Asbestos and Human History

Today we know asbestos to be a health hazard. But the natural mineral was not simply an artifact of the industrial age. The History Guy recalls the long human history with asbestos.

This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As images of actual events are sometimes not available, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.

All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. No images or content are primarily intended to shock and disgust. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Non censuram.

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Script by JCG

#history #thehistoryguy #Asbestos

[sabresmile]

Most YT historians: WWII, WWII, WWI, WWII, WWII, WWI, WWII
The HistoryGuy: Asbestos, Ships cats, Airships, Cruise ships, TV, Cranberries, Hats


I love this channel so much. You do wonderful work, sir.

[Nrdman]

I've sailed on asbestos insulated ships in the Swedish navy, as it was a very good insulator and easy to apply, often sprayed wet on the hull, it was very prolific in the ships of the navy.
When you fired the guns the shock from the firing you had a white gray mist inside the ship from the insulation.
It was a bit odd when the regulations came as the dockyard workers refused to work on the ship until the insulation was "encapsulated"; they had people come in and make sure that the insulation had an airtight protective cover as it was too expensive and complicated to rip it out.
Every time we got into the navy dockyards they came to inspect the old ships with asbestos to check for punctures or damages before the workers came onboard. Slightly unreal to sit in your normal uniform, maybe eating, while a bunch of guys in space suits are walking around while carefully examining the inside of the hull with the look on their face like they have seen death...

[dashville]

I'm 60 years old and I'm just now finding out asbestos is a mineral. For some reason I thought it was a type of man made fiberglass compound. So thank you History Guy for teaching me something new.

[dtaylorchuckufarle]

The miracle mineral with a thousand uses; and one small problem.

[paraglidingnut]

Asbestos is a great insulator. 30 years ago, we removed asbestos bricks from an extremely hot tank. The flame retardant poly we used to control the devastating heat actually caught on fire. Those asbestos bricks were great insulators for heat resistance.

[timmmahhhh]

I'm an architect of thirty years whose mentor was a volunteer firefighter in a small village. One of his calls was to a building with an arcing electric panel, and had the building not been clad with asbestos siding it would had easily caught fire. It was a good lesson in understanding why asbestos was a popular material though it was banned in construction products after 1985, and lead in 1978. When I'm renovating a building one of the first questions I ask is the year it was built to consider the possibility either material was used.

Where asbestos becomes a problem is when it is in a friable form, or easily disintegratable. Pipe insulation and building fireproofing are some of the main culprits for releasing the cancerous fibers. Any buildings with this abatement is mandatory. It's also scary to think that it was commonly used for car brake pads by companies named Raybestos and I can imagine traffic cops and street vendors being susceptible to Mesothelioma, or anyone regularly walking a busy street. Products like vinyl asbestos tile are not a danger as long as they don't become cracked, although the adhesives used to secure it often contain easily friable asbestos, which is why encapsulation of these, or covering it with another flooring material, is considered an acceptable way of dealing with it. If you see tiles measuring 9"x9" they are probably asbestos as most vinyl composition tile that replaced it comes in 12" squares. But yes seeing the health issues to those who mine and work with the material make it not worth producing. And if we need to cut a slab for new plumbing that has this tile best to properly remove it. And for that building with the asbestos panel, cement siding is now an available substitute.

I'd love to see you do a similar video for lead as you're likely familiar with a resort town to the north of you called Galena which at one time was a bigger city than Chicago. Galena of course being the Latin word for the mineral form of lead.

[nhces]

As a full time Asbestos consultant thank you for telling the story. Your research is spot on and I hope to show this video during training sessions to help educate people.

[robbarasch]

My dad died of Mesothelioma 9 years ago. He worked with asbestos in the construction industry and while serving in the Navy during WWII. Mesothelioma is a HORRIBLE way to die, my dad literally drowned as his lungs filled with fluid as a result of the disease. My dad was a tough guy who I never saw suffer until the very end of his life.

Thank you, History Guy, for helping make people aware of the dangers of this both amazing and deadly product.

[LMacNeill]

Those Kent cigarettes that used asbestos in their filters just blow my mind. "Hey, I've got a great idea! Let's take the two riskiest lung-damaging products and *combine* them! What a *great* idea!" LOL.

[brett]

As an asbestos professional you have done a good job explaining this. You have included things we talk about during our yearly refresher classes.

[MrArcher]

I am an asbestos removal abater with over 20 years in the field and want to share some fun facts with you. There are two main types of products containing asbestos; Friable and Non-Friable. Friable are products that easily produce air born particles; such as pipe insulation and ceiling tiles. Non-Friable are products containing asbestos in which the asbestos is incapsulated in a resin or other medium that binds the asbestos preventing it to become easily airborne in particulate form, . These items include floor tile, break pads, pot handles among other products. The latter products being very save unless showing signs of excessive wear ( dust) and or some sort of break down of the incapsulate that contains the asbestos. Also smoking puts you at a 200% greater risk for asbestosis than a non-smoker due to the damage to the cilia in your air ways being damaged.
So as long as your not grinding up your pot handles and snorting the dust and are a non -smoker most of us who live and work in buildings built after 1967 you should be relatively safe and can look forward to dying from one of a thousand other things out there that we humans have made.

[bradpayn]

When I was around 10 or 12 years old, my dad and his best buddy used to pan, and run a sluice box looking for gold. They usually found a little. They never got rich, but they came out ahead usually. I'd help some, but I was a kid and soon tired of it. I went on those trips more for the camping, and the brookies in those creeks, and to climb around on the boulders and hills. One day while they were grubbing around in the creek, I was climbing around on a little mountain nearby and found a man made rectangular hole, a drift, going into the hill. It only went back in, like a hallway, about 20 or 30 feet. Back in it about halfway, I saw that the rocks were 'fuzzy' looking, so I stuck some in my pockets to ask my dad about.


My dad and his buddy both knew it was asbestos, and were exited that I had found it. They went up the hill where I showed them the source, and took several coffee cans of it. Later we went to the assessor's office of that county and found that there was no mineral claims on that land, so we filed one right then. We started a company, my dad, his buddy, and me. I didn't know much about how companies work, but I knew I owned a third of this company. They talked to several people who were already into mining, minerals, and/or asbestos, and several deals sounded pretty good. They also had geologists or whatever go out with them who measured, drew, and estimated what we had. It was good.


The future asbestos mine we were trying to get going was sounding better each year, but all that research, and dealings took time. Six or eight years went by. I think the biggest thing that held everything up was it was in the boondocks, several miles of 4x4 trail into the some of the roughest of the Rockies, in a state with hardly any factories, and no place to process the ore, Wyoming. I think most of that kind of stuff took place back East - so there was going to be some freight problems, but still it was very nice clean whitish yellow asbestos - good stuff we were told. It was worth coming to get and it wasn't going anywhere. It was like 'money in the bank' lol. I was in high school when the bad news about asbestos came out. I know all the outlawing of it was in 1985, but the bad news beat that a few years. I don't know what class I was in, but I was in high school from '77 to '81 and it was in that time that we first heard of mesophilioma (sp), and knew our asbestos glory hole had petered out. At least we never took any out other than a few samples, so we had nothing to do with all the illness, or the lawsuits. Just easy come, easy go.

[richardross]

Thanks for this video Lance. As a proud retired member of Locals 118 and 110 " Heat and Frost Insulators ( formerly Heat and Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers) I can fully appreciate its dangers. I spent my first 5 years in the trade applying all types of asbestos products as pipe and boiler insulation and/or asbestos mud( which was an asbestos cement powder you made into a slurry to apply over insulation tied on with mesh) The next 5 years in the early 70's I worked on many jobs " removing" asbestos. As the process got more and more complicated I finally said enough and stepped back from that part of the industry. I refused all those calls on the board. Even after all these years I still get my lungs checked on regular of it finally appearing and compromising my health. I have lost more older friends then I care to count ....all from And it infuriates me to find out they were aware of its dangers as far back as the 1920"s and earlier. A sad a disgusting fact....money above all....at least in some business. And the only people who profit now?....mostly lawyers. Lol....no surprise there.

[noahhastings]

Me at 3 AM: "I should probably go to sleep now"
YouTube: "Asbestos?"
Me: "ASBESTOS!!!!"

[ExilefromCrownHill]

As a kid in the 1960's, there was a Johns Manville plant in full operation in Nashua, NH. Their forklift would cross the street continually from factory to warehouse, taking with it a plume of dust each time. We would often drive right through that dust cloud without pondering the health risk.

[Lazy_Tim]

Asbestos is great stuff. Cheap with so many uses. Properties that we just cannot make for the cost today. Pity it can kill us.

[grendelgrendelsson]

My uncle died of mesothelioma having been a Royal navy gunner in WW2. His anti-flash hood and gloves were made with asbestos. He said that when the ship was in heavy seas, the white asbestos dust would be falling from the ships pipework with every thud from the waves. My father-in-law also died from the same disease having been a carpenter and cut sheets of asbestos up in the 1960's. I was a builder in the 1970's and I also sawed sheets of asbestos.

[AcydDrop]

My grandfather died from Mesothelioma in the 1990's as a direct result of working on ship construction and breaking ships for scrap/etc in the UK. I was just young girl when he passed and only found out much later that it was asbestos related. So this episode really hit home for me. Still I didn't know much about it's history so thank you for making me a little wiser. Keep up the fantastic work.

[lecleland]

I worked in an old (even for its time) a Rail Road repair track. There was asbestos everywhere. Walls, ceilings, brakes, rail cars etc.

[chadweinstein]

Thank you for this thoughtful and intellectually honest history of a complex topic. Much more could be said about the deadly deceit engaged in by companies, but you made that point clearly, along with discussion of the remarkably useful properties of this mineral.