Asbesto: ¿un peligro silencioso? Parte 1: La prohibición y la regulación del uso del asbesto en el mundo

Abstract

Asbestos or asbestos is the name given to a group of fibrous minerals, the use of which has become very common in industry due to its insulating conditions, its high level of resistance to high temperatures, its flexibility and its low price. Etymologically asbestos means "inextinguishable", "unbreakable" or "incombustible". These qualifiers precisely evoke the properties of this set of fibrous minerals that have had a wide variety of uses since ancient times. It is known, for example, that the Scandinavians used asbestos 4,500 years ago to make kitchen utensils and that the Romans used it to make cloth for burning corpses, so that the ashes of the bodies would not mix with those of firewood However, the use of asbestos only reached an international peak with the industrial revolution, when the properties of the mineral fibers of that material turned out to be very useful to make key inventions such as steam engines and electric generators. Starting in 1870, large industries that used asbestos in their production processes began to be founded in countries such as Canada, Australia, Germany and England. Over time, thousands of manufactured products came to be made with asbestos. For example, the fibers of this mineral have been used in sectors such as construction, especially to produce tiles and water pipes; in the automotive sector, asbestos has been used to make brakes and clutches; This fibrous mineral has also been used to make plastics, paints, packaging, insulation devices for ship equipment, and heat-resistant textile materials. Finally, the industrial uses of asbestos have been very varied and the task of listing them is difficult, since there are those who estimate that there are some 3,000 products that contain asbestos. The boom in the extraction and use of asbestos in the world was accompanied by a growing proliferation of lung diseases, a fact that aroused the concern of some scientists