Asbestos was banned because inhaling its microscopic fibers causes fatal diseases, including a rare and aggressive cancer called mesothelioma, lung cancer, and a scarring condition of the lungs known as asbestosis. These diseases often don’t appear until decades after exposure, which allowed millions of workers and residents to be harmed before the full scale of the danger became clear. In 2021 alone, an estimated 216,535 people worldwide died from asbestos-related cancers.
What Made Asbestos So Widely Used
Asbestos refers to six naturally occurring fibrous minerals that share a set of remarkable physical properties: high tensile strength, resistance to heat, resistance to chemicals, and electrical insulation. These qualities made it a go-to material across dozens of industries for much of the 20th century. It showed up in brake pads, roof shingles, floor tiles, pipe insulation, fireproof clothing, acoustic panels, and cement products. Shipbuilding and construction relied on it heavily. At its peak, asbestos was woven into the infrastructure of daily life in ways that are still being dealt with today.
How Asbestos Fibers Damage the Body
When asbestos-containing materials are disturbed, they release fibers thin enough to float in the air and small enough to reach the deepest parts of the lungs. Once lodged there, the fibers cause harm through several overlapping processes.
The body’s immune cells (macrophages) try to engulf and break down the fibers, but the fibers are too long and durable to be digested. This “frustrated” immune response causes the cells to spill their contents into surrounding tissue, generating molecules called reactive oxygen species that damage DNA and trigger chronic inflammation. The inflammation, sustained over years, promotes scarring (fibrosis) and creates conditions where cells are more likely to mutate and become cancerous.
Asbestos fibers also interact directly with cellular machinery. Because of their surface charge, the fibers bind to DNA, RNA, and proteins, altering their shape and function. Long fibers physically interfere with cell division by disrupting the structures that separate chromosomes, leading to deletions and other genetic damage. At the same time, affected lung and tissue cells release chemical signals that recruit more immune cells to the area, amplifying the cycle of damage, cell death, and abnormal cell growth.
Diseases Linked to Asbestos Exposure
The three primary diseases caused by asbestos are mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the thin lining that surrounds the lungs and abdomen. It is almost exclusively caused by asbestos exposure, and it is nearly always fatal. Lung cancer from asbestos behaves like other lung cancers but is far more common in people who were also smokers, with the two exposures multiplying each other’s risk.
Asbestosis is not a cancer but a progressive scarring of lung tissue that makes breathing increasingly difficult over time. There is no way to reverse the scarring once it develops.
One of the most alarming features of asbestos-related diseases is their latency period. Mesothelioma, for instance, has a median latency of about 45 years. Cases appearing less than 10 years after first exposure are extremely rare. This means someone exposed in their twenties may not receive a diagnosis until their late sixties or seventies. That decades-long delay is a major reason asbestos was used so extensively before its dangers were fully recognized, and why new cases continue to appear today from exposures that happened in the mid-20th century.
The Failed 1989 Ban in the United States
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency attempted a near-total ban on asbestos-containing products in 1989, issuing a final rule under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that would have phased out most commercial uses. Two years later, a federal appeals court overturned the majority of that ban, ruling that the EPA had not adequately demonstrated that a ban was the least burdensome way to address the risk.
What survived the court challenge was narrow. Only a handful of product categories remained banned: corrugated paper, rollboard, commercial paper, specialty paper, flooring felt, and any “new use” of asbestos that had not existed before August 25, 1989. For everything else, asbestos remained legal in the United States for more than three additional decades.
The 2024 Chrysotile Ban
In March 2024, the EPA finally issued a comprehensive ban on chrysotile asbestos, the only type still imported and used commercially in the U.S. The rule, effective May 28, 2024, covers the remaining industrial applications where chrysotile was still in use: diaphragms in the chlor-alkali industry (which produces chlorine and sodium hydroxide), sheet gaskets in chemical production, brake blocks used in the oil industry, aftermarket automotive brake linings, and various other friction products and gaskets.
The ban doesn’t take effect all at once. Importing chrysotile asbestos for chlor-alkali diaphragms was prohibited immediately, but existing facilities that process and use it have until 2029 to stop, with some qualifying for extensions of up to 12 years. Sheet gaskets in chemical production must be phased out by 2026, though certain uses in titanium dioxide production and nuclear material processing are permitted until 2029. One nuclear facility, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, has an exception extending to the end of 2037.
The Global Picture
More than 70 countries have now enacted national bans on all types of asbestos, including most of Europe, Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and South Africa. Some of these bans permit minor exemptions for specialized applications, but all prohibit general use in construction, insulation, and textiles.
Despite this progress, asbestos is still mined and used in several countries, particularly Russia, China, India, and Kazakhstan. The global death toll reflects this ongoing exposure. In 2021, the United States, China, and Japan reported the highest absolute numbers of deaths from asbestos-related cancers: 33,316, 28,429, and 21,736 respectively. Many of these deaths trace back to exposures that occurred before bans were in place, but in countries where asbestos is still used, new exposures continue to add to the toll.
Why Older Buildings Still Pose a Risk
Banning new uses of asbestos doesn’t eliminate the vast quantity already embedded in existing structures. Asbestos-containing materials in older homes, schools, and commercial buildings are generally classified as either friable or non-friable. Friable materials can be crumbled, pulverized, or reduced to powder by hand pressure when dry, which means they can easily release fibers into the air. Pipe insulation, sprayed-on fireproofing, and some ceiling tiles fall into this category and pose the highest risk.
Non-friable materials, like vinyl floor tiles or cement siding with asbestos mixed in, hold their fibers firmly in place under normal conditions. They become dangerous when they’re cut, drilled, sanded, or allowed to deteriorate to the point where they can be crumbled by hand. This is why renovation and demolition of older buildings requires asbestos inspections and, when the material is found, professional abatement rather than DIY removal. Disturbing asbestos-containing materials without proper containment and respiratory protection is one of the most common ways people are still exposed today.