You see this furry little rock? That’s not fur. That’s also rock. That’s asbestos.
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This is amosite, which has a particularly high thermal resistance and doesn’t break down until about 1600 degrees Fahrenheit. This resistance to heat and flame makes asbestos useful for all kinds of products, for a few reasons: It can be engulfed in flame and still do its job - that’s why one of the first uses of asbestos was a wick for an oil lamp, that could burn and burn without degrading or disappearing.
Asbestos wicks were used in products of all kinds, including Zippo lighters. One of the first modern industrial uses of asbestos was to insulate boilers. Asbestos fabric can get hot without catching fire or melting, and it won’t easily let heat escape.
Asbestos also can prevent heat from reaching things that can be burned. That’s why asbestos was used in fire blankets, and as suits to protect firemen, as early as the 18th or 19th century.
Unlike most rocks, asbestos breaks down into... fibers. A lot of plants do this - the ancient Egyptians and Greeks and Romans wore cloth called linen made from fibers of the linseed plant, and cotton is still an extremely popular plant for making thread and fabric. Sheep’s wool is still common too.
But there aren’t too many Christmas sweaters made of rocks.
And it is small. In fact, in a square inch, you could fit about 500 human hairs or a billion of asbestos fibers. When you breathe or swallow tiny asbestos fibers, they can embed and do enormous damage over time, including destroying the white blood cells trying to prevent disease and cancer. Those tiny fibers bundle together into larger asbestos fibers, like the white fur you see on this asbestos artifact.
But even within the six asbestos types, the exact makeup of other minerals like silica and iron can differ, so asbestos fibers not only come in different sizes, but some are stronger, and some are more brittle. One kind, called Chrysotile, is curled and that’s what gets woven into asbestos fabric. It’s also white when processed, and sometimes little and fluffy, and that’s the kind that Hollywood used to use for its Christmas snow made of rocks.
But this kind, amosite, is unusual. It’s actually named after the first place it was found, though not exactly intentionally. The correct scientific name for this mineral is grunerite. And not all amosite comes from South Africa. A lot comes from Russia and other places. But large deposits of this kind of asbestos were mined in South Africa. The packages were labeled as Asbestos Mines of South Africa - with the letters AMOS - and the name amosite stuck.
Southern Africa has some of the oldest geological formations on the planet, with a lot of what are called ultramafic rocks that formed when the earth’s crust was formed. That enormous heat created some of the gold and diamonds and other precious minerals found there. It also explains why Southern Africa has been such a target for outside actors to come in and try to mine it, which is presumably what helped inspire Marvel’s vibranium in Black Panther’s Wakanda.
Asbestos often forms in ultramafic rocks, often looking like this fur here. But some asbestos fibers are long and extremely strong. In fact, some kinds of asbestos have higher tensile strength than steel. That means a strand of asbestos would hold more weight than a strand of steel. No wonder it was used for so many products.
Amosite has the added bonus of extremely high heat resistance, so the concrete becomes much more fireproof.
The truth is, there are a lot of amazing uses for asbestos - and it’s possible that it could have been used in a safe way. Unfortunately, the asbestos industries decided to hide what they knew about its dangers, and not have an honest conversation with people about what this stuff is, and whether the benefits outweighed the risks.
So by the time people found what they were breathing, and the damage it was causing, too many were injured for the asbestos company to contend with. And the problem was out of control.
Fortunately, the reason we know the temperatures that asbestos breaks down and finally loses its integrity is because new methods are being invented to dispose of all the leftover asbestos. And there are definitely some promising results that asbestos can be heated to high enough temperatures that it breaks down into less harmful substances that can be disposed of.
I have even seen a story about some jewelry pendants being made of asbestos that was rendered inert, and we’ll see if we get some for another asbestos artifact.
Think I’ll wait for that instead of putting this rock on a necklace.
Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to like and subscribe. Till next time, I’m asbestos attorney Justinian Lane, with Asbestos Artifacts.
