Asbestos Textile / Woven Cloth

Asbestos textiles represent one of the oldest and most hazardous categories of asbestos-containing materials. Woven from spun chrysotile (white asbestos) fibres, sometimes blended with cotton or synthetic yarns for improved handling, asbestos cloth was manufactured for an extraordinarily wide range of industrial, military, and domestic applications. Its unique combination of heat resistance, non-combustibility, flexibility, and tensile strength made it indispensable in industries operating at high temperatures from the late nineteenth century through the late twentieth century.

Asbestos cloth was produced by spinning raw asbestos fibre into yarn and then weaving the yarn on textile looms, in a process virtually identical to conventional fabric production. The major centres of asbestos textile manufacturing were in Rochdale (UK), where Turner Brothers operated some of the earliest mills, and in the eastern United States, where Johns-Manville and Raybestos-Manhattan ran large-scale operations. Cape Asbestos in South Africa and Bell Asbestos in Canada were also significant producers.

The applications of asbestos cloth were vast. It was used for fire blankets, welding curtains, thermal insulation wraps around pipes and boilers, gasket material, expansion joint packing, conveyor belt fabric, theatre safety curtains, ironing board covers, oven gloves, and a wide variety of other heat-resistant and fire-protective applications in factories, ships, power stations, refineries, and domestic settings.

Asbestos textiles are among the most dangerous of all asbestos products because the fibres are mechanically bound by weaving rather than chemically bound in a cement or resin matrix. This means the cloth is inherently friable: handling, folding, cutting, fraying, or even gentle agitation releases asbestos fibres directly into the air. Workers who manufactured, cut, sewed, or used asbestos textiles experienced some of the highest exposure levels and disease rates of any asbestos-exposed occupation. The weavers and spinners of the Rochdale mills and the American textile factories suffered devastating epidemics of asbestosis and mesothelioma.

Even decades after production ceased in most countries, asbestos textiles remain in situ in industrial facilities, ships, older buildings, and institutional settings. Fire blankets in older workshops, welding curtains in fabrication shops, and thermal wraps on industrial piping are among the most commonly encountered items. Any woven material in a pre-1995 industrial or institutional setting that appears to be designed for heat or fire protection should be treated as asbestos until proven otherwise.