The Breadth of Asbestos Products by the 1920s: Or, why you need to worry today when taking down old schools, houses, factories, theaters, offices, etc.

By the 1920s, asbestos in the United States was everywhere. To elaborate, let’s use the Johns-Manville Book titled Service to Industry from either 1924 or 1925 — the exact time of publication is a little confusing. For a mostly product catalogue, it shows just how ubiquitous asbestos was in the day to day life back in the roaring 20s. The number of offices selling the material and breadth of the product lines as listed below are staggering for a company prior to the Great Depression; Johns-Manville was massive.

Today, we pay the price in terms of costs for removal and exposure avoidance by people who’s job or living habits would otherwise put them at risk. Remember, the number of asbestos products continued to increase from the 1920s for the next fifty years. Also remember that, by the late 1920s, Johns-Manville was already a defendant in several asbestos exposure bodily injury lawsuits. All of these asbestos containing products, unless previously removed, are still out there.

As to some testing.

Now, let’s look at the incredibly broad scope of the products manufactured by Johns-Manville at that time.

The above don’t include products manufactured by the other asbestos companies. Imagine how many in total are still in the field and in use today, especially world-wide. In summary, to those of you in the field “be careful out there.”

Let me know what you think by providing a comment or an email to me at TheAsbestoBlog@gmail.com. Thanks. Marty