Buying a property - and being aware of asbestos.

Asbestos is a set of six naturally occurring silicate minerals.

The most common ones being blue asbestos (crocidolite), brown asbestos (amosite) and white asbestos (chrysotile). chrysotile - from the Ancient Greek words for Gold Fibre

The other three being tremolite, anthophyllite, and actinolite.

Asbestiform habit, describing a mineral that grows in a fibrous aggregate of long thin fibrous cyrystals.

Asbestos has been found in products and pottery during archaeological digs in Scandanavia dating back at least 3000 BC.

Back then asbestos was used in building materials, and many everyday items including clothes, although it does seem that the Roman empire was aware of its dangerous qualities.

Pliny the Elder, a Roman Author, recommended never to buy asbestos quarry slaves as they died young.

And yet in more recent times modern production of asbestos began in Canada in 1879, and not long after production began in the UK.

Consequently many older properties in the UK have some sort of asbestos in part as construction, often mixed in with other materials in the building process.

In 1898 His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Factories commented that; “The evil effects of asbestos dust have also attracted my attention”