Asbestos, also known as asbestos is a group of fibrous metamorphic minerals. They are composed of double chain silicates.

Asbestos minerals have long, strong fibers that can be separated and are flexible enough to be intertwined and also resist high temperatures.

Because of these special characteristics, asbestos has been used for a wide variety of manufactured products, mainly in construction materials (tiles for roofing, tiles, paper products and asbestos cement products), friction products (automobile clutch, brake, transmission components), heat-resistant textile materials, containers, packaging and coatings, protective equipment, paints, vermiculite or talc …. is also present in some foods.

It has been determined by international medical bodies that asbestos-related products / asbestos cause cancer with high mortality and therefore, for decades, has prohibited its use in all developed countries, although it is still used in some countries developing.

The main carcinogenic asbestos

Asbestos effects on health have been known for a long time, because in the first century, Pliny the Elder, in Rome, described the disease in the lungs of slaves who wove asbestos clothing.

The ancient alchemists believed that the extraordinary asbestos fibers were made by “the hair of mythical and salamanders toxic fire resistant” and named it “salamander’s wool. The deadly substance that poisoned the salamander segregated fruit trees and the waters of rivers and wells. It is said that 2000 men and 4000 horses of Alexander the Great died in India after drinking poisoned by a stream salamander.

Charlemagne had a tablecloth asbestos fibers, with which acts of fire impressed with their guests and diners, who cleaned and bleached by simply inserting it into the fire.

During the second half of the thirteenth century explorer Marco Polo visited China asbestos mines in describing the process of ore extraction and finally discarding the myths and eliminating the old “theory of the salamander.

It was in 1906 in London (England) when he described the first known case of “pulmonary fibrosis Asbestos” a worker of 33 years, the area of carding in a textile factory.

Since 1935, the first known scientific work related asbestos exposure and lung cancer in 1947 and describes the mesothelioma of pleura and peritoneum, and is now known that asbestos is the best known of industrial chemicals linked to cancer lung.

Today it is absolutely certain of two types of cancer caused by asbestos exposure: asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma. Not recognized a minimal amount of the agent below which an exposure is safe. Lung cancer in workers exposed becomes up to 7 times more frequent than in the general population.