Ancient Connections

Asbestos takes place evidently on each continent withinside the world. Archeologists exposed asbestos fibres in particles courting again to the Stone Age, a few 750,000 years ago. It is thought that as early as 4000 B.C., asbestos’ lengthy hair-like fibres had been used for wicks in lamps and candles.

Between 2000-3000 B.C., embalmed the bodies of Egyptian pharaohs had been wrapped in an asbestos fabric to guard the bodies against deterioration. In Finland, clay pots courting again to 2500 B.C. contained asbestos fibres, which might be believed to reinforce the pots and lead them to be immune to fire. Around 456 B.C., Herodotus, the classical Greek historian, mentioned using asbestos shrouds wrapped across the lifeless earlier than their our bodies had been tossed onto the funeral pyre to save you their ashes from being blended with the ones of the hearthplace itself.

Others consider that the word’s beginning may be traced again to a Latin idiom, amiantus, which means unsoiled, or unpolluted, due to the fact the historic Romans had been stated to have woven asbestos fibres right into a fabric-like fabric that changed into then sewn into tablecloths and napkins. These garments had been purportedly wiped clean with the aid of using throwing them right into a blistering fire, from which they got here out miraculously unhurt and basically whiter than after they went in.

While Greeks and Romans exploited the precise houses of asbestos, additionally they documented its dangerous outcomes on individuals who mined the silken fabric from historic stone quarries. The Greek geographer Strabo stated a “illness of the lungs” in slaves who wove asbestos into the fabric. Roman historian, naturalist and philosopher, Pliny the Elder, wrote of the “disorder of slaves,” and in fact defined using a skinny membrane from the bladder of a goat or lamb utilized by the slave miners as an early respirator in an try to guard them against breathing in the damaging asbestos fibres as they laboured

Into the Middle Ages

Around 755, King Charlemagne of France had a tablecloth fabricated from asbestos to save it from burning at some point of the unintentional fires that regularly took place at some point of feasts and celebrations. Like the historic Greeks, he additionally wrapped the bodies of his lifeless generals in asbestos shrouds. By the give up of the primary millennium, cremation cloths, mats and wicks for temple lamps have been long-established from chrysotile asbestos from Cyprus and tremolite asbestos from northern Italy.

In 1095, the French, German and Italian knights who fought withinside the First Crusade used a catapult, known as a trebuchet, to fling flaming luggage of pitch and tar wrapped in asbestos luggage over metropolis partitions at some point of their sieges. In 1280, Marco Polo wrote approximately apparel made through the Mongolians from a “material which could now no longer burn.” Polo visited an asbestos mine in China to disprove the parable that asbestos got here from the hair of a woolly lizard.

Chrysotile asbestos become mined at some point of the reign of Peter the Great, Russia’s tsar from 1682 to 1725. A handbag fabricated from fireproof asbestos, now a part of London’s Natural History Museum collection, become added to England through Benjamin Franklin at some point of his first go there as a younger guy in 1725. Paper crafted from asbestos become located in Italy withinside the early 1700s. By the 1800s, the Italian authorities become utilized asbestos fibres in their financial institution notes. The Parisian Fire Brigade withinside the mid-1850s wore jackets and helmets crafted from asbestos.

Commercializing the Abestos

Asbestos production was not a thriving industry until the late 1800s when the onset of the Industrial Revolution helped sustain strong and steady growth in the industry. It was then that the practical and commercial uses of asbestos, with its myriad applications, became widespread. And asbestos production exploded, along with its dangerous effects on the health of those who mined and refined the ore, as well as those who worked with it. Asbestos' resistance to chemicals, heat, water and electricity made it an excellent insulator for steam engines, turbines, boilers, furnaces and electric generators that powered the Industrial Revolution. The malleable properties of asbestos have made it an important building, binding and reinforcing element.

Dangerous Effects of Asbestos Discovered

As early as 1897, an Austrian doctor attributed the lung problems of one of his patients to the inhalation of asbestos dust. An 1898 report on the asbestos production process in England, where factories had been regularly inspected since 1833 to protect the health and safety of workers, cited "widespread environmental damage and injury to the lungs dusty asbestos factory In 1906, the first documented death of an asbestos worker from lung failure was recorded by Dr. Montague Murray at Charing Cross Hospital in London An autopsy of the victim of 33 years revealed large amounts of asbestos fibres in his lungs "fibrosis" in asbestos factories in Italy and France echoed studies in the United States that suggested that asbestos workers died abnormally young And as early as 1908, insurance companies in the United States and Canada began to reduce coverage and benefits, while increasing premiums, for loyal employees in the asbestos industry

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