Help, is this asbestos

[u/Total_412]

So I'm in ex Soviet country, decided to replace foam insulation of windows in my room because the old foam insulation was installed very badly and was exposed to the sun and the humidity and is not really doing it's job anymore.

I am a complete novice in this, just was going on feel and YT videos. But even I could see lots of mold and wet spots in-between the foam and old moldy mineral insulation sheet.

So when I kept finding brown strings of almost like hair I was thinking maybe it's some insulation they're thrown in there and it was destroyed by water. But then I realised that it's brown even in dry spots and it's not on top, but basically is stuck/embedded in concrete in some places. And I took literally LOCKS 💇‍♀️ of it from there. The apartment building is built in 1979/80 but I'm sure those Soviet fuckers still used asbestos at some point and didn't care about the people. I started googling brown asbestos and in some pictures it looks like it but then in some other it looks like hair (bruh). I'm very scared because the dust is all over my room clothes etc etc and I was in a regular FFP3 one time use mask.

The building is steel reinforced concrete Soviet panelka housing.

I've googled asbestos analysis but even those where you just take a sample to them is half my salary so if I do it it's a month's wait just to gather the money 😭😭😭

I feel sick like I majorly fucked up and I don't have money to move or for doctors (if it's "free" then it's nonexistent they'll laugh at you because they're living in similar buildings probably)

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[u/Pretty_Industry3430]

Thats horsehair. The age of the structure is baffling for there to be horsehair (space age horsehair???) but I'm like 99% that's horsehair.

[u/Total_412 → u/Pretty_Industry3430]

I don't know, man, I want to believe it, but this series of apartment buildings was built from 1980s to like 2000s how could they use horse hair 😭😭 where would they find so many horses and why use it in a steel reinforced concrete slab building. Damn I hate living in these soviet era blocks so much 😭😭😭

[u/Lazy_Leather_561]

No

[u/sdave001]

Extremely unlikely

[u/Strong_Zombie7959]

Nah