Asbestos: From Miracle Material to Carcinogen

Once a common industrial material, asbestos is now shunned as a carcinogen. Before it was found to be a carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance, asbestos was hailed as a miracle material by industries. Resistant to heat, fire, chemicals, and the weather, the fibrous mineral was used at the end of the 19th century and continued in widespread use throughout much of the 20th century, surging during World War II and peaking in the 1960s. 

Asbestos comes in two main forms: chrysotile, or white asbestos, which is made of curly fibers, and amphibole asbestos, which has straight fibers. Amphibole asbestos is further subdivided into subgroups. These include crocidolite (blue asbestos), and amosite (brown asbestos). 

Where Was Asbestos Used? 

In its heyday, asbestos was used extensively in the manufacturing, automotive, ship-building, and construction industries. Among some of its more common uses were:

• Building insulation
• Roofing shingles and siding
• Ceiling and floor tiles
• Paints and plasters
• Cement additive
• Automotive brake linings and clutch pads
• Wrappings for shipboard boilers and steam lines

In 1988, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that asbestos was utilized in the construction of 750,000 public buildings in the United States. To this day, asbestos can be found in many older buildings, hidden under old coats of paint or wrapped around basement steam pipes.

Over the years, asbestos also found its way into a surprising variety of consumer products, including children's crayons, cosmetics and talcum powder, hair dryers, garden products, and space heaters, to name a few.

While the adverse health effects of asbestos became obvious early in the 20th century among asbestos miners, it was not until the 1970s that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the EPA began to regulate the substance, and not until 1987 that the International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that asbestos was a carcinogen in humans. In 1989, the EPA announced a ban on new uses of asbestos. However, following an appellate court ruling in 1991, some uses of the substance — such as in cement boards and coatings that are encapsulated — were permitted to continue. 

How Is Asbestos Harmful? 

Asbestos poses a health hazard when the tiny asbestos fibers become airborne and are inhaled. Because of its fibrous character, inhaled asbestos can get embedded in the lungs or the lining of the lungs (the pleura) where it can accumulate with repeated or long-term exposure. Eventually, the fibers can cause scarring and inflammation and result in breathing problems or other serious health problems, including asbestosis, fibrosis of the lungs,  lung cancer, and mesothelioma- cancer of the mesothelioma, the lining of many organs throughout the body. 

Can Asbestos Be Avoided? 

It is impossible to completely avoid asbestos exposure. There are low levels of asbestos around us in the air, water, and soil, not to mention in the some of the older buildings we occupy. In spite of this, Mesothelioma  remains a very rare cancer. Most of the people who got sick from asbestos exposure were constantly exposed to it on the job, such as asbestos miners, shipyard workers, construction workers, building demolition workers, and automobile workers. Today, an estimated 1.3 million employees in construction and other industries are still exposed to asbestos at work, but under conditions stringently regulated by the OSHA and the EPA.(source everydayhealth)