I got whammied with a virus and my brain wasn't working so well, and then you guys somehow double the post count while I was nursing my wounds so I had to catch up. This gets a little lengthy, but these links got posted as saying cotton caused cancer, and while I am not an expert, I wanted to help break these down so people can understand them and make up their own mind.
Yes, ceramic fiber is a known carcinogen when inhaled. I never argued that.
It's even more than a carcinogen in how it acts, though in fairness the research lately seems to be pointing at the scarring permanently messing with lung function -- but good we have more common ground!
I pull away from the cancer stuff in general, even with smoking, where you're really talking about ~10% of smokers dying from cancer. But ~10% is not the number when you start talking about permanent chronic bronchitis or COPD, etc.
What I'm arguing is whether or not the ceramic fiber they use is a carcinogen when used in the way it's designed.
What evidence or reasoning do you have that it is? It's an honest question. I've simply seen no evidence -- even the design itself -- that would suggest it makes fiberglass or ceramic fibers safe to use when used as designed.
I think I covered this before: the burden of proof is not on the users, it's on the 4 year old manufacturing company Shenzen Eigate/Aspire selling coils out of fiberglass/ceramic paper. A 4-year-old company that has been shown to be misleading at best in it's marketing (fraud at worst) in the past, and in some cases is saying nonsensical things -- "even if xyz, we have the metal screen."
And the same goes for cotton. I'm curious about how you feel about these studies that explain the health risks associated with the inhalation of cotton fibers and the smoke from burnt cotton (hint: both cause cancer)
This is kind of an apples to pears thing, and I see from your latest posts you consider yourself a skeptic, as do I -- and we have to be careful we aren't falling into the false equivalency fallacy. This happens to all of us depending on our current biases.
While cotton lung from long-term huge amounts of cotton dust is real, and black lung from working in a coal mine is real, and any form of smoke inhallation is bad for you (as I said earlier, even campfires), they are not equivalents to what we're talking about.
Being OK with the risk of cotton being singed now and again doesn't mean you have to be OK with fiberglass being burned, and being OK being around a campfire now and again or walking down the street around cars doesn't mean you have to be OK with smoking cigarettes. The fact that you smoked while addicted to nicotine doesn't mean you have to be OK with fiberglass wicks.
Diffuse lung disease caused by cotton fibre inhalation
Thorax | Mobile
I actually found this to be really interesting, thanks for passing it on. For those too busy to read, I'm going to take the time to break this down and hopefully others can fill in the gaps. This isn't a scientific paper as you'd normally think of it, and it doesn't say that cotton fibers cause cancer -- but we'll get to that.
This is a medical writeup -- if you are a doctor and something unusual happens, like you come across a third eye or or you do an unusual treatment that works or doesn't work, you can document it and publish it, etc. I'm simplifying, but the point is that it is not a control-study or such.
There's something called pneumoconiosis, where your lungs don't work as they should, and is caused by inhaling large amounts of particulates/dust over time. Depending on what causes it (cotton, iron, silica, etc.) it can have different names. Byssinosis, or brown lung (black lung is lotsa coal dust) -- it basically only exists in those working in cotton/hemp/flax factories in the South or overseas. It is thought to either be from the fibers themselves coating the lungs over time, or from types of bacteria that grow on the cotton that elicit a bad immune response when the body tries to deal with them in the lungs.
If you're exposed to inhaling massive amounts of it dust/fibers carrying it, like in a cotton factory over decades, your lungs can get coated, the immune system can go nuts, and you end up with lung scarring. Generally it's thought your body just absorbs or expels the stuff, which is isn't able to do with the other types. To be clear: completely coating your lungs with types of dust seems to be a bad idea for obvious reasons, but in general smaller amounts of organic fibers (and a few non-organic) are considered safe.
In this case, doctors found a tumor-esque growth in the lungs of a guy, who was showing no symptoms of byssinosis (decreased lung function, etc.) and his lung function tests were fine. The man worked in a futon factory for *50 years*, constantly being exposed to cotton dust with zero protection. You might expect to see byssinosis based on what we've discussed, but there were none, so they biopsied the granuloma and found some fibers.
They then heated the fiber to a high temp, and since it didn't melt they concluded it was probably organic. They don't actually know that it is cotton fibers, but since he and his lungs are covered in the stuff and due to where he works, it makes sense. More importantly,
they don't really know that it even caused the granuloma, just that some fibers got incorporated into it while it was growing.
They documented and put it out there. They say themselves that this "may" be the first piece of evidence found showing that some cotton fibers may have started a cancer reaction, and then they back away from it really quickly, because there isn't much evidence for it except that some cotton fibers were there -- but they were also all over his lungs for 50 years, and it could easily be that he developed a tumor that grew around some fibers kind of like how a tree will grow around a tool left in it.
There's been ~50 years of science studying organic fibers, and little to nothing showing cancer -- including this, honestly.
They all show that inhaling massive amounts of any just about any fibers/debris will put the hurt on your lungs, and even cause permanent damage -- but you inhale cotton fibers when you put on your shirt and you're OK.
Why I'm grateful: As was pointed out by yourself, organic does not always mean safer, and I hadn't had possible carriers (like bacteria) on non-sterile organic cotton in my head.
Impact ofCarbon Monoxide on CardiopulmonaryDysfunctionAfterSmoke Inhalation Injury
http://circres.ahajournals.org/content/66/1/69.full.pdf
I'm not fully sure about the point you were trying to make about this, but since you said it backs up that cotton causes cancer I read through.
Some scientists were studying smoke-inhalation, and how it affects cardio-vasucular stuff. They took some sheep and knocked them out, cut a bunch of holes and implanted gadgets in their hearts and such. They modified a bee-smoker hooked up to some bellows that had a bit of ignited cotton towel in it.
They knocked the animals out, put them on a ventilator, and then pushed sixteen breaths of smoke into their lungs to intentionally simulate smoke-inhalation damage. They'd go back to the ventilator for 3 minutes, then another sixteen of pure smoke. They did this four times, for 64 breaths of pure cotton-smoke dreaminess. As a control, they did the whole ventilator setup for two more groups: one with just O2 and with with carbon monoxide (CO).
CO is what will put you to sleep before the fire kills you in the house, or how people die from running cars in the garage, and you get high levels of it in your blood when you smoke cigarettes. The main difference here between CO-poisonined & the smoke-inhalation group (which also got CO) was that the smoke group had some pretty nasty damage done to their lungs.
The only role cotton plays here is that it's a common way to generate smoke for a beesmoker. Again, we've known even sitting around a campfire isn't great for you and it's why some asthmatics have issues with it. But equating "well if you singe the cotton on your RDA, that's not good for you so how can you complain about fiberglass" is falling into a fallacy.
