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Asbestos in wiring?

rbmgf7

Aluminum
Joined
Oct 18, 2017
I've been retrofitting an old Tree Journeyman and came across some 4 conductor cable that was used for the button to activate the power drawbar. Seems like normal rubber jacketed power wire but when I cut into it, a white, fibrous substance came out. I never been around asbestos but I'm wondering if this is it? Resembles spider silk. It's fluffy but can be rolled and compacted. It's not like the fiberglass insulation I've dealt with in modern wiring but I don't know what 40 year old fiberglass insulation would be like. Google isn't returning much for what wire I'm describing. I do see it for older home wiring.
 
Asbestos for sure ......50s/60s ,everything had asbestos in it.......I once lucked onto some heavy copper conductor .....after stripping the heavy wire looked to be cotton covered (black thread).....so I burnt it expecting the cotton to burn off......nope the coating burnt white and fluffy.....what to do?.......scrapyard says no asbestos,and I got over 5 ton of copper scrap I cant sell.
 
Asbestos is bad for you, however, you can handle it safely. Use a mask, paint the asbestos with pva adhesive or coat with silicone aka mastic to prevent the fibres getting airborne, it’s safe if left alone, drilling holes, breaking it can release fibres, they are sharp and pointy and tiny, if you breath them they get in your lungs, the stuff is inert but the problem is when the little macrophages try to deal with them by enveloping them, well they can’t.
The cell membrane gets punctured, and dragging them causes scarring, this can lead to mesothelioma or lung cancer.
I’ve worked with asbestos, even worn it by way of gloves, jacket and trousers
I’ve breathed it and it has caused the scarring in the lungs but I’m hoping I die of death before I die of mesothelioma, lung function gets impaired but not much in my case. The nasty one is blue asbestos ( it made Johnson’s baby powder blue! Who’d have guessed it’s bad for babies sprinkling talc cut with blue asbestos over them, genius why waste it. It’s been suppressed in the media for years, they just ignore it and carry on)
Blue was used a lot in pipe lagging, there’s still loads of asbestos insulated cable still about but as I said, clear silicone mastic smeared over it stop the nasty getting airborne, after that just leave it alone.
There are commercial paint on products to stabilise it ( essentially silicone thinned with naphthalene from what I can determine, a product illegal in the U.K.!)
Mark
 
Asbestos for sure ......50s/60s ,everything had asbestos in it.......I once lucked onto some heavy copper conductor .....after stripping the heavy wire looked to be cotton covered (black thread).....so I burnt it expecting the cotton to burn off......nope the coating burnt white and fluffy.....what to do?.......scrapyard says no asbestos,and I got over 5 ton of copper scrap I cant sell.

White an fluffy? Thats CLEARLY just galvanized cotton. No problem. Let the scrap yard know you've got some galvanized cotton wrapped copper wire and hope you're talking to the new guy. Try catching them at 4:59PM on a Friday.
 
I've been retrofitting an old Tree Journeyman and came across some 4 conductor cable that was used for the button to activate the power drawbar. Seems like normal rubber jacketed power wire but when I cut into it, a white, fibrous substance came out. I never been around asbestos but I'm wondering if this is it? Resembles spider silk. It's fluffy but can be rolled and compacted. It's not like the fiberglass insulation I've dealt with in modern wiring but I don't know what 40 year old fiberglass insulation would be like. Google isn't returning much for what wire I'm describing. I do see it for older home wiring.

Like the other guys have said, it's probably asbestos. Do breath it in - it's bad for you. Put some nitrile gloves on when you mess with it. Not cause it's that bad for you skin, but you don't want to wiping for face off later and rubbing asbestos in your eyes.

As long as you don't disturb asbestos, it's perfectly safe. It isn't like it's radioactive or something... I have heard of guys tearing up asbestos tile floors without ventilation or respirators and dying from it.

Also - don't eat lead paint.
 
Generally the way they go about removing it is to wet it so that the fibers can not become airborne. Usually water is used but I see no reason a light oil can't be used if you prefer. If the fibers don't get airborne, they can't get to your lungs so in a wet state it is safe to handle.
 
I worked with one guy used to blow asbestos dust with compressed air so he could see the sparkly bits in the sunlight......a 16 1/2" twin plate clutch deposits about a shovelfull of asbestos over its working life.....which can be six months to six years depending on the driver......a full set of truck brake linings would be about 20 lbs of asbestos..........three guys I worked with have died of mesothelioma ,yet I and another who got more asbestos than most are still clear.
 
Generally the way they go about removing it is to wet it so that the fibers can not become airborne. Usually water is used but I see no reason a light oil can't be used if you prefer. If the fibers don't get airborne, they can't get to your lungs so in a wet state it is safe to handle.
Yup. Wet it down, wrap it in something, throw it away.

Programmed via Mazatrol
 
Talked to an old school guy that recommended a field test. He said take a torch to it.

Glows and still there: likely asbestos.

Gone: very likely not.

It immediately burst into flames with a propane torch.
 
I worked with one guy used to blow asbestos dust with compressed air so he could see the sparkly bits in the sunlight......a 16 1/2" twin plate clutch deposits about a shovelfull of asbestos over its working life.....which can be six months to six years depending on the driver......a full set of truck brake linings would be about 20 lbs of asbestos..........three guys I worked with have died of mesothelioma ,yet I and another who got more asbestos than most are still clear.

We're all built different. My father was a chain smoker since his teens and owned a woodworking business for decades and never wore a mask for dust or spraying yet died of something completely irrelevant. Doc took pics of his lungs and didn't see anything wrong from years of smoking, sawdust, and lacquer. The hacking said otherwise.
 
Was the power drawbar retrofitted? They may have used some old wire they had around. I do not see why special heat resistant wire would be needed?
Slip heat shrink over the wires to contain the fibers. Paint the jacket to lock in the fibers. Something like electrical varnish that will soak in and tie it together.
Bill D
 
The usual application for asbestos wire insulation was for radiant heaters and the like, where something was intended to get very hot. You would not expect to see asbestos wire in an ordinary machine tool.

Asbestos alone causes scarring of the lungs (asbestosis, just like silica and silicosis - all fine dusts cause such a disease), and smoking alone causes lung cancer but not usually mesothelioma, both at relatively low rates. The combination of heavy asbestos exposure and heavy smoking is about 100 times as dangerous as either one by itself. Given that many workers smoked back then, this was seen a lot.

And incidental asbestos exposure is not particularly dangerous, despite all the claims about a trace in talcum powder causing ovarian cancer and the like.

The flame test is diagnostic - if the fluffy white stuff burns away in a flame, it is not asbestos. If it becomes incandescent and doesn't burn away, it is a mineral fiber of some sort, and could be asbestos or mineral wool.
 
Yes, some people don't seem to affected by asbestos at all. My father worked at Combustion Engineering in New York for years starting after the war. They made boilers for power plants. He said on the factory floor it basically snowed asbestos constantly and he was breathing it eight hours a day with no protection. He made it to 91 years old with no lung problems at all. I also knew a person who owned a brake repair shop. The first thing he did once the brake drum was off was to blow compressed air at everything to remove the brake dust. And he also wore no protection and did this daily for probably 40 years. He made it to 93 years old with no lung problems. And he also smoked two packs a day.
 
Was the power drawbar retrofitted? They may have used some old wire they had around. I do not see why special heat resistant wire would be needed?
Slip heat shrink over the wires to contain the fibers. Paint the jacket to lock in the fibers. Something like electrical varnish that will soak in and tie it together.
Bill D

That's what doesn't make sense. Why a 4 conductor wire for a push button? Especially such a heavy gauge. It looks like it was replaced and I would've assumed with "whatever that was laying around".
 
"Yes, some people don't seem to affected by asbestos at all" My father-in-law used to bulk-load ships by conveyor, the holds were filled with asbestos, yet he lived into his 90's. There is an interesting connection with asbestos-induced cancer and a SV40 monkey virus that contaminated some polio vaccines years ago. Due to his age, I'm guessing my father-in-law missed this particular polio vaccine. Best thing to do with old asbestos is to leave it in place or stabilize it, as has been mentioned previously:

Mystery virus linked to asbestos cancer | New Scientist
 
The paranoia about asbestos is largely among the younger folk who've listened carefully to the regulatory rhetoric and media coverage. It can be hazardous, but stripping a wire or two isn't. In the 'old days', mechanics would regularly 'arc' brake shoes for a better fit to the drum by grinding the circumference, nearly always indoors and without protection. (Brake shoe linings in those days were primarily asbestos). These mechanics didn't die off or contract debilitating lung disease in large numbers or percentages sufficient to cause alarm. As mentioned in several replies above, it just depends. Getting it out of air conditioning duct insulation and other places is a good move, but banning it entirely is a waste of a great material.
 
I was lead to believe the east coast mined stuff was the problem. The west coast fibers are smaller? in Diameter. By the time the problem migrates out of the western fibers, trapped in the lungs, the patient has to live least 120 years after first exposure to suffer any ill effects.
I may have the diameters reversed.
Bill D

On edit: Some slight reasearch shows it is not directly related to diameter. Longer fibers cause cancer quicker as they pierce cells sooner. It is just a side effect that longer fibers tend to be a bigger diameter.
 








 
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