WHAT IS ASBESTOS?

In review of attempts to define exactly what asbestos is, there is a recurring theme of responses that form a finite spectrum. The first color of that spectrum is usually brevity, i.e., a best attempt at the most succinct verbiage that encapsulates the noun. The second color is often geology, i.e., the specific minerals that define asbestos (ironically, no mineral, even the ones that we have regulated, can be asbestos on their own), or the assertion of what asbestos is not, e.g., asbestos is not a mineralogic term, but a commercial one. The third color of our spectrum is usually a history of the material, which can take the audience of those who would define asbestos to them on mystic journeys to ancient Scandinavia or Greece, then often quickly shuffling the story fast forward to a crescendo rise of asbestos use in the Industrial Revolution, to a dénouement post regulation in the 70s and 80s. The fourth color of our definitional spectrum is then the profound effects on human health, and the perverse intertwined latency of exposure to disease paralleled in our cognizance of asbestos danger as a community. And, to finally complete our rainbow passage into understanding of what asbestos truly is, we finish in the invisible ultraviolet end of the spectrum of our reason: we admit, like philosophers or pontificators are wont to do, that we still to this day do not truly know what asbestos is.