History of Asbestos

Asbestos has been used for more than 2,000 years. It was named by the Ancient Greeks, its name meaning "inextinguishable". The Greeks also noted its harmful biological effects. Even though the Greek geographer Strabo and the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder both observed the "sickness of the lungs" in the slaves that wove asbestos into cloth, they were in such awe of asbestos' seemingly magical properties that they ignored the symptoms.

The Greeks used asbestos for the wicks of the eternal flames of the vestal virgins, as the funeral dress for the cremation of kings, and as napkins. It is rumored that Romans would clean asbestos napkins by throwing them in the fire. The asbestos cloth would come out of the fire whiter than it went in, so the Romans named asbestos "amiantus", meaning "unpolluted".

Use of asbestos declined during the Middle Ages, yet some say that Charlemagne had asbestos tablecloths. Marco Polo was also shown items made from asbestos cloth on his travels.

Asbestos use was brought back in the 1700s, but did not become popular until the Industrial Revolution during the late 1800s. It then began to be used as insulation for steam pipes, turbines, boilers, kilns, ovens, and other high-temperature products. Ancient observations of the health risks of asbestos were either forgotten or ignored.

At the turn of the twentieth century, researchers began to notice a large number of deaths and lung problems in asbestos mining towns. In 1917 and 1918, it was observed by several studies in the United States that asbestos workers were dying unnaturally young.

The first diagnosis of asbestosis was made in 1924. A woman had been working with asbestos since she was thirteen. She died when she was thirty-three years old, and an English doctor determined that the cause of death was what he called "asbestosis". Because of this, a study was done on asbestos workers in England. Twenty-five percent of them showed evidence of asbestos-related lung disease. Laws were passed in 1931 to increase ventilation and to make asbestosis an excusable work-related disease. It would take the United States ten more years to make these steps.

In the 1930s major medical journals began to publish articles that linked asbestos to cancer. The re-discovery of asbestos-related diseases were put on the back burner for several years due to the emergence of silicosis (a lung disease caused by silica dust inhalation). The affected workers brought $300 million in lawsuits against their employers. This served as a warning to the asbestos companies, and afterwards they tried to cover up the health effects of asbestos. Asbestos companies continued to use asbestos in manufacturing and construction. Despite that many materials, such as fiberglass insulation, were created to replace asbestos, companies that used asbestos ignored the safer alternatives. They ignored the danger for the sake of profits, much like the tobacco industry. The conduct of the asbestos companies is especially egregious, however, because the victims were largely exploited workers who were unaware of the serious health risks they were exposed to on a daily basis.

What Is Asbestos?

Asbestos is the common name for any variety of silicate materials that are fibrous in structure and are more resistant to acid and fire than other materials. It has two forms, serpentine and amphibole, and is made of impure magnesium silicate. Asbestos is used for thermal insulation, fire proofing, electrical insulation, building materials, brake linings and has been used in numerous industries.

Serpentine and amphibole asbestos both exhibit physical and chemical resistance to high temperatures and applied force. The raw ore of both forms is made up of fibrous strands. The strands then continue to split into smaller and thinner fibers as disturbance continues and increases. Asbestos' ore form will initially divide into visible strands, fiber bundles, and individual fibers. But then those visible strands, bundles, and fibers will continue to split into microscopic fibers, bundles, and strands. The splitting can continue on to minute levels of microscopic levels of detection. This process is unique to asbestos and is why airborne asbestos is such a problem. The fibers can become so small that they remain airborne longer and pass undetected by the respiratory dust defenses.

Physical characteristics differentiate the serpentine and amphibole forms. Serpentines divide into curly, wavy fibers that show little resistance to being bent or spiraled. Amphibole fibers are needlelike shards that show great resistance to being bent or curled. Serpentines are like man-made wool in appearance, where amphiboles are like man-made fiberglass.

In addition to the two forms, there are three main types of asbestos: chrysotile, amosite, and crocidolite. Chrysotile asbestos is serpentine and amosite and crocidolite are amphibole. Chrysotile is the chief commercial asbestos today. Amosite is used in insulating materials and crocidolite is used for making asbestos-cement products.

Canada is a chief producer of asbestos, which has some of the largest asbestos mine fields in the world. Other producers are Russia, Zimbabwe, the Republic of South Africa, Cyprus, and the United States of America.

Asbestos is a potent carcinogen, that is, a cancer-causing substance, and is a serious health hazard. It is the known cause of pleural plaques, asbestosis, mesothelioma, and causes cancers of the lung, esophagus, and colon. Diseases caused by asbestos have a long latency period, usually taking ten to forty years before showing any symptoms of the disease. This is especially apparent today, when people who worked with installing asbestos as insulation and other materials in the 1970s are just now coming to realize that they are developing cancer at alarming rates.