Asbestos: Khosrow's Fireproof Napkin, Kent Filters and Nellie Kershaw

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At a 7th century feast, Persian king Khosrow II tossed a stained napkin into the fire and pulled it out clean. It was woven from asbestos, a silicate mineral that forms flexible fibers. People in what is now eastern Finland used it to strengthen pottery about 4,500 years ago, Greek temples burned asbestos lamp wicks, and Charlemagne repeated the tablecloth trick. Pliny the Elder misapplied a Greek word for quicklime, and the name stuck, while the episode finds no ancient evidence for the claim that Romans knew it was deadly. From the 1870s, mines in Quebec, the Ural Mountains, Italy and South Africa fed more than 3,000 products, from Wizard of Oz snow to gas mask filters.

Between 1952 and 1956 Kent cigarettes used crocidolite asbestos in their Micronite filter. Stiff amphibole fibers defeat the macrophages sent to clear them, driving inflammation, scarring and mesothelioma decades later. In 1924 Rochdale mill worker Nellie Kershaw died at 33, and pathologist William Edmund Cooke named asbestosis. A 1930 UK report found 66 percent of 20 year workers affected. World War II shipyards spread exposure, and court documents later showed manufacturers knew the dangers in the 1930s.

Chrysotile, about 95 percent of US building asbestos, versus amosite and crocidolite
Hampton Roads, Virginia, where mesothelioma runs about seven times the national rate
The roughly 1,000 tons of asbestos released when the World Trade Center collapsed
The 1991 court ruling that struck down the EPA's 1989 ban and the final 2024 rule
Russia's 790,000 tons mined in 2020 and research on mine tailings capturing carbon

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