Anybody ever heard of someone getting lung cancer from digging?

[longtimefree]

Originally Posted by Jesse walker

whats there to flame? those are good points. some on that list are just hard to avoid.
every work place has a material that "casues" cancer.(im typing on it as i speak)
they finally say cell phones do
clean air? hehe not in Texas or any other industrial state.
clean water? maybe if you live on a glacier but then again im sure they would find some ancient microbe in there thats bad.
no home with a ac,copper tubing,paint,laminates,tiles or stone, is free from toxic chemicals and materials.


Now, I hope you dont take what i said the wrong way. My point was lifes too short to worry about getting cancer from digging. thats just the sillest thing ever. sure if you are going in a sealed tomb you should wear a mask but come on, people are taking this stuff over board.

now they say everything in one way shape or form causes cancer. you cant worry about everything you do. Lifes just toooooooooo short to constantly keep up with the what ifs.


as for your post, i see nothing wrong with it at all. and i would agree. im speaking though from a cdc stand point where they come out every day with a new cancer causing agent. now they are saying COFFEE AND TEA are suspect, when before they said they were the opposite. its enough to just make you sit there

i think we were all just sittin askin our selves a question and wondering at it , i say no ones gonna quit lookin even if you prove its cancerous, well all figure out away around it, and still hunt arrowheads

[arrow719]

Originally Posted by Wichita

I used to work in a limestone quarry, and in the crusher rooms, and the mills there would be fine dust in the air so thick that you couldn't see 3 feet in front of you. Silicossis was a major concern. Even wearing professionaly fitted respirators couldn't keep all of the dust/silica out. Sometimes I would cough for several minutes at a time. I haven't worked there for 2 years, but the 10 years I spent there took there effect on me. I still have coughing spells.

As far as lung cancer goes, my mothers sister never smoked a day in her life, but got lung cancer from 2nd hand smoke from her husband.

There's a ghost town in Nevada nick named the Widow Maker. Literally 100's of miners were dying but nobody knew why. It was years later that they learned about silicosis.

Delamar, Nevada - The Widow Maker Mining Camp

[jav_007]

well needless to say after reading all the info thats been going on in this thread i'm definitely wearing a lil mask when i throw backdirt. with it being all dried up in texas and me digging 3 days a week its worth the precaution.

[Mojave]

Originally Posted by arrow719

There's a ghost town in Nevada nick named the Widow Maker. Literally 100's of miners were dying but nobody knew why. It was years later that they learned about silicosis.

Delamar, Nevada - The Widow Maker Mining Camp

I bet a bunch of those dead miners had "the Con".
It wiped out many a camp.

[Flyjunkie]

You got to be very careful diggin at [b]Sharktooth Hill[/i] just east of Bakersfield by the town of Oildale.. there's a fungus, that is nicknamed "Valley fever" that will get into your lungs and can really mess up some folks. the only time we went there we wore painter's filter masks and had no problems.. we did find a few nice shark teeth, so the risk was worth it.. i guess??

[arrow719]

Originally Posted by Mojave

I bet a bunch of those dead miners had "the Con".
It wiped out many a camp.

I hadn't heard of "the con" so I googled it. Turns out silicosis and the con are one in the same. Here's a copy & paste about it, nasty stuff!

Silicosis, or as the miners called it, "the e="25"> con," is a lung disease, like Asbestosis or Black and Brown Lung disease. It comes from massive air-borne exposure to silica, which is the world's most abundant mineral. In mining operations, such as blasting and drilling, great clouds of dust are created and within that dust is silica. In the old days the bosses made no effort to keep the dust down. Once a miner got "dusted" as they called catching "the con," the miner did not last long. It starts out with a shortness of breath and slowly the miner suffocates to death. There is no real treatment for silicosis, other than to stop working in the mines at the first symptoms. But since most miners were trapped in their field of work, they would keep working until they could not carry on any longer. Then most of them would slowly die a long and penniless death. In later years, as the result of a bitter struggle for safety, water hoses were connected to the jack-legs (drilling machines) that would cut down on the dust. Though this did prolong the lives of the miners, it did not eliminate "the con" all together.

[kirby]

And so, the endless daytime commercials of lawyers trolling for clients........................