"When we had asbestos there was less autism. Big pharma teamed up with big construction to screw us up"

My country banned smoking in all public indoor spaces almost 20 years ago. As a smoker at the time I thought it was ridiculous, felt that my rights were being violated and thought it would never last. The quality of life improvement it made is massive. Today I vape rather than smoke but wouldn't dream of doing either indoors or being where someone else is. It was 100% the right move. Not quite the same thing but you sometimes can't really understand the benefits of an alternative to the status quo, even if you understand it logically.

I was surprised to find out that people also were against seatbelts. Weird

If it didn't cause cancer, asbestos is a fucking miracle material, there are people TODAY who are hugely pro-asbestos

Contracting silicosis to own the libs. Then use some sort of donkey enema as a cure.

Wasn't Trump literally trying to bring it back last time?

https://whyy.org/articles/trump-wants-to-make-asbestos-great-again/

What do you mean ... if?

I'm still in favor of asbestos. It's an amazing material for preventing fires AS LONG AS you never disturb it. The people that were most at risk of cancers were the people involved in the mining, manufacturing, and installation of asbestos products, but once the asbestos-containing products were installed, they were almost entirely safe for the occupants of the building. You could, in theory, largely mitigate the risks to the miners, manufacturers, and installers, but that is... Well, expensive. And people have a really bad tendency to ignore health and safety warnings when they're inconvenient. You see the same issue with quartz countertops; they're known to cause silicosis in people that are doing the cutting unless they do wet cutting for everything, and wear PPE, but a lot of people don't, because wet-cutting is messy and slow, and PPE is hot and uncomfortable.

There was a big movement in the late 90s to remove asbestos from old buildings; the current advice is to encapsulate it, and leave it in place.

LOL. Imagine seeing asbestos truthers coughing on their deathbed swearing that it’s completely harmless and that there’s a global conspiracy against it.

The Dipshit tried to bring it back his last term. Guess which country is the top producer of asbestos?

Old car guys are still bitter over unleaded gas. Some will drive to airports to buy the leaded stuff.

I'm a little surprised Trump hasn't signed the "Asbestos Fibers Are Our Friends" Executive Order.

It actually was just recently (a year ago) banned fully in the US. Before that, it was just prohibited to be used in new construction.

AI version of this, because I found it funny:

In Defense of Asbestos: The Mineral We Love to Hate

Look, everyone’s got their vices. Some people sip whiskey to "relax," others puff cigars to feel "distinguished." But heaven forbid you mention asbestos—suddenly, you're the villain in a 1980s PSA.

But let's be honest: asbestos walked so modern insulation could run. Before we had fancy synthetic fireproofing and high-tech soundproofing, asbestos was out here doing it all. Fire-resistant? Check. Insulating? Absolutely. Durable? Like the cockroach of minerals—won’t burn, won’t break, just vibes.

“Oh, but it causes health problems,” they say, as they light their third cigarette of the day and sip their third oat milk IPA. Everything causes health problems if you inhale it long enough. Ever tried breathing in glitter? Death trap.

And what happened to personal responsibility? You don’t see us eating asbestos sandwiches. We just want a little cozy, non-flammable nostalgia in our ceilings. It’s not like we’re snorting the stuff—though, let’s be real, if someone did that in the 70s, it was probably the same guy who invented disco.

Let’s stop pretending asbestos was some mustachio-twirling villain and start recognizing it for what it was: the gritty, misunderstood hero of 20th century construction. Sure, it had a dark side—but so did lead paint, and we don't see that getting canceled on social media.

So here’s to asbestos: May your fibers be forever airborne in the halls of history, and your reputation just slightly less shredded than it deserves.

The use of it in the US was banned only last year and I'm not aware of there having been such movement.