The asbestos problem is worse than we thought

[00:19] >> Wa. This is really blue. You should come. Like this is so blue. >> Look at how many you're finding. I feel like Gollum. fun activity to do. >> These are the big So, what about all the

[00:35] particles you can't see? >> This same kind of material was used in Center buildings. And when the towers fell, it was pulverized to microscopic fell, it was pulverized to microscopic size and released into the air. The

[00:49] particles remained airborne for days, and thousands of people unknowingly breathed them in. They buried themselves deep within people's lungs, wreaking deep within people's lungs, wreaking havoc and causing all sorts of diseases.

[01:01] >> We've known for decades that these particles are extremely dangerous. But particles are extremely dangerous. But when the towers fell, no one was warned. >> The concentrations are such that they don't pose a health hazard.

[01:14] >> And yet today, the diseases linked to that dust have killed more than twice as many people as the attacks themselves. Once we started looking, we kept finding this material in places we never expected.

[01:28] aren't just eating it and breathing it. They're mainlining it." >> In popular off-roading spots, in makeup, and even kids toys, >> say it ain't so. Mickey Mouse crayons. >> No. It's been detected in the dust

[01:42] >> Five generations of people died up there. >> And instead of banning it outright, we let it spread.

[01:54] hundreds of thousands of tons each year, and it's estimated that by 2035, nearly 2.8 million people might die because of it.

[02:08] material we can't stop using. This investigation is based on publicly available documents, recordings, and third party sources. All of our links are in the description. Thank you to Ground News for sponsoring this video.

[02:21] More about them later. There is this story about the ancient Greeks from around the 2nd century AD. They had this golden lantern that would burn for a whole year without going out. All because of a very special wick that

[02:35] just wouldn't burn down. So, how did they develop this technology? Well, the they develop this technology? Well, the truth is they didn't. They've found it. Imagine you're walking around 2,000 years ago and you see this fluffy

[02:50] It's got all of these fibers that you can pull apart and twist into shapes.

[03:03] >> it looks like it would burn really well. Like it would just right? All right. >> Okay, let's see what happens. It's not burning. That's because this is actually a rock. It's a naturally

[03:17] occurring mineral. The core building block is simple. It's a silicon atom surrounded by four oxygen atoms. Now, silicon has four electrons in its outer shell, but it really wants eight. So, each of the oxygen shares one

[03:32] electron with it, but oxygen doesn't share evenly. Since it's more electrogative than silicon, it pulls those shared electrons closer to itself. This leaves the oxygen side slightly negative and the silicon side slightly

[03:45] positive. Now there's an electrostatic attraction between these atoms which pulls the atoms closer together and strengthens this bond. The result is an incredibly stable pyramid-shaped unit called a silica tetrahedrin. But if you

[03:59] look at the oxygens in these corner spots, they've only shared one electron, but they actually want two to complete their outer shells. So the corners link up with other silicon atoms to form more tetrahedra. And in this way, the

[04:12] structure just keeps growing. The bonds inside here are incredibly strong and stable. And because the atoms are already tightly bound to the oxygen inside the silicate structure, the oxygen in the air has nothing to react

[04:25] oxygen in the air has nothing to react with. So the material doesn't burn. about these building blocks. More than 90% of the Earth's minerals are made from this stuff. everything from quartz to clay. What makes this material

[04:39] to clay. What makes this material special is how those units link up. Here the tetrahedra have formed a sheet and bonded to it there is actually a second sheet made of magnesium atoms and hydroxal groups which are just an oxygen

[04:51] and a hydrogen stuck together. Now the atomic spacings of these two layers are slightly different. So there's a tiny mismatch which causes tension between these layers causing them to curl up and you end up with these tiny scroll-like

[05:05] tubes. These tubes don't break down easily under heat. The structure stays stable up to around 600° C. >> So like all these individual fibers that all like these scrolls more. >> What is that? What was that bend?

[05:19] >> That's just a place where I twisted the fiber with my tweezers. Ah, >> okay. And when you twist these fibers, they actually don't break. So it's they actually don't break. So it's literally a rock you can weave.

[05:34] tangled layered structure. So if heat is introduced, it has to pass from fiber to fiber across many contact points with air filling the spaces between them. This reduces how quickly heat can spread through the material. Because of that,

[05:48] like theater curtains and insulation blankets for steam engines. even fireproof clothing, essentially anywhere they didn't want something to catch fire. But by far the most important use came around in the 1800s. Between 1790

[06:03] and 1870, the number of people living in urban areas in America jumped from 1 in 20 to around 1 in4. So to accommodate this, people had to tack on extra floors onto existing buildings and courtyards would then be filled with makeshift

[06:18] extensions, effectively tightly packing all of these buildings together. Pretty much all these buildings were made out of wood, but the people inside still cooked with open flames. They used gas lamps. They lit candles. So, one

[06:31] accident and an entire neighborhood could go up in flames. That reality hit New York City in December 1835 when within a span of just 2 days, three separate fires erupted in Manhattan. One bystander described what followed as

[06:47] an ocean of fire with roaring, rolling, burning waves. By the end, a third of a mile of Manhattan was engulfed, destroying nearly 700 buildings at a cost of $20 million. That's over $730 million of

[07:03] today's money. Similar catastrophes were happening in cities all over the world. Chicago, London, Hamburg, Tokyo. When will this appalling rate of destruction will this appalling rate of destruction come to an end?

[07:19] burned, it spewed up embers into the air. These then got carried by the wind and landed onto other roofs, setting them alike.

[07:32] York, a 21-year-old named Henry Ward John's set out to break that chain reaction by making roofs fireproof. But that's trickier than it sounds. Whatever his solution was, it had to be usable across an entire city. So cheap and easy

[07:46] enough to massproduce, durable enough to sit exposed on rooftops, baking in the summer sun, freezing in the winter, and most importantly, it was not allowed to ignite even when exposed to burning embers.

[07:59] Now, John's knew of a mineral that was already being spun into fireproof fabric, but only the long fibers were useful for thread. The shorter ones were actually swept aside his waist. John's realized those scraps were exactly what

[08:13] he needed. Fireproof, tough, and most importantly, cheap. So, he set up a makeshift lap in his basement apartment and started experimenting. He heated up tar in his tea kettle, smeared that onto cloth, and then pressed in these tiny

[08:26] fibers. Then, he ringed the whole thing through his wife's brand new clothes ringer, and when he tested it, it worked. It didn't burn. In 1868, Henry War John's patented his

[08:39] invention, and by 1927, the company he built was generating $45 million in annual sales, more than $800 million in today's money. Soon, people were using this fireresistant stuff in all kinds of building materials. Across America,

[08:54] consumption grew from around 20,400 tons in 1900 to a peak of 803,000 tons in in 1900 to a peak of 803,000 tons in 1973.

[09:06] building in the US, public or private, commercial or residential, used some form of this material. During that same period, stronger building codes, safer heating systems, and other fireresistant materials were also introduced, and it

[09:19] showed during that time, fire related deaths dropped around 80%. So, this material likely helped save millions of lives worldwide.

[09:34] fire, the name the ancient Greeks gave it, it stuck around. They called it inextinguishable or asbestous.

[09:50] the mid- 20th century, asbestous was everywhere inside brake pads, toasters, ironing boards, hair dryers, surgical dressings and blankets. You know, brewers filtered beer through it. One brand of toothpaste even used it for

[10:05] extra polish. The fake snow in department store windows and in movies like The Wizard of Oz, all of that's asbestous, too. >> Unusual weather we're having a >> Sorry, Darthothy. It was such a big

[10:19] deal, Marvel even had a villain called Asbestous Lady. She'd set a fire to escape the police and she'd easily walk through it safe inside her asbestous bodysuit. To feed this demand, asbestous was

[10:32] pulled out of the ground on an enormous scale. Major mining operations spread across Canada, Russia, and South Africa, with global production peaking at approximately 4.8 million tons per year in 1977.

[10:51] many different products is because it's actually a group of different minerals. That white fluffy stuff we tried to burn earlier, it's called cryetile and it belongs to a mineral family known as the serpentines. But other types of

[11:05] asbestous looked completely different. For instance, there is also brown asbestous known as amocite. It forms thick fibers that almost look like wood splinters. strong, stable, and highly heatresistant. So, it was perfect for

[11:20] putting into building materials like cement panels. This type belongs to a different mineral family, the amphubles. Here, instead of forming sheets, the silica tetrahedral lock into rigid

[11:34] latter-like chains in amite, iron, and magnesium ions along with hydroxal groups embedded in the structure bind those chains together forming these long needle-like fibers. But tweak that chemistry just slightly

[11:48] so that now iron and sodium ions bind the chains and you get this blue asbestous or cassidily. These crystals split easily along their flexible fibers that are still extraordinarily strong with tensile

[12:04] strengths comparable to high-grade steel wire. This type went into chemicalresistant insulation, shipyards, and even filters inside early gas masks. Oh, and there was another use, one that's hard to

[12:16] believe now. >> In this magic box I have right here is something that was manufactured right here in North Carolina. They're cigarettes produced in the 1950s.

[12:30] And if you look at the filter, you see the filters are blue asbestous. This is Kent with a micronite filter that was manufactured with cryolite

[12:45] >> So you're not only smoking, you were smoking it through a blue asbestous >> What a deal. >> Only Kent has the revolutionary new micronite filter you've heard so much about. Kent and only Kent filters best.

[12:59] about. Kent and only Kent filters best. Filters best. Filters best.

[13:13] Nelly Kershaw worked in a factory that spun asbestous fibers into threads. Every day, she breathed in the dust that those machines threw into the air. So, by her early 30s, she was so sick she could barely breathe.

[13:29] And when she finally decided to ask the factory for help, they refused. They said helping out workers would set a dangerous precedent. Nelly died shortly dangerous precedent. Nelly died shortly after at the age of just 33.

[13:43] Nelly's case caught the attention of pathologist Dr. William Cook. When he opened up her chest, her lungs were gray and scarred, almost blue black like they had a huge internal bruise. And when his scalpel passed through them, they

[13:57] rasped. It was like scraping against sandpaper. under the microscope, the cause was unmistakable. Asbestous fibers lodged into the lung tissue. If we were to inhale some type of an

[14:13] asbestous fiber, I kind of think of them as like little microscopic straight arrows. They kind of just shoot down through the nose or the mouth and move down through the trachea. If we continue on going down here, we get smaller and

[14:26] smaller as we penetrate deeper into the lung tissue. And then you get into these alvolar sacks, these asbestous fibers, they lodge in the tissue there and lung secretions, enzymes, even white blood cells, they have a really hard time

[14:38] breaking those down. >> You end up with scarring deep inside the lungs. In 1924, Dr. Cook published the first medical description of this condition, which became known as asbestosis.

[14:52] When these asbestous fibers lodge into the lungs, the body treats them like invaders. Specialized cells called macrofasages move in cells whose job it is to engulf and digest bacteria, dust or debris. But asbestous fibers are too

[15:06] long and stiff to swallow. It's kind of like trying to eat a toothpick sideways. The macrofasages keep trying and failing and in the process they release inflammatory chemicals that damage the surrounding lung tissue. So workers

[15:19] breathing in asbestous dust day after day accumulated more and more damage. When doctors sent by the British government examined hundreds of asbestous workers, they found that more than 25% already showed signs of lung

[15:33] disease. And for workers with over 20 years of exposure, that number was closer to 80%. So in 1931, the government officially classified asbestous as a workplace hazard, making it one of the first industrial materials

[15:47] to be regulated for health risks. But the new rules only covered factories where asbestous was manufactured. They didn't extend to other workers like ship builders, miners, or construction workers who were regularly exposed to

[16:00] workers who were regularly exposed to asbestous dust. Across the Atlantic, things weren't much better. There was no binding federal asbestous rules in the states, only a recommendation. The US Public Health

[16:12] Service suggested a temporary exposure limit of 5 million asbestos particles for a single cubic foot of air, which meant that a worker breathing normally could inhale over 300 million asbestos particles an hour and still be

[16:25] considered within guidelines. This became especially problematic for shipyard workers when World War II broke out. Ships were packed with asbestous insulation, so workers spent their days cutting and fitting asbestous in thick

[16:38] clouds of fibers. And according to the guidelines of the day, these levels met the official definition of safe working conditions. In fact, asbestous was still marketed as a magic material. A few years earlier, Time magazine actually

[16:52] put John's Manuel's president, Lewis H. Brown, on its April 3rd, 1939 cover. But in the early 1960s, finally, one doctor started connecting the dots on asbestous. Dr. Dr. Irving Celikov was running a

[17:06] small clinic in Patterson, New Jersey when the local asbestous workers union asked if their members could come and see him. Before long, he'd seen multiple workers with either severe lung scarring or more concerningly an extremely rare

[17:20] cancer called meotheloma. But methyloma is strongly associated with speestous exposure and is cancer of those cells lining the inside of the chest cavity. And most commonly it's this plural cavity. These plural

[17:35] membranes are lined with meothelial cells. Sometimes what happens is the fibers will work their way out of the lung tissue and directly get into this cavity here and they can literally pierce out the lungs.

[17:50] They cause constant irritation and over time that can trigger cancerous changes time that can trigger cancerous changes in the cells that make up those linings.

[18:02] the scale of the problem. But factory owners refused to share medical records from their workers with him. So Celikov had to get creative. See, during World War II, many shipyard workers employed by the Navy underwent federal background

[18:16] checks. Thousands of these men had been working with asbestous to insulate ships. So using surviving FBI wartime personnel records, Celikov began tracking them down and one by one painstakingly pieced together their

[18:31] medical histories. What emerged wasn't a handful of isolated tragedies. It was a pattern. That exposure proved deadlier than combat itself.

[18:43] 8.6 6 out of every thousand servicemen were killed in action whereas 14 out of every thousand shipyard workers later died from asbestous related cancers.

[18:55] Selikoff launched a formal investigation into hundreds of asbestous insulation workers and what he found confirmed his fears. widespread disabling aspestosis, dozens of cases of messotheloma, lung cancer rates roughly seven times higher

[19:10] than expected, and a three-fold increase in gastrointestinal cancers. In 1964, he organized a conference at the New York Academy of Sciences, where for the first time, all this evidence was presented publicly in one place and on the record.

[19:24] stopped being seen as a modern miracle material and instead started being material and instead started being recognized as a public health crisis.

[19:37] trying to discredit Selikoff. Industry funded research groups came out with papers minimizing the risk of exposure and framing Celikov's findings as overblown. They started a coordinated PR effort to discredit him, trying to call

[19:50] him alarmist and starting a rumor that he wasn't even a real doctor just Scotland. But Celikov kept going. He kept publishing data on the devastating health effects of asbestous exposure. He

[20:05] worked 18-hour days documenting every patient who wrote to him. He contacted policy makers, even world leaders, urging them to take action against asbestous. uh Celikov uh the legendary um doctor

[20:21] who organized this conference in the 1970s found that uh introvenous drugs were being contaminated by asbestous filtration. People aren't just eating it filtration. People aren't just eating it and breathing it, they're mainlining it.

[20:34] By the 1970s, no one could deny it any longer. miners, factory workers, shipyard insulators, people who had been exposed decades earlier during the asbestous boom were now turning up with multiple cancers in huge numbers.

[20:47] Asbestos exposure is linked to all sorts of different cancers. The lung tissue has lymphatic vessels in it. Would you have them throughout your whole body? The asbestous fibers sometimes on their own can migrate into the lymphatic

[21:00] vessels. Sometimes the white blood cells will take it into the lymphatic system. Once you hit the lymphatic system, you have the potential to go anywhere in the human body. >> Autopsies have found fibers in nearly

[21:14] every organ in the body. The brain, bone marrow, spleen, intestines, pancreas, prostate, ovaries, thyroid, and liver. And in every tissue those fibers reach, they set off the same chain reaction. I'm imagining these white blood cells

[21:29] and frustrated because they can't engulf this asbestous fiber. They've coined this term called essentially frustrated faggoytosis. They start releasing these things like reactive oxygen species. They can cause damage to surrounding

[21:44] cells. And really important is damage to DNA. Those cells can start dividing out together and we start to call those clumps of cells cancer. >> US courts were flooded with lawsuits against companies like John's Manville.

[21:59] The harm asbestous caused was well documented. The information was out products were dangerous. >> They should know what's reasonably available in the public domain about the dangers of asbestous. If they can read

[22:14] asbestous patents, they can read asbests pathology papers. But the companies >> What was needed was definitive evidence that the companies knew their products that the companies knew their products were killing their workers.

[22:27] Then an attorney Carl Ash noticed something strange in the 1974 report by this huge asbestous company called Raybestus Manhattan. See in this report actually been investigating health

[22:40] hazards of asbestous since the 1930s. So Ash started digging. He filed a request for internal documents and at first the company claimed it couldn't find much. Then unexpectedly, Ash was handed a banker's box stuffed full of documents

[22:56] meticulously kept by Ray Best Manhattan's former president, Sumar Simpson. Back in 1935, a journal contacted Simpson because they wanted to write an article about asbestosis. Shortly after,

[23:10] Simpson himself reached out to John's Manville's lawyer, Van Diver Brown, asbestous, the better off we are." to which Brown replied, "I quite agree with you that our interests are best served by having espostosis receive the minimum

[23:24] of publicity." The same papers also revealed that in the 1930s, Ray Bestus and John's Manville hired an external company, Sarin Laboratories, to do studies of asbestous on animals, but the companies insisted on controlling what

[23:38] from those studies will be made public. As a letter from Van Dyver points out, results obtained will be considered the property of those who are advancing the whether to what extent and in what manner they shall be made public. A

[23:53] clause to which Sarinac Laboratories said yes. But after the lead researcher who was compiling all this evidence died in 1946, the companies agreed that contained any objectionable material. objectionable, meaning any sort of

[24:08] indication that asbestous causes cancer. So when Sarin Laboratories finished their research, the companies took the report, edited it, and just buried the evidence. Here's an original copy of that manuscript, and you can find whole

[24:21] sections just crossed out. Other documents were even more damaged. A John's Manville medical official later testified that up until 1971, the their workers if their physicals showed signs of asbestosis or asbestous related

[24:36] lung cancers. And in sworn testimony, a witness recalled a meeting they had in the early 1940s with the president of John's Manville, asking why they weren't warning workers about asbestous. As the witness recalls it, they asked, "Do you

[24:50] mean to tell me you would let them work until they drop dead?" to which the president replied, "Yes, we save a lot of money that way." they unlocked a new industrial Watergate, the industry's standard, "Oh,

[25:06] we didn't know" defense. It simply fell apart. Comparisons were made to Big Tobacco's concealment of smoking risks. And the lawsuits surged. Each case brought new discovery, and each round of discovery exposed a wider, more

[25:20] coordinated cover up. Ever since the word aspestosis started showing up in medical journals in the 1920s, John's Manville went out to secure the market around itself. First, they acquired the biggest rockwool

[25:34] company. Then they acquired a firm holding the key patents to calcium silicate insulation, insulation that could be made without asbestous. Now, at the same time, companies that had non asbestous insulation were incentivized

[25:46] into creating asbestous product lines. With each acquisition or inducement, another potential competitor lost the ability to denounce asbestous and say, "Oh, we have an asbestous free product. So each in turn became a member of this

[26:00] conspiracy of silence. That is how the asbestous industry guaranteed its survival by ensuring no one could speak out against it. >> We suggest you consider asbesus for the walls of your home.

[26:14] >> They're business decisions and the people who make them are businessmen. I mean the word morality or moral obligation is almost non-existent in the corporate documents. >> In 1982, John's Manville filed for

[26:27] >> Manville Corporation's board of directors has determined that the corporation should file for reorganization under chapter 11 of the >> Not because they were broke, but in a

[26:40] move widely seen as a way to shield the company from a flood of asbestous lawsuits. Despite all the evidence against them, John's Manville survived. They continue operating to this day, although they no longer produce

[26:52] asbestous. Between 1940 and 1980, the asbestous industry, led by John's Manville, exposed roughly 21 million Americans to these fibers. Asbestous related deaths amounted to at least 8 to 10,000 people

[27:08] every year, with many more suffering lifelong disease. In 1989, the EPA issued a rule to phase out almost all asbestous use in the United States. And that should have been the end of the story.

[27:24] But the industry sued immediately, not because anyone disputed asbestous causes cancer, that was undeniable by this point, but because of a legal technicality. See, under the law, the EPA had to prove that an outright ban of

[27:38] asbestous was the only solution and that anything less than that just wouldn't cut it. this was an almost impossible feat. Now, the industry argued that they hadn't done that. And unfortunately, the US courts agreed. So, in 1991, they

[27:51] ruled that the EPA just hadn't met this narrow legal standard. And with that, narrow legal standard. And with that, the asbestous ban was dead in the water. But by then, asbestous had become so financially and legally risky for the

[28:04] companies that manufactured it or used it that its overall use did actually decline. Yet in the end, after years of trying to define and regulate asbestous, the only thing that truly stuck around was a definition and a narrow one.

[28:18] Chryotile and five amphubles because these were the only ones being mined, sold, and used in factories. Those six became the official asbestous minerals. And anything else, no matter how fiberlike or potentially dangerous,

[28:31] fiberlike or potentially dangerous, well, that doesn't count. considering testing for asbestous in cosmetics and talc powder.

[28:46] >> Traces of it have now been detected in children's play sand. >> Thousands of people are claiming that they developed various forms of cancer after years of using Johnson and Johnson's baby powder.

[28:58] collected over the years? >> No, it's not all of it. But, uh, this >> No, it's not all of it. But, uh, this box is full of all the Claire's labelled products that I found as bestas in everything little girls could possibly

[29:11] want to have their makeup in. Like, oh, I don't know. How about sparkly boxes, right? >> And, uh, there's a cell phone. >> Yeah. >> Right. There's asbesus in there. There's

[29:25] asbesus in the unicorn. >> There's Yes. All of these have asbesus in them. I started seeing asbesus fibers >> Everywhere. Okay. >> The the eyehadows, the blush, they all

[29:39] had asbestos fibers. All right. Wow. Okay. >> Uh 2017. >> What? >> I thought it was going to be like 1980 or something. What? 2017.

[29:54] >> And the manufacturer came back said there's no way. and they sponsored uh another laboratory to look at the same samples and they said no none of this

[30:06] counts as asbesus it's all cleavage fragments or sepiaite clay or something like that and it was boulder dash right I called friends all across the states and said hey do you have a CLA's store near you can you find the sparkly box

[30:21] right and send it to me pronto there's Claire's all in all the malls all across America and then I looked further It's all over the world. I mean, every mall everywhere. And I end up testing Claire's from Brazil to Japan uh to

[30:37] London. I found asbesus. Don't worry. Right. So, that turned into a huge story. Right. And now I don't think you can buy very much uh talc think you can buy very much uh talc based cosmetics at Claire's now. But it

[30:52] was a several years long >> battle.

[31:09] These are different products that were sold at at toy stores. Like here's the >> And you see there's a fingerprint kit there, right? And in that fingerprint there, right? And in that fingerprint kit was a powder in which I found uh

[31:23] asbesus fibers. Say it ain't so. Mickey Mouse crayons. >> No, I found asbestous in those. And this keeps happening. Just a couple of months ago, around 70 schools in Australia and New Zealand had to close

[31:36] down because of the asbestous found in children's playand. Out of the 60 outlets that reported on this story, only 24% were from right-leaning sources. Depending on where you get your news, this might have never crossed your

[31:49] radar, which is a problem because public health information like this shouldn't fall through the cracks. And this is why we've asked Ground News to sponsor this video. They compile news from outlets all over the world into one place so

[32:01] that you can easily see the partisan split. And with their color-coded layout, it's also easy to sort your news by factuality, ownership, and source so that you can see how a story like this is getting covered side by side with all

[32:13] the context you need. Take these two headlines for example. This article from the Herald Sun only talks about the fear of asbestous while this very highfactuality source firmly states that asbestous was found in decorative sand.

[32:26] That difference matters. I would like to know whether the concern is over a mere suspicion or actual asbestous contamination. And that's why I find ground news so useful. You get the full picture, not just one headline

[32:38] sensationalizing for clicks. And they also have a dedicated blind spot feed know, disproportionately covered by either side of the political spectrum. All to help people avoid their echo chambers. Now, we partnered up with

[32:51] Ground News because we share the same mission, getting to the truth, and that's why we're offering 40% off their Vantage plan at ground.news/ve. So, if you want to support the channel, but also want a clearer understanding of

[33:05] description, or you can also scan this QR code. So, I want to thank Ground News And now, let's go figure out why asbestous is even getting into all these consumer products. Now, no one is intentionally putting asbestous in

[33:20] makeup or kids toys. So, how did something we know is deadly just end up everywhere? Well, it's an unfortunate consequence of where asbestous forms and nowhere makes that more clear than Libby, Montana.

[33:35] >> It kind of breaks my heart to talk about it. Um, the mine up there is vermiculite mine is about 56 miles north. >> Vermiculite is a mineral that is used in everything from insulation to

[33:48] fireproofing to potting soil. On its own, it's harmless. The problem was Libbyy's vermiculite formed mixed in with amphubable asbestous fibers. And the same thing happens with other minerals we mine, including stuff like

[34:02] That's how asbestous ends up in products like the ones we saw at Shaun's lab. And the worst part, the company that owned and operated the mine, WR Grace, they knew. They knew the ore contained asbestous. They knew people were getting

[34:17] sick. And they didn't warn the town. In fact, they try to cover it up for almost 30 years. >> They had hundreds of workers in there. home, they had dust all over their clothes and their kids and their wives

[34:33] got it and died as well. But the doctors up around Libby, they knew. Boy, did they know. Besides the lung disease and cancers long associated with asbestous exposure, researchers were also finding rates of some autoimmune diseases were

[34:46] nearly six times higher than the national average. And by the time the Liby situation hit the headlines in 1999, reporters documented nearly 200 deaths in a town of fewer than 3,000. >> And it could take 20 years for it to go,

[35:00] but pretty soon you have no breath at all. And you die ofxiation. I could tell talking on the phone by somebody's voice how far along they were toward death because none of them survived. Finally, in 2009, the EPA declared a public

[35:16] health emergency in Libby, calling it the worst case of industrial poisoning of a community in US history. >> But Libby is just the tip of the iceberg. >> Because for decades, WR Grace shipped

[35:28] Libby vermiculite around the country and with it deadly amphable asbestous, which ended up in millions of homes as attic insulation. And Grace also made a fireproof spray that was used on the steel frames of

[35:42] high-rise buildings. By 1970, over half of the multi-story buildings erected in the United States used this fireproof spray, including the World Trade Center. But this spray was actually marketed as asbestous free. According to a later

[35:58] investigation by the New York Times, Grace lobbyed regulators to adopt a containing less than 1% of asbestous would not be regulated. Grace argued that the danger of such small amounts had not been proved. This became known

[36:13] as the 1% rule or the grace rule. That decision didn't just affect the products from Libbyy's mine. It reshaped how asbestous was detected, regulated, and asbestous was detected, regulated, and ignored everywhere.

[36:31] >> Oh my god. >> OH MY GOD. >> OKAY. When that went down, I knew it. I knew they had asbestous. And so I started calling. I said, "What do you how are you going to protect people from

[36:43] that?" Cuz now that stuff's all over the place. You saw the dust clouds, right? >> September 11th became the largest realworld test of asbestous detection following a single catastrophic event. That dust is so thick you can't see.

[36:56] >> When the EPA began sampling the dust and analyzing it, they chose a method we used back at the lab called polarized light microscopy or PLM. But the PLM has two major limitations. First, it struggles to detect asbestous if it's

[37:10] less than 1% by weight in the sample. And second, it can only see the fibers that are roughly longer than about 5 micrometers or wider than about a/4 of a micrometer. As a result, the smallest and often times the most dangerous

[37:24] fibers like the ones pulverized during the collapse of the towers are difficult to detect using just the PLM. To reliably find these, you need To reliably find these, you need transmission electron microscopy or TEM.

[37:37] times with electro with light microscopy, this tops out at about a million times. But what we need to see is just what are the finest fibers that are potentially can go into your lung. >> Without having used a TEM, the EPA

[37:53] declared New York's air safe. >> Everything we've tested for, which includes asbestous, lead, and VOCC's have been below any level of concern for the general public health. >> But some researchers after 911 actually

[38:08] did do studies with TEM. They found asbestous levels far above the EPA's own safety thresholds in most of their samples. And the report also warned that actually smaller than normal, they were especially dangerous. They posted the

[38:24] results on the American Industrial Hygiene Association website, but within Hygiene Association website, but within hours, their post disappeared. Less than 24 hours later, the researchers were notified they had been taken off the job

[38:36] and were no longer required at ground zero. One former EPA chief investigator later went on CBS saying they believe the agency had deliberately used the wrong testing methods and downplayed the danger.

[38:50] >> New York City directly lied about the test results for asbestous in air. When they finally released them, they doctorred the result. We don't know if that's true, but to be clear, PLM is still widely used to

[39:04] detect asbestous because it's faster, it's cheaper, it's easier to deploy. But what we do know is two things. First, the PLM method was not sensitive enough to detect whether there were asbestous fibers in the dust at ground zero. And

[39:17] second, the EPA did have other more sensitive methods available to them. Whatever the motives, the result was the same. New Yorkers were told that the air was safe when it really wasn't. And as of December 2023, 6,781

[39:33] the World Trade Center Health Program have died either of an illness or a cancer linked just to their time being around ground zero.

[39:50] the answer would still not be simple because even then researchers run into a more basic problem. What actually counts as asbestous? asbestous in the soil? Is there asbesus in the water? Is there asbestous in the

[40:04] body? All of those counting rules are based on fibers that are not super long, but they're way longer than the vast majority of say libampul fibers and the

[40:17] vast majority of fibers that are inhaled. So, they're not even counting them. The ways that we are right now telling people whether they're being exposed or not is a lie.

[40:32] >> And when longer fibers break, forming these so-called cleavage fragments, they >> Yeah. There's a whole effort to say, "Oh, yeah. If it's if it's been broken, it's not it's not dangerous." But there are so many papers out there that show

[40:45] that if you put pure cleavage fragments into mice, they get very very sick. This really matters when you're in a place like this and you realize the dust could be considered asbestous contaminated under one definition and

[40:58] perfectly safe under another. >> Nobody would have expected fine asbestous here. >> To be clear, there were no asbestous mines in Nevada. No industrial sites, no history of asbestous commercial use at

[41:11] all. But geologists Brenda Buck and Rott Medal found asbestous spread across approximately 1 million acres outside Las Vegas. >> Geologic processes transport these materials and you know before the

[41:26] erosion started they were just in the bedrocks along the mountain front. Now they're in sediments down there. They're in the stream here. And the problem with the naturally occurring stuff like this is it may be only a small percentage in

[41:39] the rock and even a smaller percentage in the soil, but this stuff gets in the >> Entire communities might be breathing it in and getting sick without knowing. So Brenda and Rod tried to warn people. Back in late 2012, they compiled all of

[41:55] Conference of the Geological Society of America. But before the conference even began, the abstract caught the attention of a journalist who reported on the story and that's when the push back started. Soon the state of Nevada sent a

[42:10] cease and assist letter and officials questioned Brenda and Rod's methods. >> So if you go to Las Vegas, you're going to get exposed to that. That they didn't >> Every time I drove into Boulder City, there was an official tailing me within

[42:25] a minute. >> The message was clear. Don't look any further. Well, we did decide to look further. So, we drove out into the desert to a popular off-roading spot to test whether there really is asbestous

[42:39] in the dust around Las Vegas. Okay, I'm strapped into a dune buggy here. I'm going to go down to that basin and Sean's strapped up some dust collectors with uh receivers in my breathing zone so we can actually figure out how much

[42:52] asbestous I would be inhaling through the dust that I kick up.

[43:15] there. >> Yeah. From a geological point of view, >> It rained today. I thought about that while I was watching. I was like, there the air samples that were hanging in your breathing, right? And I looked at

[43:28] >> Oh, that's good. >> Um, which means we actually did get some dust. We don't know what's in it yet, >> but there's something in there. >> But the original plan was for us to actually do this at the dry lake bed

[43:41] is where people do the majority of their off-roading. You know, they camp, they do photo shoots, even take their wedding photos. Except not on the day that we were there. Okay, we're out here on the dry lake bed. supposedly uh in Las Vegas

[43:56] where on the one day that we're here, the lake has decided not to be dry in any sort of definition. Oh god. And so what we're going to go do is suit up, get some samples, and figure out how much is bestest there really is uh in

[44:11] much is bestest there really is uh in this stuff.

[44:24] perfect. We're going to do a third. Let's go out to that island. That's it. Okay, got the samples. Next step, take them to the lab.

[44:41] >> yeah, good to see you, too. Well, we're here for one thing, I suppose. Like, what kind of results did we get? >> Now, the big reveal. Drum roll, please. Uh, I did the dune buggy air samples first. Those samples that you had on

[44:57] your left and right shoulders. I didn't find any asbesus fibers. relief. I'm glad we did the demonstration and I'm kind of glad we didn't find anything because I'm pretty sure I took my mask off at a few points.

[45:09] >> I've been in those shoes like we didn't find anything. Oh, but wait a minute. I was breathing that. >> Exactly. lake bed? >> Uh,

[45:23] >> Okay. >> I found amphubable asbestous. >> Wow. Okay. >> It's there. It is there. I counted up the number of fibers, the the area of the filter that I analyzed, and I

[45:37] the filter that I analyzed, and I figured out that we had between 30 and figured out that we had between 30 and 50 million asbesus structures per gram

[45:49] of mud that we were walking through. >> Wow. Just to think that we pulled off to the side of the road, walked what 30 m, took three samples, and all of them had these incredibly high concentrations of

[46:02] had to go out and find >> very wet soil was lucky for us because we know there's asbestous in that soil. Now, think about the guys that go taking

[46:15] their jeep across there when it is a dry lake. I mean, that was our initial plan to do the dune bugging there. And I can't I can't like help but think about time. They must pull over. They must go down there like just kick dust and

[46:29] >> we know they do. We know they do. >> And there's no sign to tell you that there's anything wrong with the dry lake. >> It's not like we, you know, discovered this. This has been available data since

[46:44] >> October October of 2013 is the actually publication date of naturally occurring asbesus potential for human exposure in southern Nevada by Brenda Buck at all.

[46:56] >> So 13 years we've had this data. It's not like we rediscovered anything. >> And that's the other thing that's really hard about this science. You need the public to be aware but you don't want to terrify them. And so how do you find the

[47:08] right way? This will potentially be seen by tens of message you want to get out? >> This is a a a natural hazard just like a

[47:20] lot of things in your life. It's really good for people to know whether or not right? It's really good to know about earthquake risks. It's really good to know about hurricanes and tornadoes. Well, this is just another natural

[47:34] hazard. And if you have the information, then you can make better decisions to then you can make better decisions to live a healthier life.

[47:57] real world doesn't line up with how it's regulated. Take this fiber. It comes from a sample of the same blue asbestous from the site outside Las Vegas we visited at the start of the video. I think we have uh two different phases at

[48:11] think we have uh two different phases at least of amphable here because if it's yellow in this orientation but also blue in this orientation and the same fiber in this orientation and the same fiber bundle then we have a change in the

[48:23] phase from here to here. So this one fiber is actually two minerals and that complexity shows up in its structure too. Under the electron microscope, one side could meet the definition of asbestous, the other may

[48:37] not simply because of its shape. So one single fiber could fall within one of the six named and regulated asbestous minerals if you look at one side, but the other would be completely unregulated. Your lungs don't care about

[48:52] these categories though. the asbestous fiber. You find it everywhere. No ordinary rock, no single rock indeed, but a group of related minerals with varying degrees. >> Most experts will say asbesus isn't a

[49:08] minic or a geological term. It's a commercial one, but that's symbolics. Why do I say that? Because it's not just a commercial term. We now know that

[49:22] asbesus can kill you. So if we're going to say that, we have to define it based on health effect and we don't. >> So what are we actually doing about it? The system was so complex, it was so burdensome that our country hasn't even

[49:35] burdensome that our country hasn't even been able to uphold a ban on asbestous, a known carcinogen that kills as many as 10,000 Americans every year. >> Well, in 2016, Congress did try to fix this broken system. They passed an

[49:48] amendment giving the EPA new power to evaluate and restrict dangerous chemicals, including asbestous. >> I think it's time to sign the Frank R. Ladenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act into law. But then progress

[50:03] stalled again. Under the Trump administration, efforts to strengthen asbestous rules slowed dramatically. Trump had publicly praised my industry think asbestous is the greatest fireproofing material ever ever

[50:19] made. >> It wasn't until 2024 that the US finally banned chrysile asbestous. But this ban doesn't cover the other five types of asbestous and it still allows some manufacturers up to 12 years to phase it

[50:32] out. It doesn't address what to do with asbestous already in schools and homes and other buildings. nor does it fix any of the numerous classification, identification, and detection loopholes. And it doesn't address the asbestous in

[50:45] the environment. On top of that, the EPA is already getting sued again. >> There have been tremendous forces from commercial industries to make it sound like it's not as bad as it as it is and

[51:02] like it's not as bad as it as it is and to find ways to allow them to continue to use the material. This is a sad sad fact of our decision making in our driven by money. >> But at least the United States are going

[51:17] for some level of moderation. Other countries are not that lucky. In 2019, India imported more than 350,000 tons of asbestous and it's predicted that in the upcoming decades 6 million people there

[51:30] might develop asbestous related diseases and similar things are happening in many of the other countries in Asia. We've actually found this website where it looks like you can just buy asbestous cloth made in China, but please don't.

[51:44] And all of the asbestous that we've already mined even after we stopped using it, it's still out there. Asbestous doesn't naturally decay in the environment. So, should you be worried? Well, having asbestous in your house

[51:59] dangerous. If you have asbestous in your ceiling and you don't drill into it, you're probably going to be fine. Asbestous is an issue if the particles go airborne. But who knows which house has asbestous,

[52:13] where all of that asbestous is, who is going to take care of it, and how. So, a lot of the answers to these questions just don't exist yet. But if you're yourself, check out the links that we've put in the description.

[52:28] I think a big part of the problem is that people assume asbestous is a solved issue. And I'll be the first to admit I fell for that line of thinking. Here's the ending I wrote for our PAS video. We've been here before with leaded

[52:40] gasoline, freon, and asbestous. And each time we did the research and made the right decision to phase these chemicals out. Yeah, I was completely oblivious.

[52:52] >> We will look back at our history and what do we do with tobacco? Everybody was smoking, right? It would be improper for me to not offer an ashtray even if I wasn't a smoker back in the day. And all the scientists working for the big

[53:07] cigarette companies said why tobacco never hurt anybody. But because of the never hurt anybody. But because of the outcry and the recognition that uh that smoking causes disease, uh everybody knows someone who died because of

[53:20] cigarettes. Right now, you might find out that asbesus related diseases has touched you in some way. You don't even know yet. >> I didn't know my grandfather died because of asbestous. That my father is

[53:36] dying more likely than not because of asbestous. Did I know that when I started looking at asbesus under a microscope? No. Did I know that when I changed the brakes on the jeeps that I ran around in? No. Did I know that when

[53:49] I ran around through as vessels containing dust? No. Now I do. journalist we spoke to for this video said the same thing. This is a hard

[54:01] story to get out there. They've faced economic pressure, political pressure. Their research got buried and some people even received death threats for reporting on the story. It is an uncomfortable topic. But I think it's

[54:14] the most, that have the potential to do the most good, yet they are also the ones that are the most uncomfortable to watch. So I really appreciate you for sticking around to the end and facing the truth, making yourself aware and

[54:28] becoming part of the solution. So perhaps now more than ever, thank you perhaps now more than ever, thank you for watching.