[Rockhounds] Asbestos: The strange past of the 'magic mineral'

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

In the minerals gallery at the Natural History Museum in London, amid rows
of ornately carved columns and cathedral-like windows, is an oak display
cabinet. Within it is a small clear plastic box, labelled with the warning
"DO NOT OPEN".

The case contains what looks like a ball of the grey, fibrous fluff that
you might find choking up a clothes dryer
<https://www.tips-and-tricks.co/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/pluizenfilter.jpg> –
or the kind of thing an owl might regurgitate
<https://steeprockassoc.org/dissecting-an-owl-pellet>. It looks like
something that has been put on display by accident. But though this
artefact is safely sealed within its box, and poses no risk to the public,
inside is something deadly. It's an asbestos purse. Oddly, this pale,
mangled relic once belonged to none other than American founding father
Benjamin Franklin.

For millennia, asbestos was not seen as a deadly hazard – a word now
uttered in hushed tones, associated with tragedy
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-44535967> and scandal
<https://www.nature.com/articles/468868a#:~:text=After%20the%20link%20between%20asbestos,scandal%20that%20deserves%20wider%20attention.>.
Instead, it was an exciting, even miraculous, material with highly
appealing properties. This is asbestos' past as the "magic mineral
<https://www.brachers.co.uk/insights/asbestos-a-history-of-the-magic-mineral#:~:text=Until%2520the%25201970s%2520asbestos%2520was,resistance%2520and%252C%2520ironically%252C%2520safety.>",
a strange time when it was woven into textiles fit for kings, and used for
party tricks. One 18th-Century philosopher even slept in a night-cap made
from it
<https://archive.org/details/gri_33125008626067/page/n121/mode/2up?q=night-cap&>
.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240207-asbestos-the-strange-past-of-the-magic-mineral