Asbestos and the Romans

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos and the Romans, by K. Browne, R. Murray (Lancet, 1990).

The study

• Authors: K. Browne, R. Murray
• Journal: Lancet
• Published: 1990;336(8712):445
• Type of article: Historical article, Letter
• Cited by: 2 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 003839).

In plain English

This is a short letter to the editor of The Lancet, not a research study. The authors responded to a Lancet correspondent's claim that the Romans knew about the health hazards of asbestos. They reported that neither they nor the people whose help they enlisted could trace any original source for this claim. In their search, classical writings mentioned asbestos and "amiantos" but none referred to health hazards. The authors wrote that small quantities of chrysotile (white) asbestos appear to have been extracted intermittently in ancient times in north Italy, Corsica, Cyprus, and Arcadia and Euboea in Greece, and that illness caused by it was unlikely to have been identified. They explained that classical passages describing harmful dust or mine air involved other substances. A mine described by Strabo involved ore containing realgar (arsenic disulphide) in a silver mine. The elder Pliny is given credit for describing respiratory protection against asbestos, but the authors wrote that the face coverings he described were worn by workers exposed to cinnabar (sulphide of mercury). The authors suggested the story may have arisen from a mistranslation of a Greek word in Plutarch that was regularly used to mean slaked lime.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: letter to the editor (correspondence) reviewing classical literary sources
• Who was studied: no people were studied; the authors examined classical literature (Plautus, Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch) for references to asbestos health hazards
• Exposure: chrysotile (white) asbestos extracted in small quantities in ancient times, probably from open-cast workings with primitive tools
• Main results:
  • The authors found no original source for the claim that the Romans knew of asbestos health hazards, and no classical reference to such hazards.
  • Based on modern experience of intensive mining in these regions, the authors considered it unlikely that illness from ancient asbestos extraction would have been identified.
  • Strabo's description of a mine with life-destroying air referred to realgar (arsenic disulphide) ore in a silver mine, not asbestos.
  • The elder Pliny is given credit for referring to respiratory protection against asbestos, but the authors wrote that the workers he described were exposed to cinnabar (sulphide of mercury).
  • The Greek word Plutarch used to describe a choking dust was regularly used to mean slaked lime, not asbestos.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that it is improbable that the adverse effects of asbestos were detected two thousand years ago, and that the story may have arisen from a mistranslation.

Related studies

• Malignant mesothelioma in Rome, Italy 1980-1995. A retrospective study of 79 patients — V. Ascoli, C.C. Scalzo, et al. (1996)
• Malignant mesothelioma in Rome and Latium region, 1993-2001 — V. Ascoli, S. Belli, et al. (2003)
• Asbestos containing materials in schools of Rome and surrounding area (Italy) — A. Campopiano, A. Cannizzaro, et al. (2021)
• The biomedical and epidemiological characteristics of asbestos-related diseases: a review — M. Huncharek (1986)
• Historical background to the asbestos problem — D.H. Lee, I.J. Selikoff (1979)
• Magic, menace, myth and malice — F.D. Liddell (1997)

Browse more research in Lancet, or return to medical research.