USGS Minerals Yearbook

The USGS Minerals Yearbook is an annual publication of the United States Geological Survey that documents the production, consumption, import, export, and end uses of mineral commodities in the United States and worldwide. For asbestos, it provides year-by-year data on how much asbestos was mined, imported, and consumed by U.S. industries, and identifies the companies and industrial sectors that handled it. These reports stretch back over a century and form a key public record of the U.S. asbestos economy.

Origin

The U.S. Geological Survey began publishing mineral commodity statistics in 1882 under the title 'Mineral Resources of the United States,' which was renamed the 'Minerals Yearbook' in 1932. Responsibility shifted to the U.S. Bureau of Mines for several decades before returning to the USGS in 1996 when the Bureau was abolished. Asbestos has been tracked as a commodity in nearly every edition.

Significance in Asbestos Context

For patients and their legal teams, the Minerals Yearbook is one of the most reliable independent sources for showing what asbestos was used in the U.S., by whom, and when. Because each volume names importers, end-use industries, and consumption volumes, it can help establish that a specific industry or product category was using asbestos during the years a patient worked there, useful when a defendant denies that asbestos was present in its operations or supply chain. The Yearbooks also document the transition from domestic mining (largely Vermont chrysotile) to heavy reliance on imports from Canada, South Africa, and later Brazil and Russia, which matters when tracing the provenance of fibers found in a patient's tissue or workplace. They are public-domain government documents and are routinely cited by industrial hygienists, historians, and exposure experts.

Example Sentence

The industrial hygiene expert cited the 1965 USGS Minerals Yearbook to show that the gasket manufacturer's industry sector consumed thousands of tons of chrysotile that year, contradicting the company's claim that it had stopped using asbestos.

Related Terms

Chrysotile, Bureau of Mines, Provenance Analysis, Industrial Hygiene, Asbestos Imports, State-of-the-Art Evidence

Notes

• Ask your legal team whether the Yearbooks covering your years of employment have been pulled and reviewed for your industry sector.
• Older volumes (pre-1996) are archived by the USGS and the U.S. Bureau of Mines and are freely available online. Preserve any printouts your attorneys obtain as part of the case record.
• The Yearbooks identify importers and major consumers by name in some years; this can help connect a specific defendant to asbestos handling even when company records have been destroyed.
• Pair Yearbook data with your work history, union records, and product identification testimony to strengthen the link between documented industry-wide asbestos use and your personal exposure.