Oliver Bowles, Asbestos, the Silk of the Mineral Kingdom, Ruberoid Company Booklet (1946)

A 1946 booklet published by The Ruberoid Company, a maker of asbestos and asphalt roofing and building products, giving Dr. Oliver Bowles's popular account of asbestos. Bowles, chief of the Nonmetal Economics Division of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, covers the history of asbestos, its uses in fire protection and industry, the fiber types, sources in Vermont, Arizona, Quebec, Africa and elsewhere, and how it was mined and milled. The company's preface, dated December 1946, sends it out "on its mission of industrial education," and the back pages advertise Ruberoid's own asbestos products.

What it shows

Under the heading "A Boon to Humanity," the booklet presents asbestos as a mineral of "inestimable value to mankind" and describes its uses in roofing, siding, insulating cements, pipe covering, brake linings, textiles and firemen's and industrial workers' clothing. It says nothing about any health risk from asbestos dust. Ruberoid describes itself on the back pages as operating an asbestos mine in Vermont and eleven factories. A shorter version of Bowles's text, reprinted in a roofing trade journal, is a separate Library page: Asbestos: Silk of the Mineral Kingdom.