100 years ago, asbestos was the new wonder material, and "We added asbestos to stuff" was a very common marketing bullet point for building materials. It found its way into flooring, mastic, the predecessors to drywall, ceiling texture, insulation, and anything and everything used near a combustion appliance.

Literally just, take a process that used to use sand or horsehair or whatever filler, and add a significant portion by mass of asbestos powder instead.

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gcanyon 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I wonder if there are studies on the lives saved by asbestos's fireproofing feature vs. cost by its lung-disease-causing feature.

Answering my own question: the WHO estimates it costs 200K lives per year. No estimates on the other side, but that's a big number to overcome...

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/asbestos

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bn-l an hour ago | parent [-]

I’m not sure if it’s still the case but I searched of alibaba once and found huge rolls of asbestos for sale and massive supply capacity numbers. It was pretty shocking.

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ACCount37 an hour ago | parent [-]

It's still used in the industry. And it can be used safely, as long as you follow the precautions (handling, encapsulation) and mind the lifecycle. But China being China? Haha no.

	▲	some_random 8 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's also still used in building materials in developing countries, it's an incredible material that happens to give people cancer, mainly workers.