Asbestos: the story on HearLore

Asbestos

Asbestos is a group of naturally occurring, fibrous silicate minerals that have been woven into human history for thousands of years, yet it remains one of the most dangerous substances on Earth. The word itself derives from the Greek term meaning unquenchable, a name given because ancient peoples discovered that this material could be spun into cloth that would not burn when exposed to fire. Archaeological evidence suggests that inhabitants of the Lake Juojärvi region in East Finland used asbestos to strengthen earthenware pots and cooking utensils as far back as 4,500 years ago, creating a style of pottery now known as asbestos-ceramic. Ancient cultures believed the substance was so resilient that they used it to make shrouds for burning the bodies of kings, ensuring that the royal ashes remained pure and separate from the wood of the funeral pyre. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder described the mineral in his first-century manuscript Natural History, noting that it was more expensive than pearls and coining the term asbestinon to describe its fire-resistant properties. For centuries, wealthy Persians amazed guests by cleaning asbestos cloths simply by throwing them into fire, a practice that led to the myth that the fiber was the fur of a salamander that lived in fire and died when exposed to water. Marco Polo recounted seeing a vein in a place he called Ghinghin talas where cloth was made that could not be burnt, and Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, is said to have possessed such a tablecloth. This ancient fascination with a material that could withstand the flames of destruction set the stage for its eventual industrial exploitation, though the true nature of the substance would remain hidden for millennia.

The Silent Killer Emerges

The first documented death related to asbestos occurred in 1906, but the true scale of the tragedy would not be understood until decades later. In 1898, the Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops in the United Kingdom noted the negative health effects of asbestos, a contribution made by Lucy Deane Streatfeild, one of the first women factory inspectors. By 1900, H. Montague Murray conducted a postmortem investigation at Charing Cross Hospital in London, discovering asbestos traces in the lungs of a young man who had died from pulmonary fibrosis after working for 14 years in an asbestos textile factory. The first diagnosis of asbestosis was made in the UK in 1924, following the death of Nellie Kershaw, a worker at Turner Brothers Asbestos in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. Pathologist William Edmund Cooke testified that his examination of her lungs indicated extensive fibrosis, in which were visible particles of mineral matter that originated from asbestos and were, beyond a reasonable doubt, the primary cause of her death. In 1930, a report commissioned by Parliament concluded that the development of asbestosis was irrefutably linked to the prolonged inhalation of asbestos dust, finding that 66% of those employed for 20 years or more suffered from the disease. Despite these early warnings, the asbestos industry concealed the dangers from the public, and court documents from the late 1970s proved that industry officials knew of the risks since the 1930s. The latency period from exposure until the diagnosis of negative health effects is typically 20 years, meaning that the consequences of exposure often do not arise until decades after the initial contact. Approximately 100,000 people in the United States have died, or are terminally ill, from asbestos exposure related to shipbuilding, with mesothelioma occurrence in the Hampton Roads area being seven times the national rate. Thousands of tons of asbestos were used in World War II ships to insulate piping, boilers, steam engines, and steam turbines, creating a hidden legacy of death that continues to claim lives today.

Common questions

What is asbestos and how was it used in ancient times?

Asbestos is a group of naturally occurring, fibrous silicate minerals that ancient peoples used to create fire-resistant cloth and strengthen earthenware pots. Inhabitants of the Lake Juojärvi region in East Finland used asbestos to make pottery as far back as 4,500 years ago, and ancient cultures used the material to create shrouds for burning the bodies of kings.

When did the first documented death from asbestos occur and who was the first diagnosed victim?

The first documented death related to asbestos occurred in 1906, but the first diagnosis of asbestosis was made in the UK in 1924 following the death of Nellie Kershaw. Pathologist William Edmund Cooke testified that her lungs contained visible particles of mineral matter that originated from asbestos and were the primary cause of her death.

Which countries currently ban asbestos and when did the United States implement a ban?

Sixty-six countries and territories, including all those in the European Union, have banned the use of asbestos, yet the United States remained one of the few developed countries to not completely ban asbestos until 2024. The US Environmental Protection Agency announced the Part 1 Chrysotile Asbestos rule banning chrysotile in six conditions of use by 2037.

What are the six types of asbestos minerals and which is the most common?

How many people die each year from diseases related to asbestos exposure and what are the most common diseases?

Around 255,000 people are thought to die each year from diseases related to asbestos exposure, and the most common diseases are asbestosis and mesothelioma. Asbestosis is the scarring of the lungs due to asbestos inhalation, and mesothelioma is an aggressive form of cancer that often leads to a life expectancy of less than 12 months after diagnosis.

The Industrial Gold Rush

Industrial-scale asbestos mining began in 1878 in Thetford township, Quebec, marking the start of a global boom that would transform the construction and manufacturing industries. Sir William Edmond Logan, head of the Geological Survey of Canada, was the first to notice the large deposits of chrysotile in the hills, and samples from there were displayed in London, eliciting much interest. With the opening of the Quebec Central Railway in 1876, mining entrepreneurs such as Andrew Stuart Johnson and William Henry Jeffrey established the asbestos industry in the province. The 50-ton output of the mines in 1878 rose to over 10,000 tonnes in the 1890s with the adoption of machine technologies and expanded production. For a long time, the world's largest asbestos mine was the Jeffrey Mine in the town of Asbestos, Quebec, which became a symbol of the industry's power. Asbestos production began in the Urals of the Russian Empire in the 1880s, and the Alpine regions of Northern Italy with the formation in Turin of the Italo-English Pure Asbestos Company in 1876, although this was soon swamped by the greater production levels from the Canadian mines. Mining also took off in South Africa from 1893 under the aegis of the British businessman Francis Oates, the director of the De Beers company, where the production of amosite began in 1910. The US asbestos industry had an early start in 1858 when fibrous anthophyllite was mined for use as asbestos insulation by the Johns Company, a predecessor to the current Johns Manville, at a quarry at Ward's Hill on Staten Island, New York. US production began in earnest in 1899 with the discovery of large deposits in Belvidere Mountain in Vermont. By 1973, US asbestos consumption hit a peak of 804,000 tons, and world asbestos demand peaked around 1977, with 25 countries producing nearly 4.8 million metric tons annually. The use of asbestos became increasingly widespread toward the end of the 19th century when its diverse applications included fire-retardant coatings, concrete, bricks, pipes and fireplace cement, heat-, fire-, and acid-resistant gaskets, pipe insulation, ceiling insulation, fireproof drywall, flooring, roofing, lawn furniture, and drywall joint compound. In 2011, it was reported that over 50% of UK houses still contained asbestos, despite a ban on asbestos products some years earlier.

The Six Faces of Danger

Six mineral types are defined by the EPA as asbestos, including those belonging to the serpentine class and those belonging to the amphibole class, and all six are known to be human carcinogens. Chrysotile, the only asbestos serpentine fiber, appears under the microscope as a white fiber and has been used more than any other type, accounting for about 95% of the asbestos found in buildings in America. Chrysotile is more flexible than amphibole asbestos and can be spun and woven into fabric, making it the most common component in products such as corrugated asbestos cement roofing, fire barriers in fuseboxes, pipe insulation, floor tiles, residential shingles, and gaskets for high-temperature equipment. Amphibole class fibers are needle-like, and members of this class include amosite, crocidolite, tremolite, anthophyllite, and actinolite. Amosite, often referred to as brown asbestos, is a trade name for the amphiboles belonging to the cummingtonite-grunerite solid solution series, commonly from South Africa, and is seen under a microscope as a grey-white vitreous fiber. Crocidolite, commonly known as blue asbestos, is the fibrous form of the amphibole riebeckite, found primarily in southern Africa, but also in Australia and Bolivia, and is seen under a microscope as a blue fiber. Crocidolite commonly occurs as soft friable fibers, and asbestos with particularly fine fibers is also referred to as amianthus. While mostly chrysotile asbestos fibers were once used in automobile brake pads, shoes, and clutch discs, contaminants of amphiboles were present. Since approximately the mid-1990s, brake pads, new or replacement, have been manufactured instead with linings made of ceramic, carbon, metallic, and aramid fiber. Cigarette manufacturer Lorillard used crocidolite asbestos in its Micronite filter from 1952 to 1956, a fact that has been the subject of controversy and legal action. Tremolite asbestos constituted a contaminant of many if not all naturally occurring chrysotile deposits, and other regulated asbestos minerals, such as actinolite and anthophyllite, are less commonly used industrially but can still be found in a variety of construction materials and insulation materials. All forms of asbestos are fibrillar in that they are composed of fibers with breadths less than 1 micrometer in bundles of very great widths, and the visible fibers are themselves each composed of millions of microscopic fibrils that can be released by abrasion and other processes.

The Global Health Crisis

Around 255,000 people are thought to die each year from diseases related to asbestos exposure, a figure that continues to rise despite the substance being banned in many countries. The most common diseases associated with chronic asbestos exposure are asbestosis, the scarring of the lungs due to asbestos inhalation, and mesothelioma, a type of cancer that is an aggressive form of cancer and often leads to a life expectancy of less than 12 months after diagnosis. All types of asbestos fibers are known to represent serious health hazards in humans and animals, and amosite and crocidolite are considered the most hazardous asbestos fiber types. However, chrysotile asbestos has also produced tumors in animals and is a recognized cause of asbestosis and malignant mesothelioma in humans, and mesothelioma has been observed in people who were occupationally exposed to chrysotile, family members of the occupationally exposed, and residents who lived close to asbestos factories and mines. During the 1980s and again in the 1990s, the asbestos industry suggested at times that the process of making asbestos cement could neutralize the asbestos, either via chemical processes or by causing the cement to attach to the fibers and changing their physical size, but subsequent studies showed that this was untrue and that decades-old asbestos cement, when broken, releases asbestos fibers identical to those found in nature, with no detectable alteration. Exposure to asbestos in the form of fibers is always considered dangerous, and working with, or exposure to, material that is friable, or materials or works that could cause the release of loose asbestos fibers, is considered high risk. In general, people who become ill from inhaling asbestos have been regularly exposed in a job where they worked directly with the material. The US Occupational Safety and Administration has standards to protect workers from the hazards of exposure to asbestos in the workplace, with the permissible exposure limit for asbestos being 0.1 fiber per cubic centimeter of air as an eight-hour time-weighted average, with an excursion limit of 1.0 asbestos fibers per cubic centimeter over a 30-minute period. Despite these regulations, the consequences of exposure can take decades to arise, and the latency period from exposure until the diagnosis of negative health effects is typically 20 years.

The Ban and The Breakthrough

Worldwide, 66 countries and territories, including all those in the European Union, have banned the use of asbestos, yet the United States remained one of the few developed countries to not completely ban asbestos until 2024. In 1989, the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued the Asbestos Ban and Phase-Out Rule, but in 1991, asbestos industry supporters challenged and overturned the ban in a landmark lawsuit: Corrosion Proof Fittings v. Environmental Protection Agency. The ruling left many consumer products that can still legally contain trace amounts of asbestos, and six categories of asbestos-containing products are however banned, including corrugated paper, rollboard, commercial paper, specialty paper, flooring felt and any new uses of asbestos. In 2024, the EPA announced the Part 1 Chrysotile Asbestos rule banning chrysotile in six conditions of use by 2037, and the Alan Reinstein Ban Asbestos Now Act has been reintroduced in Congress. In Australia, the use of crocidolite was banned in 1967, while the use of amosite continued in the construction industry until the mid-1980s, and it was finally banned from building products in 1989, though it remained in gaskets and brake linings until the 31st of December 2003. The town of Wittenoom, in Western Australia, was built around a blue asbestos mine, and the entire town continues to be contaminated and has been disincorporated, allowing local authorities to remove references to Wittenoom from maps and road signs. In January 2024, asbestos was found in garden mulch supplied to dozens of sites including parks, playgrounds and schools across Sydney, triggering the Sydney asbestos mulch crisis. In Japan, revelations that hundreds of workers had died in the country over the previous few decades from diseases related to asbestos sparked a scandal in mid-2005, and the Japanese government did not ban crocidolite and amosite until 1995, and a near-complete ban with a few exceptions on asbestos was implemented in 2006, with the remaining exceptions being removed in March 2012 for a full-fledged ban. In South Korea, a full-fledged ban on all types of asbestos occurred in January 2009, and in 2011, South Korea became the world's sixth country to enact an asbestos harm aid act, which entitles any Korean citizen to free lifetime medical care as well as monthly income from the government if they are diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease.

The Lingering Legacy

Despite the global ban on asbestos in many countries, around 255,000 people are thought to die each year from diseases related to asbestos exposure, and many developing countries still support the use of asbestos as a building material. Russia was the largest producer with 53% of the world total in 2017, followed by Kazakhstan, China, and Brazil, and Asia consumes some 70% of the asbestos produced in the world with China, India and Indonesia the largest consumers. In Vietnam, chrysotile asbestos is not banned and is still widely used, and Vietnam is one of the top 10 asbestos users in the world, with an annual import volume of about 65,000 to 70,000 tons of chrysotile. About 90% of the imported asbestos is used to produce about 100 million square meters of cement roofing sheets, and according to one study, among 300 families in Yen Bai, Thanh Hoa, 85% of households use asbestos roofing sheets, but only 5% know about the negative health effects. In Mexico, as a result of increased regulation of asbestos in Europe and in the United States, there was a massive transfer of asbestos-processing enterprises to the country, and asbestos is used in many products, including roofing, boilers, pipes, brakes, and wires, produced by over 2,000 Mexican companies, many of them subsidiaries or subcontractors of US companies, and sold throughout the Americas. In 2000, 58% of Mexican asbestos-containing exports went to the United States, and 40% to Central American countries and Cuba. The demolition of buildings containing large amounts of asbestos-based materials pose particular problems for builders and property developers, and such buildings often have to be deconstructed piece by piece, or the asbestos has to be painstakingly removed before the structure can be razed by mechanical or explosive means. Asbestos can be destroyed by ultra-high-temperature incineration and plasma melting process, and a process of thermal decomposition at 1,000 degrees Celsius produces a mixture of non-hazardous silicon-based wastes, and at temperatures above 1,500 degrees Celsius it produces silicate glass. The combination of oxalic acid with ultrasound fully degrades chrysotile asbestos fibers, and microwave thermal treatment can be used in an industrial manufacturing process to transform asbestos and asbestos-containing waste into porcelain stoneware tiles, porous single-fired wall tiles, and ceramic bricks. The mining company R T Vanderbilt Co of Gouverneur, New York, which supplied the talc to the crayon makers, states that to the best of their knowledge and belief there had never been any asbestos-related disease among the company's workers, but media reports claim that the United States Mine Safety and Health Administration had found asbestos in four talc samples tested in 2000. On the 12th of July 2018, a Missouri jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay a record 4.69 billion dollars to 22 women who alleged the company's talc-based products, including its baby powder, contain asbestos and caused them to develop ovarian cancer.

The Future of a Forbidden Material

The potential for use of asbestos to mitigate climate change has been raised, and although the adverse aspects of mining of minerals, including health effects, must be taken into account, exploration of the use of mineral wastes to sequester carbon is being studied. The most common type of asbestos, chrysotile, chemically reacts with carbon dioxide to produce ecologically stable magnesium carbonate, and chrysotile, like all types of asbestos, has a large surface area that provides more places for chemical reactions to occur, compared to most other naturally occurring materials. Fiberglass insulation was invented in 1938 and is now the most commonly used type of insulation material, and the safety of this material has also been called into question due to similarities in material structure. In 1978, a highly texturized fiberglass fabric, called Zetex, was invented by Bal Dixit, and it is less dense than asbestos but offers the same bulk, thickness, hand, feel, and abrasion resistance. In Europe, mineral wool and glass wool are the main insulators in houses, and many companies that produced asbestos-cement products that were reinforced with asbestos fibers have developed products incorporating organic fibers. One such product, known as Eternit, and another, Everite, now use Nutec which consists of organic fibers, portland cement and silica, and cement-bonded wood fiber is another substitute. Stone fibers are used in gaskets and friction materials, and another potential fire-resistant material is polybenzimidazole or PBI, a synthetic fiber which has a high melting point of 427 degrees Celsius and does not ignite. Because of its exceptional thermal and chemical stability, it is often used by fire departments and space agencies. In most developed countries, asbestos is typically disposed of as hazardous waste in designated landfill sites, and the demolition of buildings containing large amounts of asbestos-based materials pose particular problems for builders and property developers. The United States Environmental Protection Agency governs the removal and disposal of asbestos strictly, and companies that remove asbestos must comply with EPA licensing. Anytime one of these asbestos contractors performs work a test consultant has to conduct strict testing to ensure the asbestos is completely removed. The combination of oxalic acid with ultrasound fully degrades chrysotile asbestos fibers, and microwave thermal treatment can be used in an industrial manufacturing process to transform asbestos and asbestos-containing waste into porcelain stoneware tiles, porous single-fired wall tiles, and ceramic bricks. The future of asbestos remains a complex issue, balancing the need for fire-resistant materials with the undeniable health risks that have claimed millions of lives over the past century.