If you breath it in, it never goes away and stays in your lungs.
It must be like silicosis, the disease that my granfather died from: he worked in an iron mine in Normandy, near Falaise (around 60,000 brave Americans died there, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falaise_Pocket ). The miners used to say it was worse than working in coal mines because one can cough out some of the coal dust, but the iron ore stayed in the lungs.
When I was a kid, I would go to see the family each summer and one of our favourite spots for playing was on the "mountain", where they would dump all the scories. When I think of it now...
But dumping sites, junkyards, even landfills were great adventure playgrounds for us kids. Later, I went with my father to find copper, lead or aluminium there. We would then sell it, buy smoked herrings -and a bottle of wine for him, make an open fire, and... yum-yum.
...
I should do DNA testing one day, must have some gypsy genes
