By TAD DICKENS
THE ROANOKE TIMES

   For nearly two millennia, people wanting to master fire turned to asbestos.

    Ancient Greek geologist Strabo knew it. In the first century, he wrote about the fiber, "which is combed out and woven, so that the woven material is made into towels, and, when these are soiled, they are thrown into fire and cleansed, just as linens are cleansed by washing."

    Roman soldier and author Pliny the Elder knew it. Pliny, also in the first century, noted that asbestos "is quite indestructible by fire," and "affords protection against all spells, especially those of the Magi."

    So at least one of the claims stretched the bounds of credibility. Magi reference aside, the common thread in the ancient observations is asbestos' resistance to heat.

    Strabo and Pliny are widely reported to have made another observation that for centuries was largely forgotten: Lung problems arose among the slaves who were required to work in asbestos.

    The fiber's use took off in the early 20th century. Steam engines, boilers, buildings, theater curtains, brake linings - practically anything that could catch fire was made of or coated with asbestos.

    Workers by the hundreds of thousands, including many in Roanoke's railyards, applied the material to products. In the steam-engine era of Roanoke's railroad shops and others across the country, asbestos was used as insulation and pipe wrapping on locomotives and other equipment. The fiber was made into a paste and spread by hand.

    The workers didn't know about asbestos' downside. Meanwhile, the particles were attaching themselves to lungs, causing scar tissue that stiffened the normally elastic organs, making breathing difficult, and in some cases, eventually impossible. With the illness and deaths came lawsuits by the thousands.

    All the litigation has dramatically changed the marketplace for asbestos, said Leonard Vance, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor who has testified as an expert witness in asbestos trials. But that change hasn't ended the product's use, he said. You can find it in such everyday products as paint, floor tile, sheet rock, brake lining, gaskets.

    "It's easier to list the things asbestos is banned from than the things in which it's still legal to use," said Vance, who has testified in Roanoke and other courts for both plaintiffs and defendants.

    "I use it myself on a farm I grew up on," Vance said. "I use an asbestos paint on the roof of my barn."

    The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created in 1971, and its first significant standard applied to asbestos. OSHA applied standards to both application and removal.

    The Environmental Protection Agency has banned most spray-applied asbestos materials, and wet-applied and preformed asbestos products used for insulation. The EPA also bans its use in corrugated paper, rollboard, commercial and specialty paper, flooring felt and any product in which asbestos has not previously been used.

    Railroads quit using asbestos about the time the steam era ended. Other industries have shied away because of lawsuits, Vance said.

    "The tort system has been what has virtually driven asbestos off the market, not government regulators."

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