Asbestos product has been used for more than 2,000 years. It is rumored that Romans would clean asbestos napkins by throwing them in the fire. The asbestos cloth would come out of the fire whiter than it went in, so the Romans named asbestos "amiantus", meaning "unpolluted".
Use of Asbestos product declined during the Middle Ages, yet some say that Charlemagne had asbestos tablecloths. Marco Polo was also shown items made from asbestos cloth on his travels.Ancient observations of the health risks of asbestos were either forgotten or ignored.
In 1917 and 1918, it was observed by several studies in the United States that asbestos workers were dying unnaturally young.A woman had been working with asbestos since she was thirteen. Twenty-five percent of them showed evidence of asbestos-related lung disease. This served as a warning to the asbestos companies, and afterwards they tried to cover up the health effects of asbestos. Asbestos product companies continued to use asbestos in manufacturing and construction. Despite that many materials, such as fiberglass insulation, were created to replace asbestos, companies that used asbestos ignored the safer alternatives.
For the other stories, Millions of homes, office buildings, military vessels and factories contained asbestos-laden products for many years, before the risks associated with asbestos fibers were made known.
In December 1977, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission banned the use of asbestos-containing patching compounds and artificial fireplace ash products. Currently, the 1989 EPA ban affects only flooring felt, rollboard and certain types of papers that contain Asbestos product .There are currently hundreds, if not thousands, of products and construction materials in use today that may contain asbestos.
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