Did the Ancients know that asbestos was dangerous?

Short Answer: Nope. Many websites and even scholarly articles and medical textbooks often claim that the Ancient Romans or Ancient Greeks said asbestos mines smelled, and that slaves and workers who mined asbestos developed health problems.

No ancient Roman or Greek texts support this claim. The Ancient Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder did describe asbestos, which he said was fireproof and had sound-dampening qualities. But Pliny never claimed asbestos smelled bad, or caused breathing problems for people weaving with it.

Pliny did that about the mineral cinnabar, which was ground up and used to make red dye known as vermillion. Also known as dragon’s blood and minium, vermillion was used in great quantities by the Romans. Pliny said that slaves who worked with cinnabar had breathing problems and tried to cover their noses and mouths with masks.

In fact asbestos has no taste or smell, and takes decades to cause breathing problems. The claim that the Ancients knew asbestos causes health problems seems to be a legend that came from confusing writings about other minerals.

Asbestos in the Ancient World

Asbestos is the name for a group of rocks that have amazing, almost magical properties. It’s fireproof, rust-proof, acid-proof – and breaks up into fibers like cotton, so you can spin asbestos rocks into threads and weave the thread into cloth. In the Ancient World, asbestos was prized for these qualities, and often called “rock wool”. 

Many books, websites and even experts claim the Ancients said asbestos causes health problems. Is it true?

Nowadays we know that breathing asbestos fibers leads to major health problems, including cancer. But did people in the Ancient World know that it was unhealthy?

If you google “ancient asbestos” you will see a lot of scientists, engineers, and asbestos attorneys claiming that the Ancients knew asbestos was dangerous. But is it true? 

Did the Ancient Romans know that asbestos was dangerous?

So let’s take a closer look at the claim that ancient people knew asbestos causes health problems.

The first question we have to ask is: how exactly do we know what the Ancient Romans knew about asbestos, or any other minerals? And the answer is, we have a two-thousand year old encyclopedia written by a guy named Pliny the Elder.

Pliny The Elder and Asbestos

The Ancient Roman Historian described asbestos in his encyclopedia of the natural world.

Pliny the Elder was an Ancient Roman cavalry commander who spent his life working in government.

But in his free time, Pliny really liked to read and write books. Only one of his books still exists today, but it’s actually the longest book that survived from the ancient Roman era.

Pliny the Elder’s Natural History

Pliny’s book was known as the Naturalis Historia, or “Natural History”, and many historians consider it to be the oldest Encyclopedia still in existence.

It was actually split into 37 smaller books on a variety of topics, and Pliny summarized everything he could learn about the natural world at that time. 

So the botany book listed every plant known in the ancient world, the zoology book listed every animal (even ones Pliny had never seen but had only read about), the geography book described the known world at the time.

One volume of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History encyclopedia was on minerals, and it’s here that Pliny tells us what he knew about asbestos. 

Pliny describes a kind of fireproof cloth, which he calls vivum, meaning “living linen”. What’s linen?

Asbestos Cloth in the Ancient World: “Living Linen”

In the ancient world, most cloth was made of linen, a type of thread made from the leaves of tall plants known as flax. Clothes, napkins, wicks for oil lamps, were usually linen. 

But linen eventually burns, or decomposes and disappears. Asbestos cloth, or “living linen” as Pliny calls it, doesn’t burn away. Pliny tells us it comes out of a fire cleaner than when it went in.

In fact, Pliny says that asbestos cloth – or vivum – was used in cremation ceremonies. Ancient rulers were often cremated, and their ashes preserved in a tomb or other sacred place. 

Asbestos Cremation Shrouds

Pliny says that asbestos cloth was used to wrap the deceased ruler, so that when the body had burned away, what he called the “corpse-cloth” remained behind, unharmed and filled with the ashes to be preserved. He explains that asbestos cloth is rare and prized as more valuable than pearls. 

Because asbestos was fibrous and resembled linen, Pliny seems to believe that asbestos is a plant, not a rock, because he incorrectly says it grows in the hot deserts of India.

Pliny the Elder was Roman, writing in Latin – and he explains in his Natural History book that the Greeks call it abestinon, meaning “unquenchable”. That name stuck.

Asbestos Cloth Helps Dampen Sounds

Pliny also mentions the sound absorbing qualities of asbestos. He explains that if you wrap asbestos cloth around a tree, it will deaden the sound of an ax chopping it. And in the twentieth century, before it was banned, asbestos was often used as sound-proofing insulation.

Did Pliny the Elder say that asbestos was dangerous?

But what about the claim that Pliny the Elder said asbestos was unhealthy? Well, they’re confusing some of the things Pliny is saying about minerals other than asbestos.

In fairness, Pliny the Elder himself actually seems to have gotten the Greek name wrong. 

Abestinon vs. Amiantos

Asbestinon is ancient Greek for quicklime – an industrial mineral made by heating limestone. Greeks used asbestos fibers for the wicks of the everlasting lantern in Athens, and they called it amiantos, which is still the word for asbestos in a number of languages. 

Three Bogus Claims About Asbestos in the Ancient World

CLAIM #1: Pliny the Elder said asbestos mines smelled terrible.

Some people say that Pliny said asbestos mines smelled terrible. The problem with that claim is that asbestos has no detectable odor, or taste. On the other hand, here’s what Pliny said about silver mines: “The exhalations from silver mines are dangerous to all animals, but especially to dogs. 

CLAIM #2: Pliny the Elder said asbestos mines are poisonous.

There’s also the claim that Pliny called asbestos poisonous. That also doesn’t sound right, because breathing or even swallowing asbestos does not produce any immediate symptoms that would make you sick. 

Asbestos-related illnesses usually only show up at least twenty years, if not fifty years, after you’re first exposed to asbestos. But in the same chapter as the silver mines, Pliny brings up the toxicity of mercury, saying “there is a mineral found in these veins of silver which…is always liquid, and is called quicksilver. It acts as a poison on everything.”

CLAIM #3: Ancient Roman asbestos miners wore masks to protect themselves from the dust.

But the most popular claim is that Pliny the Elder says Roman workers who were forced to labor in asbestos mines wore masks to protect themselves from the dust.

Sometimes the story goes that the people weaving the asbestos fiber into cloth wore the masks.

Neither is true. The reason these claims get repeated so much is that the mask idea was first stated in a very large and old book by Scottish doctor Sir Thomas Oliver, who worked in the British mines as a doctor during the Industrial Revolution.

Sir Oliver was one of the early voices raising the alarm about asbestos, and his book – published in 1900 – is still a kind of encyclopedia of industrial hygiene that gets referenced today.

But the story about asbestos miners wearing masks to guard against dust also seems like a case of mistaken mineral identity. In the Ancient World, asbestos was generally gathered, not mined in the way it was in the nineteenth century. Asbestos fibers appear like hairs growing on other rocks.

The Truth About Pliny the Elder and Asbestos

Asbestos was Rare in the Ancient World

Also, Pliny is clear how rare asbestos was – the same is true in records of asbestos cloth in China and elsewhere in Asia. Asbestos cloth was owned only by the most powerful of Emperors, not the product of a large mining industry that was generating enough by-product dust to make slaves sick. 

As we said – asbestos diseases take decades to appear. And if there had been a long, ongoing asbestos mining industry in Ancient Rome, we’d at least expect to see more evidence of it, especially since asbestos doesn’t decompose or disappear.

And in fact an ancient Roman asbestos cloth has been found. But only one.

Cinnabar (aka Dragon’s Blood) was used for the popular Ancient Roman red dye vermillion

On the other hand, Pliny does refer to the mineral vermillion, which he calls minium, and cinnabar. Cinnabar – also known as dragon’s blood because of its red color – was used in large quantities by ancient Romans.

And it was used by large groups of slaves, in closed spaces… as a pigment. To dye what? Linen.

Pliny says that the Romans import tons of vermillion each year, and that people working in the factories and preparing the vermillion “protect the face with masks…in order to avoid inhaling the dust, which is very harmful.” 

Not only that, when Pliny does mention asbestos, he says it is red. Asbestos actually comes in a variety of colors – but Pliny’s description of it as red may explain why that entry got mixed with his description of laborers wearing masks while they process cinnabar.

Conclusions on Asbestos in the Ancient World

So there you have it – did Pliny the Elder say that asbestos causes health problems? Nope.

But they did make cloth out of asbestos, and next time we’ll talk about how the Ancient Egyptians used asbestos cloth… to make their mummies.