While asbestos was used as a "stand alone" product in a variety of applications, the combination of asbestos and cement surfaced in the 1900s in the United Sates, and was perceived as an innovation on the building material sector. Asbestos cement products found use in many different areas, because manufacturers wanted to take advantage of its remarkable durability, resistance to heat and fire. Further to that, it was easy to process, form and install. Although, nowadays when people think of asbestos it is usually associated with fear. Yet, it needs to be acknowledged that when we look at the history of asbestos cement and the characteristics of this material, it played a very important role as a revolutionary building material in the twentieth century. Asbestos cement is a composition of two products, namely Portland cement and asbestos fibers. Before they were combined, each product was used separately in a widespread field of commercial applications. A number of different experiments led to the conclusion that asbestos worked best when mixed together with cement which simply proved to be most useful for the building industry.
The ratio between cement and asbestos fibers varied. Proportionally, asbestos was used anywhere between 10-75% (by weight), depending on the desired outcome. As already mentioned, the reason why asbestos gained such a popularity stemmed from the fact that it was inexpensive to process and furthermore came with physical and chemical properties that made the material virtually indestructible.




Asbestos is a mineral consisting of silicate fibers that are highly resistant to fire, mechanical pressure (which can be explained by the fibers' ratio between length and diameter). Yet, they are still very flexible, which made it a perfect bond to the Portland cement matrix. An approximate 95% of all building materials used asbestos in the form of white asbestos (crysotile), and only on occasion brown asbestos (amosite) was used. There is also a number of other asbestos forms: crocidolite, tremolite, anthophylite and actinolite. These variants were not used since it was determined early on that they were too hazardous. Typical asbestos cement applications included covering of boilers, hot blast furnaces, steam pipes and stills.
Johns-Manville, formerly known as Johns Manufacturing Company, took on a leading role in the development and production of asbestos cement products. For instance, the company introduced a marketing strategy, claiming that asbestos cement coating - when applied properly - is a perfect agent to stop all leaks; turning beat up and damaged roofs into solid constructions. Further to that, the product was used as joint compounds around chimneys, skylights, scuppers, shingles, nail holes in roofs and dormer windows.
It was also utilized in order to protect beams, posts, ceilings and walls in the restaurants to prevent the heat transmitting from the kitchen to other rooms.