicotine for that matter.

          • Phantaloons@piefed.zip
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            17 days ago

            Taste it and let it roll on, same as cigars. Don’t take my word for it, any other source will say the same.