Short Answer: In 1989, many uses of asbestos were banned, but the regulation was later reversed. Many uses have now been banned, but not all uses, and not all asbestos products have been removed.

Asbestos has been regulated and sometimes restricted at different levels in different places around the world, but there are very few places where all asbestos has been banned, and all of it has been removed. Asbestos was used in construction and industry of all kinds throughout the twentieth century, so there is always some level of asbestos in the air and water, and exposure to asbestos is ongoing.

Many of the most dangerous uses – like asbestos insulation – can no longer be manufactured or installed in the United States, but they are still present in homes and other buildings. In other countries, asbestos products are still sometimes used, and in many places less abatement has been done. That is one reason veterans who served in combat around the world may also have been exposed to asbestos.

Asbestos is unsafe in any amount.

We know today that no amount of asbestos exposure is ever safe.

However, asbestos was once prized by manufacturers across the United States. Easily affordable and incredibly durable, companies went so far as to call asbestos a “miracle mineral.” It was baked and woven into an astounding range of products, from vinyl floor tiles to boiler ducts and cigarette filters. 

Many asbestos products, especially those installed in homes and other structures, remain in use even today. 

While asbestos enjoyed a privileged position, scientists began to suspect that exposure could cause health problems as early as the 1920s. After decades of investigation, researchers reached a startling conclusion: asbestos was not only associated with intense respiratory distress, it could also cause cancer. 

The asbestos industry spent enormous amounts of money trying to suppress this emerging medical research, using its influence to lobby Congress and dissuade regulators from taking any action.

Reason finally started to prevail in the early 1970s, as the federal government began enacting asbestos prohibitions. Eventually, in 1989, the Environmental Protection Agency passed what it had intended to be a final ban on almost all asbestos-containing materials.  

Unfortunately, though, this ban was quickly dismantled by the courts. Since neither the E.P.A. nor Congress was ever able to propose another plan or issue an asbestos recall, contamination continues to pose a significant threat to families and workers throughout the country. 

An Overview of Asbestos and Illness 

Asbestos is a type of naturally-occurring mineral that can be found around the world. 

In the United States, most reported asbestos deposits are in California, Montana, and the Appalachian Mountains. These deposits sometimes coincide with concentrations of other industrial ores, like vermiculite. Cross-contamination is a major problem, and it has resulted in several public health crises. 

Asbestos can be subdivided into six separate subcategories. Each type of asbestos has its own distinctive appearance and unique traits. However, every strain of asbestos shares certain qualities. These include resistances to heat, electricity, and corrosion. 

Since asbestos is a fire retardant with insulative properties, it was often incorporated into construction materials and other industrial products. In some cases, asbestos was even integrated into common consumer goods, like makeup and cigarette filters. 

In almost every case, asbestos was touted as an attractive feature—an additive that could put an end to unexpected conflagrations, or, perhaps, help a product retain its form over the course of many years.

How Asbestos Causes Illness 

Asbestos’s strength, though, is also its greatest weakness. 

This is because, when asbestos is broken down into fine powder—during processing, or through overuse—it can aerosolize, scattering microscopic fibers into the air. 

Asbestos fibers, unlike some other types of particles, are virtually undetectable. They have no smell, cannot be seen by the naked eye, and are small enough to be inhaled. 

Once asbestos is inside the body, it is all but impossible to eradicate. Fibers can become embedded deep within the lungs and surrounding tissue, causing scarring, inflammation, and the abnormal cellular reproduction characteristic of cancer.  

Asbestos exposure is associated with medical conditions including, but not limited to, the following: 

Many of these conditions have unusually and extraordinarily long latent periods. In other words, people who are diagnosed with diseases like malignant pleural mesothelioma typically live very ordinary lives. They have no asbestos-related symptoms, or their symptoms are so mild that they are either ignored or misattributed to another condition. 

By the time that most people realize that their bodies are harboring a life-threatening disease, it is often too late for physicians to offer anything beyond palliative care. 

Asbestos’s Annual Death Toll 

Estimates vary, but scientists believe that asbestos-related illnesses claim the lives of about 40,000 Americans each year. 

Most people who pass away from these diseases are those who have a history of working with or around asbestos. Others shared homes or other common spaces with former asbestos-industry employees. 

However, asbestos exposure through other routes is not uncommon, and anyone who believes they may have been exposed to asbestos should exercise an abundance of caution. 

Asbestos Legislation and Regulation 

People have used asbestos for thousands of years. 

However, the asbestos industry only began to peak in the United States after the end of the Second World War By the early 1970s, American companies were producing an estimated 300 million pounds of asbestos annually. 

Even in its heyday, though, scientists had concerns about asbestos—concerns that were eventually proven right, but which the government steadfastly refused to address for the better part of a half-century. 

United States Asbestos Regulation

Only when the evidence against asbestos became overwhelming did the federal government and Environmental Protection Agency begin introducing new regulations intended to curb its already-widespread use. 

These initial measures included policies and legislation such as: 

After 1986, the E.P.A.’s next significant action was an attempted “phase-out” of all asbestos-containing materials. 

The Year That Asbestos Was Banned

The federal Environmental Protection Agency issued a regulatory plan to ban the manufacture, importation, processing, and distributing of most commercial asbestos products in a July 1989 issue of the federal register. 

Under this rule, the so-called asbestos “phase-out” would entail: 

  • A ban on the Manufacture, Import, and Processing of Asbestos, to be completed in three separate stages and finalized by Augst 26, 1996; and 
  • A ban on the Distribution in Commerce of Asbestos, to be completed in three separate stages and finalized by August 25, 1997. 

Each stage of these staggered bans would have seen the removal of different asbestos-containing materials from the market, with only small quantities of asbestos approved to be sold for essential uses. 

Ongoing EPA discussions on regulation – and pushback from industry

While the E.P.A. acknowledged that some companies might claim that asbestos is critical to their operations, they planned to place the onus upon businesses to show both that they needed asbestos-based products and that they had made, at minimum, a good-faith effort to find a safer alternative. 

However, the planned asbestos phase-out was itself discarded after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA that regulators had failed to do their due diligence in responding to public comment and in planning the actual ban. 

The phase-out was thus overturned, although the court allowed the E.P.A. to continue enforcing prohibitions against new uses of asbestos. 

In summary: asbestos was banned in the United States in 1989, but the ban was overturned two years later. 

The take home is that asbestos exposure is still an issue – both because it’s in the infrastructure and environment around us, and because many people were exposed to it in th past, and their diseases are only becoming clear health problems more recently.

Fortunately there is compensation for asbestos-related cancer and other diseases. Billions of dollars were set aside to pay for patients’ medical bills, lost wages and other costs associated with their asbestos-related disease. Learn more about the fastest and easiest route to financial aid for an asbestos-related cancer.