Trade Names: How can you tell if a Historical Product Contained Asbestos Fibers?

Determining whether a historical product contained asbestos fibers is a lot easier than you might have thought. There are a lot of older books available on eBay and other similar sites for a reasonable sum of money that are right on point. See, for example, The Handbook of Material Trade Names published in 1953 by authors Zimmerman and Lavine. This book is packed at 794 pages with nothing but Trade Names from that era including the manufacturer (trade name owner) and the composition of the materials.

Say, for example, you remember the trade name Asbesto-Sorb from your work in a factory, but don’t recall the manufacturer. Well, piece of cake as the book states that the material did contain asbestos, was used to remove grease and oil deposits, and was manufactured by Philip Carey Manufacturing Company.

Do you want to know about Bakelite? Easy enough to find out the background.

Just as an aside, my deep dig into Bakelite showed that some contained asbestos while others did not. This is one of those tradenames that are a good starting point, but you really need an expert to know for sure.

In summary, if you are trying to sort out an exposure to a particular product, books like this one are a good starting point and they are plentiful at reasonable prices.

Let me know if you have any comments or thoughts by either leaving a comment or emailing me at TheAsbestosBlog@gmail.com. Thank you. Marty