I think back to my high school days in science class. Every once in a while we would have to heat up a beaker of something. There were stands on the lab tables with a burner underneath, an adjustable metal ring is where you would place the beaker above the burner. There was a small mat that you would put on the ring and then place the beaker on it, well the teacher would pull out this box full of the little mats and toss them to each student. This he did carefully because the mats were about 1/8 thick pure asbestos and, if they landed wrong, would break, you could see a bit of dust floating up when this happened.
We, not knowing any better, never gave it a thought. I remember heating benzine one time and smell it gave off. There was a big the bottle of mercury that we weren't supposed to open, not because it was toxic, but because of what happened when it spilled. When teach wasn't looking we did anyway. We would mess around and pour it into the palms of our hands, we spilled a lot of it... Then there's the stuff we were told to be careful with and not mess around... of course, tell a bunch of high school kids not to mess with something... Thank God there was nothing radioactive, well i don't think there was..
Today, they'd evacuate the school, send hazmat suited people in, tear down the building, bury it somewhere and we'd all see it on the 6 o'clock news..
Yeah, I'm probably missing cells somewhere and if I get some disease, I probably look back at those high school days and wonder..
Arsenic in rice? I eat a lot of rice.. what will they do with me when i die? I'm practically hazmat myself.
