Chrysotile: White Asbestos, the Most Common Type

Chrysotile, also called white asbestos, is one of the six minerals regulated as asbestos under US law, and it's by far the most common. About 95 percent of all the asbestos ever used was chrysotile, so it's the type in most of the asbestos products Americans encountered: brake linings, floor tile, cement siding and pipe, joint compound, gaskets, textiles, and fireproofing. It's the only one of the six that isn't an amphibole. Its fibers are curly and flexible rather than straight needles, and the asbestos industry argued for decades that this made chrysotile the "safe" kind of asbestos. It does not. Every major health authority agrees that chrysotile causes mesothelioma (a cancer of the lining of the lungs or abdomen), lung cancer, and asbestosis (permanent scarring of the lungs).¹ It was the last form of asbestos still used in the United States until the EPA banned it in 2024.

If you worked with brakes, building materials, gaskets, or insulation, or you've renovated older buildings, and you've been diagnosed with an asbestos disease, call 833-4-ASBESTOS to find out whether you have a claim.

The cancer finding that was buried

In 1936, a group of asbestos manufacturers led by Johns-Manville hired Dr. Leroy Gardner, the country's leading researcher on lung disease, to answer what seemed like a simple question: how much chrysotile dust could a worker breathe before getting asbestosis? The contract gave the companies the power to keep the results secret. Because they funded the work, they owned the results, and nothing could be published without their approval.

In the early 1940s, Gardner's experiments turned up something no one had asked about. The mice breathing chrysotile weren't just getting scarred lungs. They were getting lung cancer, in one experiment 9 of 11 of them, a rate about six times higher than mice breathing other dusts. Gardner reported it to Johns-Manville. The company's lawyer called the finding "dynamite." Under the contract, Gardner couldn't publish those results, and the industry had no intention of letting him.²

Gardner tried to get out from under the contract by applying for a government grant so he could duplicate the results and publish his own findings. The application was on track until industry pressure killed it behind the scenes. "The subject was dropped," he wrote, adding that he hoped before he died he'd get the chance to study the link between chrysotile and cancer. Six months later, he died of a heart attack. The cancer findings stayed unpublished.

His successor finished Gardner's study and published it in 1951, keeping the asbestosis findings almost word for word but deleting every trace of the cancer data. The tumors, the rates, the lab photographs, all of it was edited out of the record.³

The truth surfaced only because a young pathologist named Gerrit Schepers, exploring the lab's files, found the original suppressed cancer data still sitting in the archive. He also found something worse: a folder of lung tissue from Quebec chrysotile miners, evidence of their cancers, that industry attorneys had reportedly arranged to remove from Canada and hide in the American lab, away from the doctors who were treating those very workers.⁴

The world's English-speaking medical community wouldn't be told that asbestos causes lung cancer until 1955.⁵ By then the evidence had been sitting suppressed for twelve years. This is the heart of chrysotile's story, and like the rest of the asbestos industry's record, it's why these companies are liable today: they knew, and they buried it.⁶

For an overview of all six asbestos minerals and the diseases they cause, see our main asbestos minerals page.

What is chrysotile?

Chrysotile is the fibrous form of a mineral in the serpentine family, and it's the odd one out among the six asbestos minerals. The other five are amphiboles, with straight, stiff, needle-like fibers. Chrysotile's fibers are curly and flexible, more like wool or cotton. In fact, that flexibility is exactly why chrysotile took over the asbestos industry: it could be carded, spun, and woven on ordinary textile machinery, and it mixed easily into cement, brake pads, and hundreds of other products. It's also cheap and found on nearly every continent, which is why it became roughly 95 percent of all the asbestos ever used.⁷

The flexible fibers come from chrysotile's unusual structure. Each fiber is a microscopic sheet that has rolled itself into a hollow tube, far thinner than a human hair, and those tubes can split lengthwise into ever-finer fibers small enough to breathe deep into the lungs.

The name comes from Greek words for "gold" and "fiber," because freshly separated chrysotile can have a golden, silky sheen.⁸ People have used it for a very long time. The Greeks and Romans wove it into fireproof cloth and lamp wicks, and Pliny the Elder wrote about cloth that could be cleaned by throwing it into a fire.⁹

Is chrysotile the "safe" kind of asbestos?

No. This deserves an explanation, because it's the most common question about chrysotile and because the asbestos industry spent decades trying to make the answer seem like "yes."

The industry's argument went like this: chrysotile's fibers are curly and flexible instead of sharp and rigid, and its magnesium chemistry lets it slowly dissolve in the body, so it should be far less dangerous than the amphiboles. A related version, sometimes called the "amphibole hypothesis," held that whenever chrysotile workers got mesothelioma, the real cause must have been small amounts of amphibole minerals mixed into the chrysotile, not the chrysotile itself.¹¹

That argument had one clear weakness. If you could find a group of workers exposed to chrysotile that contained no amphibole contamination, and they still got mesothelioma, the argument would collapse. That test case turned out to exist. A mine at Balangero in Italy produced chrysotile that, by a quirk of geology, was essentially free of amphibole contamination. The workers there developed mesothelioma at about four times the expected rate.¹² Clean chrysotile, on its own, caused the disease. Studies of chrysotile textile workers in North Carolina and China showed the same thing.^13,14

Today the scientific verdict is unanimous among the organizations whose job is human health. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organization, the EPA, OSHA, NIOSH, and the US National Toxicology Program all conclude that chrysotile causes mesothelioma and other cancers.^1,15 The only governments still defending chrysotile as safe are the handful that mine or sell it, including Russia, Kazakhstan, and China. That split is a commercial dispute, not a scientific one.

Chrysotile may be somewhat less potent than crocidolite at causing mesothelioma, fiber for fiber, but "less potent than the most dangerous fiber known" is not the same as safe.¹⁶ There's no established safe level of exposure to any form of asbestos, chrysotile included.

Where chrysotile came from and what it was used for

For the other asbestos minerals, you can list the handful of products they went into. For chrysotile, that approach fails, because chrysotile was the default. It went into thousands of products across the twentieth century. The useful question isn't whether you encountered chrysotile, it's which product it was in.

Most of the chrysotile used in the United States came from Canada, specifically a cluster of mines in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, which supplied more than 90 percent of US imports for most of the century. The rest came from Russia, Zimbabwe, and a scattering of other countries.¹⁷ The fiber was cheap, strong, and flexible, so manufacturers put it almost everywhere:

• Brakes, clutches, and other friction products. Auto and truck brake linings, brake pads, and clutch facings used chrysotile because it handled heat and friction. Mechanics were heavily exposed.¹⁸
• Asbestos-cement products. Roofing shingles, siding, wallboard, flat and corrugated sheet, and water and sewer pipe. This was the single largest use of asbestos worldwide.
• Floor tile. Vinyl-asbestos and asphalt floor tile installed in millions of homes, schools, and offices.
• Joint compound and drywall products. The mud used to finish drywall seams, sanded smooth by drywall finishers and renovators, which released fibers into the air.
• Gaskets and packings. The seals in industrial pipes, pumps, and valves across virtually every industry.
• Textiles. Woven asbestos cloth, rope, tape, gloves, and protective clothing.
• Roofing felts, paper products, and spray-on fireproofing.
• Chlor-alkali diaphragms. Chrysotile was used to make the diaphragms in plants that produce chlorine and caustic soda, which was the last legal use of asbestos in the United States until the 2024 ban.

For more on the kinds of products that contained asbestos, see our guide to asbestos-containing products.

The full record: the Quebec industry, global production, fiber grading, and the industry's collapse

The mineral content on this site draws on a systematic review of 88 consecutive USGS Minerals Yearbook chapters on asbestos, spanning 1932 through 2024, the complete run of the federal government's annual reporting on the asbestos industry.¹⁹

Quebec and the Eastern Townships

The heart of the North American chrysotile industry was a small region of Quebec, around the towns of Thetford Mines and a town actually named Asbestos. The deposits formed roughly 460 million years ago in ancient ocean-floor rock that was later thrust up onto the continent. The largest operation, the Jeffrey Mine at Asbestos, was the biggest chrysotile mine in the Western world for most of the century, producing around 630,000 tons of fiber a year across the full range of grades.

The Jeffrey operation ran on Johns-Manville's Canadian arm and fed the company's US product lines directly. The scale of its dust shows in the scale of the machinery built to catch it: the USGS described an elaborate dust-collecting system that kept the mill air virtually dust free, venting through a disposal shed 200 feet long in which 140 tons of dust settled out each day, with a Cottrell electric precipitator recovering 60 tons more of the finest particles. The dust the system caught was a measure of the dust the work produced. Quebec's output came from several large producers besides Jeffrey, among them Asbestos Corporation, Bell Asbestos (owned for decades by the British conglomerate Turner and Newall), Carey Canada, and the Cassiar mine in British Columbia.¹⁹

Play the film from 4:26: Asbestos: A Matter of Time (1958) from 4:26

Asbestos ran deep in Quebec's identity. Whole towns existed because of the mines, and a 1949 strike by Quebec asbestos workers is remembered as a turning point in the province's modern political history. That attachment is part of why Canada defended its chrysotile industry long after most wealthy countries had turned against it. The end came in stages: the Jeffrey Mine closed for good in 2011, Canada effectively banned asbestos in 2018, and in 2020 the town of Asbestos renamed itself Val-des-Sources to get out from under the association.

The scale, and the collapse

Chrysotile consumption in the United States peaked in 1973 at more than 800,000 short tons in a single year, about 97 percent of all the asbestos the country used. That year's USGS figures show where it went:¹⁹

End use	1973 (short tons)	Share
Construction materials (A/C sheet, siding, pipe)	248,300	30%
Floor tile	172,700	20%
Paper products	88,500	10%
Friction products (brakes, clutches)	68,700	8%
Asphalt roofing felts	44,900	5%
Packing and gaskets	21,500	2%
Insulation	11,800	2%
Textiles	10,900	1%
Other	171,900	22%

Counting the construction-bound share of the floor tile, roofing felt, and the like, building materials accounted for roughly three-quarters of all US asbestos use that year. Virtually every building put up in the country between about 1940 and the late 1970s held chrysotile in several components, and most of that stock is still standing.

Then consumption fell off a cliff as the health evidence and the lawsuits mounted: OSHA tightened the exposure limit in 1976, the EPA moved toward a ban (it proposed one in 1986), and the major manufacturers began filing for bankruptcy. By 2016 US consumption was down to a few hundred tons, a decline of more than 99 percent. No other major industrial mineral in American history collapsed so completely.

Who still mines it

Production has consolidated in a few countries that treat chrysotile as economically essential: Russia (the largest producer, with the world's biggest reserves and the largest asbestos mine in world history), Kazakhstan, and China. Brazil, once a major producer, banned asbestos in 2017. The pattern is consistent: Countries without chrysotile commercial interests have banned it; countries with commercial interests insist it can be used safely.

The small US domestic industry

The United States consumed more chrysotile than any country on earth, but it mined very little of its own: domestic production never reached even four percent of what the country used, and almost all the rest came from Canada, with some grades from Zimbabwe. Three domestic sources are worth noting. Arizona's Globe district produced a distinctive low-iron fiber suited to filtration and electrolytic cells, an output kept going less by the market than by the federal government, which bought up most of it as a strategic material (in one mid-1950s year, 87 percent of Arizona crude went to government purchase). Vermont's Belvidere Mountain deposit yielded some spinning fiber but went mainly into chlor-alkali diaphragms. California, centered on the Coalinga and Copperopolis districts, became the largest domestic producer by the 1960s, accounting for roughly seven in ten tons of US output. Domestic production peaked in 1973 and then fell away with everything else, ceasing entirely in 2002; the country hasn't mined chrysotile since.^17,19

One California operation deserves its own mention. Union Carbide mined chrysotile in the hills between Coalinga and King City and sold it under the trade name Calidria, at a mine in San Benito County. Writing for the industry's trade journal in 1971, Union Carbide's marketing manager for the fiber said the deposit "contains only Chrysotile asbestos and consists entirely of the short-fiber mineral, equivalent to Canadian Grade 7 or shorter," and that the company sold it as pellets "primarily as a means to minimize asbestos dust" (Asbestos, October 1971). Union Carbide sold it mainly as a thickener and filler for plastics, rubber, paints and the ready-mix joint compound used to finish drywall, as its own sales brochures from 1969 to 1974 show. More than 1,200 documents from Union Carbide's files in our library mention Calidria, and our Calidria product page gathers what the documents say about it.

Fiber grades: the Quebec (QAMA) system

For most of the twentieth century, the single most important commercial fact about a bag of chrysotile was its grade. The grade fixed how long the fibers were, which products the fiber could be made into, and what it cost, so a grade marked on an old purchase order or product specification points to what the fiber became and how it was handled. Chrysotile grading set the world standard, and the amphibole systems (the Penge grades for amosite and the Cape Blue grades for crocidolite) were the regional exceptions that cross-walked back to it.

The framework was the Quebec Standard Test, run by the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association (QAMA). It's a mechanical screening: sixteen ounces of fiber is shaken through a nested stack of three sieves (a half-inch screen, a 4-mesh screen, and a 10-mesh screen) above a collection pan, and the operator weighs what stays on each level. The result is four numbers, in ounces, that add back to sixteen, and that distribution defines the grade. A Group 3F fiber, for instance, leaves 10.5 ounces on the half-inch screen, 3.9 on the 4-mesh, 1.3 on the 10-mesh, and 0.3 in the pan; a Group 7T fiber falls all the way through, leaving the full sixteen ounces in the pan. A producer selling 3F was warranting that distribution, so the grade was a contract specification, not just a label.²⁰

Play the film from 10:30: Asbestos, a Johns-Manville Film from 10:30

The test became the international reference. Producing regions from Zimbabwe and the Soviet Union to Australia and South Africa ran the Quebec machine alongside their own internal grade names, and the mine names cross-walked to QAMA so the fiber could be traded: a Cassiar "AAA" sold into the American market as Canadian Group 3, a Shabani "C&G1" as the equivalent of QAMA's No. 1 crude.²⁰

The table sorts chrysotile into nine groups by descending fiber length, each with its own product world:^20,21

Group	Fiber length / character	Principal products
1 (No. 1 crude)	Hand-sorted vein fiber, staple ¾ in and longer	Premium textiles (cloth, yarn, rope, fire-resistant garments), long-fiber gaskets, resin laminates
2 (No. 2 crude)	Crude, ⅜–¾ in	Same uses as Group 1 at a lower price point
3 (textile)	The workhorse spinnable mill fiber; subgrades 3F–3Z	Asbestos textiles, premium brake linings, clutch facings, chlor-alkali diaphragms, long-fiber papers and gaskets
4 (asbestos-cement)	Premium A/C fiber; subgrades 4A–4Z	A/C pressure pipe (blended with crocidolite for drainage and strength), boards, sheets, shingles, gaskets
5 (paper stock)	Subgrades 5D–5Z	A/C sheet and board, papers, brake linings, disk brake pads, molded clutch plate, packings
6 (paper and shingle)	Subgrades 6D, 6F	A/C shingles and flat/corrugated sheet, brake linings, papers, millboard
7 (shorts and floats)	The largest group by tonnage; eight subgrades plus floats	Floor tile, asphalt roofing and coatings, automobile underbody and sound-deadening coatings, welding rods, paints, plastics, extruded brake linings
8–9 (sands and gravels)	Coarse non-fibrous residue, graded by bulk density	Drilling mud, fillers, non-fiber construction uses

The group numbers aren't arbitrary; they track what fiber length can mechanically do. Only fiber long enough to card and spin (Group 3 and up) could go into textiles, which is why no amount of cheap Group 7 fiber could substitute there. Reinforcement works the same way: long fiber bridges and carries load across a cement matrix, so A/C pressure pipe under constant water pressure needed Group 4 (and the crocidolite blend), while shingles under lighter loads could use Group 5 or 6. And drainage on the A/C forming belt depends on fiber shape: short, high-surface-area chrysotile drains slowly, which is why amosite was sometimes added as a filter aid to speed it and why crocidolite's rigid needles, which drain faster, were the specified reinforcement for pressure pipe.²²

Who was exposed to chrysotile

Because chrysotile was in so many products, more people were exposed to it than to any other type of asbestos. You may have been exposed if you, or someone whose dusty work clothes you were around, fits one of these descriptions:

• Did automotive work, especially brake and clutch jobs, as a mechanic or hobbyist
• Worked in the building trades: drywall finishing, floor tile, roofing, plastering, or general construction
• Did renovation, maintenance, or demolition on older buildings, including as a homeowner
• Worked as a plumber or pipefitter around asbestos-cement pipe
• Worked as an insulator, boilermaker, or pipefitter around chrysotile insulation and fireproofing
• Worked with gaskets and packings in any industrial setting
• Worked in an asbestos textile mill or with asbestos cloth, rope, or protective clothing
• Worked at a chlor-alkali plant handling chrysotile diaphragms
• Worked in shipyards, power plants, refineries, or factories where chrysotile products were used

Family members were exposed too. Chrysotile fibers traveled home on work clothes, hair, and skin, and spouses and children have developed mesothelioma from that secondhand, or "take-home," exposure. And because chrysotile is in so many ordinary building materials, people have been exposed simply by renovating an older home and disturbing old tile, siding, or joint compound.

Health risks

All forms of asbestos cause the same group of diseases: asbestosis, mesothelioma, lung cancer, and cancers of the larynx and ovary.¹ For how these diseases develop and what symptoms to watch for, see our page on asbestos-related diseases.

Chrysotile causes every one of them. Its fibers may be curly rather than sharp, but they still lodge in the lungs, split into finer and finer threads, and stay there for decades, driving the inflammation, scarring, and DNA damage that lead to disease 20 to 50 years later. The industry's claim that chrysotile harmlessly dissolves in the body never held up: the dissolving is too slow and too incomplete to protect anyone, which is why workers exposed only to chrysotile still get mesothelioma.

There's a grim scale to chrysotile's harm. Because it made up about 95 percent of all asbestos ever used, it's responsible for an enormous share of all asbestos disease, even though, fiber for fiber, it's somewhat less potent than crocidolite. It was also the asbestos most people actually came into contact with, in their cars, their workplaces, and their homes. The suppressed Saranac cancer findings described at the top of this page were only the first proof of what chrysotile does. Decades of studies since, including the clean-chrysotile mines and textile mills, have confirmed it.

Were you or a family member exposed to chrysotile?

If you've been diagnosed with mesothelioma, lung cancer, or asbestosis, and you think chrysotile may have been involved, we can help you find out whether you have a claim. Because chrysotile was in so many products, exposure can trace back to brake work, construction and renovation, gaskets and packings, textiles, insulation, or a family member's clothes. Don't assume you don't have a case because it was "only" white asbestos. Chrysotile causes the same diseases as every other type.

Most chrysotile products are covered by asbestos bankruptcy trusts. The Johns-Manville trust handles the largest share, and there are dozens of others for specific makers of brakes, gaskets, joint compound, floor tile, roofing, and cement products. That often means compensation is available even when the original company is long gone, and many people have claims against more than one trust. You can learn more about filing an asbestos trust claim.

When you call, you reach our litigation team, not a screener. There's no fee unless we recover compensation for your family.

Call 833-4-ASBESTOS to speak with us about your case.

Is chrysotile still a danger today?

Chrysotile is one of the six minerals formally regulated as asbestos by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer.^1,23 In March 2024, the EPA banned ongoing uses of chrysotile under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which finally ended the last legal US uses, including the chlor-alkali diaphragms that had kept a trickle of asbestos in use long after most products were gone.^24,25 For where asbestos regulation stands now across all six fibers, see our main asbestos page.

But chrysotile is still all around us. It's still mined and used in Russia, Kazakhstan, and China. And in the United States, it remains in the millions of older buildings, homes, vehicles, and products made during the decades it was everywhere. It is, by far, the asbestos people are most likely to disturb today, in old floor tile, siding, roofing, pipe, joint compound, and insulation during renovation and demolition. Because the disease can take decades to appear, new cases from past exposure will keep emerging for years.

Chrysotile in the industry's own words

Chrysotile was the asbestos industry's main product, and its trade journal, Asbestos, wrote about it in nearly every issue for sixty years. These are the journal's major articles about the fiber and where it was mined, and the patents in our library that mention it.

In the trade journal

Most of what the journal printed about chrysotile was market news and production figures. These are its longer articles on the fiber itself and on the mining districts that produced it, in Quebec, the American West and southern Africa. Each link opens the article's page in that issue.

The fiber

• Chrysotile: Its Origin, November 1919
• The Iron Content of Chrysotile, July 1921
• Misconceptions About Chrysotile, February 1922
• Chrysotile vs. Amphibole, November 1924
• Mysteries of Chrysotile, January 1928
• Classification of Canadian Asbestos, December 1931
• Origin of Serpentine, Chrysotile and Antigorite, February 1939
• Iron in Chrysotile Asbestos, February 1940
• A Peculiar Form of Chrysotile, May 1950
• Are Asbestos Fibres Tubular?, February 1951
• Stability of Chrysotile Asbestos, June 1953
• Heat Treatment of Chrysotile Asbestos Fibres, July 1955
• Chrysotile Asbestos in Serpentinized Sedimentary Deposits, by W. E. Sinclair, July 1957
• Chrysotile's Superior Tensile Strength, October 1967
• Chrysotile Asbestos Fiber Pads: A Wet Dispersion Process, by D. H. Laubscher, February 1977

Quebec and the rest of Canada

• Canadian Asbestos Co., October 1937
• Growth in Canadian Asbestos Industry, May 1953
• Relocation Program at Thetford Mines, February 1954
• Free World Depends on Quebec for Asbestos, June 1955
• Chrysotile in Canada, October 1958
• Underground Mining in Canadian Asbestos Mines, July 1959
• Chrysotile Potential in Canada, September 1959
• History of Mining Methods at Jeffrey Mine, September 1964
• The Clinton Mine: Cassiar Asbestos, April 1970
• Carey-Canadian Asbestos Paves the Way, January 1971
• Asbestos Corporation: 50th Anniversary, July 1976
• Lake Asbestos of Quebec Ltd.: Its Canadian Mines Provide Quality Fiber to Users Worldwide, June 1978

The United States

• Asbestos in Arizona, July 1920
• Quality of Crude Asbestos (Arizona), April 1923
• Arizona Mining Differs from Canada, March 1928
• J-M New Processing Mill (Arizona), November 1941
• Vermont Asbestos Mines, June 1945
• Condensate Purification with Arizona Asbestos, March 1946
• Geology of Asbestos Deposits: Vermont, by Kay Badollet, March 1948
• Geology of Asbestos Deposits: Arizona, by Kay Badollet, September 1948
• Chrysotile Deposits of Arizona, May 1955
• A New Chrysotile Discovery in Montana, November 1957
• The Arizona Low Iron Chrysotile Asbestos Situation, March 1961
• Pacific Asbestos Corporation, July 1969
• "Calidria" Asbestos Pellets, by John L. Myers of Union Carbide, October 1971
• Geology and Mining Operations at Pacific Asbestos Corporation, October 1972

Southern Africa

• Shabani, Rhodesian and Orlo, September 1921
• Chrysotile in the Union of South Africa, May 1928
• Chrysotile Asbestos in the South African Fields, May 1941
• The Rise of Rhodesia's Asbestos Industry, July 1942
• Geology of Asbestos Deposits of Southern Rhodesia, August 1950
• Production in Southern Rhodesia (I), by W. E. Sinclair, August 1953
• Production in Southern Rhodesia (II), by W. E. Sinclair, September 1953
• Story of Rhodesian Asbestos Limited, April 1955
• The Quest for Chrysotile in Southern Rhodesia, by W. E. Sinclair, April 1957
• The Development of Chrysotile Asbestos in South Africa, August 1959
• The Development of Chrysotile in Southern Rhodesia, April 1960
• Msauli Mine: African Chrysotile Asbestos Ltd., November 1968

In patents

287 US patents in our library mention chrysotile in their text, from 1929 to 1980. At least 52 were assigned to Johns-Manville, which mined chrysotile at the Jeffrey Mine in Quebec.

References

1. IARC. Arsenic, Metals, Fibres, and Dusts. IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, Vol 100C. International Agency for Research on Cancer; 2012.
2. Gardner LU. Laboratory records documenting chrysotile asbestos mouse inhalation experiments. Saranac Laboratory; 1943. (Preserved in the asbestos litigation historical record.)
3. Vorwald AJ. Published report of the Saranac Laboratory chrysotile research, omitting the cancer findings from the original Gardner data. 1951.
4. Schepers GWH. Testimony and writings on the Saranac Laboratory archives and the Quebec miner lung samples. (Multiple published sources; asbestos litigation historical record.)
5. Doll R. Mortality from lung cancer in asbestos workers. Br J Ind Med. 1955;12(2):81-86.
6. Markowitz SB. Asbestos-related lung cancer and malignant mesothelioma of the pleura: selected current issues. Semin Respir Crit Care Med. 2015;36(3):334-346.
7. Virta RL. Worldwide Asbestos Supply and Consumption Trends From 1900 to 2003. US Geological Survey Circular 1298. US Department of the Interior; 2006.
8. Kobell F von. Introduction of the mineral name chrysotile in the German mineralogical literature. 1834.
9. Pliny the Elder. Naturalis Historia. c. 77 CE.
10. Dana ES, Dana JD. Dana's New Mineralogy. 8th ed. Wiley; 1997.
11. Stayner LT, Dankovic DA, Lemen RA. Occupational exposure to chrysotile asbestos and cancer risk: a review of the amphibole hypothesis. Am J Public Health. 1996;86(2):179-186.
12. Mirabelli D, Calisti R, Barone-Adesi F, et al. Excess of mesotheliomas after exposure to chrysotile in Balangero, Italy. Occup Environ Med. 2008;65(12):815-819.
13. Loomis D, Dement JM, Wolf SH, Richardson DB. Lung cancer mortality and fibre exposures among North Carolina asbestos textile workers. Occup Environ Med. 2009;66(8):535-542.
14. Wang X, Lin S, Yu I, et al. Cause-specific mortality in a Chinese chrysotile textile worker cohort. Cancer Sci. 2013;104(2):245-249.
15. Suzuki Y, Yuen SR. Asbestos fibers contributing to the induction of human malignant mesothelioma. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2002;982:160-176.
16. Hodgson JT, Darnton A. The quantitative risks of mesothelioma and lung cancer in relation to asbestos exposure. Ann Occup Hyg. 2000;44(8):565-601.
17. Clarke GM. Major world asbestos producers. In: Abbott PA, ed. A Review of Asbestos Resources. Colorado School of Mines; 1982.
18. Lemen RA. Asbestos in brakes: exposure and risk of disease. Am J Ind Med. 2004;45(3):229-237.
19. US Geological Survey. Minerals Yearbook: Asbestos [annual chapters]. US Department of the Interior; 1932-2024.
20. Virta RL. Mineral Commodity Profiles: Asbestos. US Geological Survey Circular 1255-KK. US Geological Survey; 2005.
21. Industrial Minerals and Rocks. 4th ed. American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers; 1975.
22. Bowles O. Asbestos: A Materials Survey. Information Circular 7880. US Bureau of Mines; 1959.
23. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Asbestos. 29 C.F.R. § 1910.1001.
24. US Environmental Protection Agency. Risk Evaluation for Asbestos, Part 1: Chrysotile Asbestos. EPA Document 740-R1-8012. US Environmental Protection Agency; 2020.
25. US Environmental Protection Agency. Asbestos Part 1; chrysotile asbestos; regulation of certain conditions of use under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Fed Regist. 2024;89(61):21970-22010.

Key Sources

Littré É. Dictionnaire de la langue française. Hachette; 1861.

Selikoff IJ, Lee DHK. Asbestos and Disease. Academic Press; 1978.

Badollet MS. Asbestos, a mineral of unparalleled properties. Transactions of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. 1951;54:151-160.

Speil S, Leineweber JP. Asbestos minerals in modern technology. Environ Res. 1969;2(3):166-208.