Unfortunately, yes. Asbestos used to be highly used in America. It was a very useful mineral and it could be found in a lot of products. A lot of the products that it could be found in were used for construction. Construction and the related industries were huge consumers of asbestos-related products. If it weren’t for the use of asbestos in these industries, we would have a lot fewer problems with asbestos today. However, they were sadly used a lot in construction, which is one of the main reasons that we have so many problems with asbestos-related diseases today. 

Nowadays, we know that asbestos is extremely dangerous. We didn’t always know this, however. We used to create a ton of products that contained asbestos, all the while not knowing how dangerous asbestos can be. After all of the health complications that were arising started being traced back to asbestos, scientists and researchers eventually came to the conclusion that asbestos was the culprit for a lot of these problems. If we hadn’t found this out, we still to this day would be developing asbestos related diseases. That would be extremely bad, as a lot of the asbestos related diseases that we deal with now are mainly in older people who had exposure to asbestos years ago.

After the scientists and researchers found out that asbestos was dangerous to the general population, governmental agencies started to ban their use. Lots of products were no longer allowed to contain asbestos, as we had found out exactly how much damage they were doing to people. There are so many health issues that come with inhaling or coming into contact with asbestos, and we as a nation were not about to put up with those health issues anymore. So, the EPA took action and asbestos is now heavily regulated in the US. 

However, asbestos is not fully banned in the United States. It is actually just heavily regulated. This has caused a lot of controversy over the years amongst many different groups and organizations. Some companies claim that they really need asbestos to create their products. They say that asbestos is a key element to the products they create and that their use isn’t actually harming any of their workers. On the other hand, other groups and organizations want asbestos to be completely banned in the United States, not just partially banned. They say that the risk of using asbestos is not worth it for our nation. We should not have to deal with the terrible effects of asbestos related diseases.

Since this is such a huge issue, the EPA will be meeting to further discuss the asbestos ban. The EPA will be looking at multiple aspects of asbestos and how it affects the environment, people, and other things to see if it really needs to have more restrictions. If asbestos does get banned, it could cause a lot of problems for the industries that still use the dangerous mineral.