BJ Penn on health: what the evidence says · JRE #2032
SUBJECT: HEALTH
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
as kids we played in asbestos our whole lives we've cleaned it up thousands of times put it in trash bags... now nobody i haven't heard of anybody with asbestos i mean i could be wrong
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
BJ Penn suggested that childhood asbestos exposure was harmless because he hasn't personally heard of anyone getting sick from it. Asbestos is a well-established human carcinogen: exposure causes most cases of mesothelioma and increases risk of lung, laryngeal, and ovarian cancer, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute. A defining feature of asbestos-related disease is a long latency period, often decades between exposure and diagnosis, which the World Health Organization notes means illness and death from past exposure continue to appear for many years even after a country stops using the material. This latency means an individual's lack of personal awareness of nearby cases is not informative about safety, since symptomatic disease frequently does not surface until 20 to 40 years or more after exposure. Occupational exposure standards set by OSHA reflect that asbestos handling carries documented long-term cancer risk, and casual childhood exposure of the kind Penn describes is consistent with exposures documented in epidemiological studies as raising that risk.