The shift towards Chrysotile from Asbestos

The difference between asbestos products manufactured today and the ones manufactured several decades back is as huge as day and night. The only type of asbestos that is used nowadays is chrysotile. Moreover, the industry now produces and markets only non-friable and dense materials that contain chrysotile fibers wrapped in a casting of either resin or cement. These present-day products include friction material, chrysotile-cement building materials, specific plastics and gaskets.

Asbestos products manufactured earlier were mostly low-density insulation materials. These were very dusty and easily crumbled under hand pressure. As opposed to current day products, they contained amphibole fibers (amosite and crocidolite).

Chrysotile: Safety depends on controlled usage

A less dusty variant of asbestos, chrysotile can be eliminated more easily from the human body in comparison to amphiboles. The claim that present-day asbestos products are safe to manufacture and use, is based on studies of workers who had much higher exposure levels in comparison to those working in present-day factories with controlled environments. Increased presence of mesothelioma (cancer of the pleura) or lung cancer was not recorded amongst these workers.

The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) of Great Britain recently provided an explanation for this observation, stating that asbestos-related lung cancer such as fibrosis (asbestosis) can be described as a threshold phenomenon. In addition, the HSE also confirmed that there have been very few cases of mesothelioma that can be directly attributed to chrysotile. This is despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of workers had undergone substantial and prolonged exposures in the past.

With dust levels in the present-day chrysotile manufacturing units ranging from 500 to 1000 fibers for every liter, the associated risks, if any, are so low that they can be treated as undetectable. This is referred to as a practical threshold.

Chrysotile-Cement – a relatively safe, quality product

Around 90% of the world’s entire chrysotile production is used for manufacturing chrysotile-cement, mostly in the form of sheets, shingles and pipes. These are used in around 60 industrialized and developing nations.

Chrysotile-cement is valued mostly for its durability and cost effectiveness. Only small quantities of chrysotile fiber is required to be imported for manufacturing this product (most of the other raw materials are easily available locally). In addition, manufacturing technology does not require heavy investments and its energy consumption is also less in comparison to production methods used for other competing products.

Risks of chrysotile