Some silicon substances are harmful to human body, such as asbestos. Asbestos is a fibrous siliceous mineral. Long-term inhalation will cause damage to lung tissue, and these tiny asbestos fibers will be deposited in alveoli, which will lead to gradual fibrosis of lung tissue and then affect the function of lung gas exchange.
Because asbestos fiber is invisible to the naked eye, ordinary people can't stop its spread. There is no safety limit for the risk of exposure to asbestos. Basically all kinds of asbestos can cause cancer. So far, there is no medicine, surgery or radiotherapy to treat asbestos-related diseases.
In addition, asbestos can also cause lung cancer, pleural mesothelioma and benign pleural lesions. People with asbestosis may be complicated with bronchitis and pulmonary heart disease due to extensive pulmonary fibrosis, leading to heart failure and death.
The dust of quartz sand is extremely fine, and its specific surface area exceeds 100㎡/g, so it can be suspended in the air. If people inhale dust containing quartz sand for a long time, they will suffer from silicosis (because silicon is called silicon and silicosis is called silicosis).
Silicosis is an occupational disease, and its occurrence and severity depend on the content of dust in the air, the content of quartz sand in the dust and the time of contact with people. People who work in places with high quartz sand dust content for a long time, such as mining, sand turning, sand blasting, ceramics making, refractory making and other places, are prone to this disease.
Therefore, in these workplaces with more dust, strict labor protection measures should be taken, and various technologies and equipment should be adopted to control the dust content in the workplace to ensure the health of workers.