A worker will encircle the gash and the surrounding pipe in a glove bag, which isolates the asbestos from ambient air, and then replace the insulation. Asbestos hazards result mainly from inhalation Asbestos waste requires some special handling. Yet compared to other dangerous wastes, it poses relatively little hazard. Once asbestos is buried in a landfill, it poses little hazard. Asbestos only poses a problem when airborne, he added.
Asbestos fibers can be as little as three micrometers wide.
When inhaled, the fibers irritate the lungs, and can cause shortness of breath in very large doses. Once inhaled, asbestos can gradually degrade lung efficiency, and increases the risk of getting lung cancer at high levels of exposure. But often the cancer does not appear for decades. Asbestos may also pose a hazard at low levels of exposure, but there the data is much less clear. Asbestos is actually a generic name for several different minerals with similar chemical structures, some of which pose greater hazards than others.