miss her kiss her love her
(wrong move you’re dead)
It’s likely that my house is full of Poison.It was built in 1896 with nice harmless materials like wood and brick, but since then there have been decades of “improvements.” Covering the oak floors with vinyl tiles, for example. Coating the old moldings with lead paint. Dropping the ceilings with asbestos acoustic board. Gluing fake wood paneling onto the plaster. You definitely don’t ever want to glue anything onto plaster, said the contractor who teaches my Saturday home improvement class.
Apparently the best way to handle toxics in your home is not to handle them at all. Most of the stuff is only dangerous if you breathe it or eat it, so covering it up and forgetting about it is cheap and safe. But the former residents of my home were very devoted in their work. They enclosed every surface, usually several times over. There’s just no room left to layer. The shit’s gotta go.
I’ve been having trouble getting a handle on exactly how much precaution the cleanup warrants, particularly for asbestos. My mental threshold for toxic exposure is on the high side. As a coxswain for my college crew team I was thrown into all sorts of sewage-laden rivers, including but not limited to the Charles, the Schuylkill, and the Harlem. Once while I was waiting a long time for a lift by the hot roadside in South Africa, I pumped some water from a puddle through my little backpacker filter and drank it. My job is all about contaminated land. I wash my hands a lot and I try not to be careless, but thoughts of germs and radon do not keep me up at night.
But asbestos is pretty scary. You read enough about mesothelioma and you don’t really want to go anywhere near the stuff. When my inspector pointed out asbestos tape on my heating ducts, he pointed from a distance, with his pen. Internet resources say things like “A professional should take samples for analysis…. In fact, if done incorrectly, sampling can be more hazardous than leaving the material alone. Taking samples yourself is not recommended.”
That said, it seems asbestos exposure might be more similar to smoking: unwise on a long-term basis, somewhat risky even in moderation, best avoided, but not actually synonymous with certain death. My mom – a worldclass hypochondriac who finds cause for concern every time I mention moving through the world – cheerfully reminisced about how she and my father had smashed through asbestos tiles in their early days. That’s what everybody did! she laughed. Just wear a mask, I’ve been told by a contractor. My favorite advice was It’s easy to get guys to pull it out for you – they don’t care. Let’s not get started on that one.
So while my personal jury on asbestos is out, the first step is to learn how much of it I actually have. I found a lab online that does analysis and tried to follow their sampling instructions – wetting the material with a spray bottle, cutting cleanly with a utility knife, wiping off the sealed ziplock bag. In reality, though, when I was crouched ten feet up on top of a kitchen cabinet, sawing away over my head at ceiling board unsuccessfully, breathing heavily into my sweaty respirator, I just ripped a piece of the fucker off.
(Girl, I, must warrrrrn yoooooooooou.)
posted by tortaluga @ 4:14 PM
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