Visit us anytime at https://www.asbestosclaims.law/. Did the Ancients know that asbestos was dangerous?
Short Answer: Nope.
No ancient Roman or Greek texts support this claim.
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”.
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.
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”.
Asbestos Cremation Shrouds
Pliny says that asbestos cloth was used to wrap deceased rulers, 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.
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
Three Bogus Claims About Asbestos in the Ancient World
CLAIM #1: Pliny the Elder said asbestos mines smelled terrible.
The problem with that claim is that asbestos has no detectable odor, or taste.
CLAIM #2: Pliny the Elder said asbestos mines are 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.
CLAIM #3: Ancient Roman asbestos miners wore masks to protect themselves from the dust.
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.
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. They were most likely plucked and bagged by workers, and mask use is HIGHLY doubtful.
The Truth About Pliny the Elder and Asbestos
Asbestos was Rare in the Ancient World. Pliny is clear how rare asbestos was – the same is true in records of asbestos cloth in China and elsewhere in Asia.
And if there had been a long, ongoing asbestos mining industry in Ancient Rome, we’d at least expect to see more evidence, especially since asbestos doesn’t decompose or disappear.
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!
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