05 September 2020

Asbestos in a Kent cigarette filter (1950s)


And I agree with the comment at the via that it appears to be crocidolite ("blue asbestos"), which is the most carcinogenic of the asbestiform minerals.

3 comments:

  1. I thank the most popular deity that they didn't have me start smoking until 1970, and didn't start smoking Kent cigarettes until 1972, when I was 16.
    And what influenced me to do so, in New Zealand back then, you ask ?
    National Geographic magazines, even if I was only there for the articles.

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  2. William rocket hundred percent agree with you that the early 70's National Geographic's were very educational.
    As a side note about asbestos in my early years in Vermont I used to work for Johnson & Johnson in their talc mine as an engineer which manufactured the baby powder. The base rock that formed either asbestos or talc starts as a seam up in Québec and go down the Atlantic seaboard to Georgia. Québec used to have the major asbestos mines, in Vermont the seam transitions over to talc. And yes the ore body we mined the baby powder out had a thin seam of asbestos running down the middle of it.
    But here's a trivia for you wherever there is talc there is gold nearby.I.e. the original goal strike in California has a huge Deposit nearby and the same holds true in the early years when they found some gold in Georgia that's where the talc seam ends on the Atlantic seaboard. Our Ludlow Vermont facility used to have a prospector pan for gold on the streams on the property. He obviously found something as he kept doing it.Raw asbestos actually looks quite interesting it looks like long spears attached together.And I know how you enjoy your rocks raw asbestos looks quite interesting it's a bunch of Spears all attached together.Have a piece somewhere in the basement that I kept in case something ever developed in my lungs
    lll

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  3. if you have an interest in asbestos or the history of asbestos you might be interested in a little town of witternoom in western australia

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