Is This Deadly Story Happening Across America

[gab13by13]

I ran into a friend at the grocery store yesterday. He is a water expert, a scientist, former president of the fish commission and was instrumental in restoring our local streams. I met him back in the 70's when we fought to protect our town's pristine watershed from gas frackers and coal strippers. Yup, he got death threats.

Our town has some of the purest water in the country, but it is delivered by cement pipes that used asbestos to seal the joints. The past 4 years we got notices that our drinking water exceeds the allowable % of asbestos. My friend told me the story about being called to our local car wash where the owner complained about low water pressure. My friend took samples of his water and discovered that it was full of asbestos. My friend went to our borough and water authority to report the asbestos, they wanted nothing to do with him, they covered it up. He was upset because he offered to help them get grants to work on solving the problem, but was turned down. My friend told the car wash owner about his rejection so the car wash owner went on social media and raised holy hell, let everyone know about the asbestos in the water, so that's when we started getting notices about excessive asbestos.

How many other towns, cities are there that used cement pipes back in the 70's that sealed them with an asbestos compound?

At the grocery store my friend got visibly upset, he said, people are dying and they don't care. He said that the asbestos would cause lung issues and cancer. I told him I put a filter on my water line. He asked how many microns was it rated at, I told him 5 microns. (it will stop particles 5 microns or larger) He told me, not good enough, I needed either a 1 or 2 micron filter which I just ordered yesterday.

Hey people who have water lines that were installed around the 70's, better check and see if they used cement pipes that used an asbestos compound, I am talking main water lines. If they did I suggest putting in a 1 or 2 micron water filter because your water authority may be covering up the asbestos. It is a tremendous cost to replace all of the main water lines in a town or city, so they cover it up.

[Lovie777]

1. Damn..........

[70sEraVet]

2. It's amazing how many construction materials were made from asbestos!

It was in our homes, workplaces, even our automobiles!
Being in our water pipes is a new one to me.

[gab13by13]

3. Just in a certain type of cement pipe

that used a compound that contained asbestos to seal the joints, after time the asbestos erodes into the water.

In the 80's they used cast iron pipes which is another story.

The day I installed my filter, I immediately saw white flakes of asbestos.

[70sEraVet]

5. When I was in the Navy, I worked on the boilers on the ships.

So far, so good.

[TBF]

11. You're very lucky -

my dad and at least one other guy I know about (Navy, mid 60's) handled things on those ships that resulted in debilitating injuries. My dad's psoriasis while in the Navy was noted in his records, and he has been retired for decades (he ended up with a disfiguring psoriatic arthritis). Thankfully he is near a good VA hospital, from what I've read that is sort of luck of the draw. He was on the west coast and lord knows what they were hauling to Asia.

[70sEraVet]

12. Sorry about your Dad TBF

You're right -- I HAVE been lucky. But you never know what is around the corner, waiting for you.
I'm grateful that I'm still healthy enough to enjoy my life in my early 70's.

[popsdenver]

13. A friend of mine

worked on Navy Ships during Viet Nam. His job was scraping all the asbestos off old pipes that needed to be repaired or replaced. No Mask or Respirator.........

He contracted? mesothelioma, about ten years after leaving the navy. He was promised, like so many others, a settlement would be made......he died a few months from his lung ailment and still no settlement has been reached.....nearly SIXTY YEARS LATER.....

[TBF]

14. Oh my goodness -

that is crazy. Was he part of a lawsuit or something?

My dad was well taken care of, but this was just local VA reps looking out for him, I think. There was no legal action or anything like that. I remember going along to a couple of different hospitals for assessments and my dad retiring when I was in high school. He was working at a factory, and they had him driving forklift because it was about the only thing he could do with his rapidly declining joints. He held out until he hit the 15-year mark for a small pension. Then the VA "retired" him with a pension and social security. They started doing operations to replace joints with pins. He also agreed to take methotrexate (it was new for arthritis at that time); and still takes it. The hope was that the methotrexate would keep his shoulders and hips from getting worse. He's 80 now and no wheelchair. He has gone to the same hospital all these years.

[70sEraVet]

21. Veteran's organizations (VFW, American Legion and DAV) have excellent Reps

for helping file for VA benefits. And most counties have trained Veteran's Services reps on their payrolls. There is no need for a Veteran to have to navigate the process on their own.

[70sEraVet]

20. Sorry about your friend, popsdenver.

[GoodRaisin]

18. I sailed on two of those ships. I didn't work in the boiler room but I had a friend that

was a BT. I hope he made it through life okay.

[RVN VET71]

22. A friend of mine once put a damper on a discussion about education

"Practically every school in America has asbestos in the roofing and rafters. We're all going to die from the poisoning, so why bother with school?"

This was a way back in the 70's so, while he may have exaggerated the threat a bit, his remarks was a kind of "ahead of its time alert."

[BeneteauBum]

4. Like everything else

The current political polity would rather ignore or cover up issues that impact health or the environment in general. The same story over and over again: it costs money.

Peace ☮️

[erronis]

6. And it costs human lives to do nothing. Shows us what they think of the value of life....

Last edited Fri Jun 26, 2026, 10:33 AM - Edit history (1)

[infullview]

7. Ahhh, but if your Trump, or anyone in congress covered by insurance

Spare no expense, because their lives are worth more than the people who elected them. That’s what defines “equality” in the US now. Race, religion, healthcare, housing, schools, and public water all on the chopping block for our fascist asshole leader of “free world”. Tax breaks for the rich… let them eat cake.

[SCantiGOP]

8. The biggest danger is from inhaling asbestos

Since it doesn’t break down in the body, ingesting asbestos is potentially harmful, but not near as bad as inhaling the fibers.

[Wicked Blue]

9. Your friend could contact the state's department of environmental protection

or possibly the agency that regulates utilities.
Or go to the media.
This is serious stuff.

[Fla Dem]

10. Our water has such a chemical taste to it we no longer drink it or give it to our cats.

Theoretically this is how our drinking water is processed.

It is drawn from deep wells in the Upper Floridan Aquifer and a surficial aquifer. It is treated using a multi-step process that includes low-pressure reverse osmosis / nanofiltration, followed by aeration and free chlorine disinfection.

Same water we've have been drinking the last 25 years, but now has a very chemical taste to it. We buy about 3-4 1 gallon bottles of pure spring water each week for our drinking/cooking needs.

[PJMcK]

15. We're pretty lucky

Our house is in the Catskills Mountains and there’s no one uphill from us. Our well was drilled to 175 feet and the water is delicious and pure.

We’re fortunate.

[canetoad]

16. Interesting article from the BBC

Since the early 1900s many water pipes were concrete with added asbestos for increased tensile strength. This piping has a lifespan of 50-70 years and is failing - right now.

I wondered about ingested asbestos; the dangers of inhalation are well documented but there is disagreement about asbestos in drinking water.

Asbestos is a known carcinogen to humans, meaning it is capable of causing cancer. When asbestos fibres become airborne and are inhaled, they are known to lodge in the lungs and other parts of the airways, where they can cause scarring, inflammation, asbestosis – an inflammatory condition leading to permanent lung damage – and cell damage that lead to cancers, including mesothelioma, an incurable cancer of the lining that covers organs such as the lungs. For decades, however, the risk from swallowing asbestos has been thought of as small as most fibres were assumed to pass through the gut and be expelled in faeces.

Currently, the World Health Organisation (WHO) does not consider ingestion of asbestos in drinking water to be a serious risk to human health. The evidence is contradictory, with some epidemiological studies showing a correlation between asbestos exposure through drinking water and incidences of stomach and gut cancers. But others have failed to find such a link, and animal studies have also not provided definitive evidence that it can lead to cancers in the gastrointestinal tract.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240124-asbestos-in-drinking-water-an-overlooked-health-risk

The UK and Australia and heaven knows how many other countries have thousands of miles of this concrete/asbestos water pipe. From the same BBC article:

"My concern is that it is in drinking water," says Arthur Frank, professor of public health and professor of medicine at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He is one of the leading international experts on asbestos and has been sounding the alarm about ingestion as a possible mechanism for asbestos-related conditions. "The risk may not be great. But it is generally accepted that there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos."

[BidenRocks]

17. "Full of Asbestos"

The sciency part of me has a need to understand the scale of this, and 'full of' is not quantifiable.
From AI: In California, the legal limit for asbestos in drinking water is 7 million fibers per liter (MFL) for fibers longer than 10 micrometers.
That's a start.

[Lonestarblue]

19. People seem to have all the money needed to fight fake culture wars but none to fix actual problems.

I'm so tired of a country where over a third or more people believe that it is more important to push to turn the US government into one ruled by their extremist interpretation of the Bible than to actually work to make sure we have affordable healthcare accessible by all citizens, healthy food and water untainted by chemicals and old infrastructure, affordable housing, and safe public infrastructure. All those Republicans who want to force women to have babies vote for Republicans who then give protections to the big corporations to poison the food those babies eat. The Guardian recently reported a study in Seattle that found serious concentrations of chemicals in breast milk--chemicals like preservatives that affect brain and physical development in babies and children. Such chemicals are far more likely to cause autism than vaccines and should be researched, but our research dollars are being used instead to prove that vaccines are the cause simply because a few people refuse to believe dozens of studies showing no correlation.

[Historic NY]

23. Our water comes off the NYC Aqueduct

we also have deep wells unfortunately its treated with a variety of salts for manganese. I do filter my water coming in from the main.
The water if left to dry in a glass leaves a residue from the salts (softening) The town provides a water quality report several times a years.