Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
They knew. They always knew.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, Roman historian Pliny the Elder documented asbestos workers dying from "sickness of the lungs"—watching slaves fashion crude respirators from animal bladders while weaving what he called "funeral dress for kings." The people closest to the dust understood the danger. The people farthest away admired the spectacle, collected the profits, and buried the evidence. That pattern never changed.
Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making traces humanity's 4,500-year relationship with the mineral the ancient Greeks named "asbestos"—meaning indestructible. From Stone Age Finnish pottery (2500 BCE) to the $70+ billion in legal damages paid by modern corporations, we uncover how a material praised for safety became a source of sickness, litigation, and grief.
Each episode explores:
- Ancient origins: The salamander myth that persisted for 2,000 years, the Roman tablecloths that cleaned themselves in fire, the sacred flames kept burning with asbestos wicks
- The industrial cover-up: Internal documents proving companies knew asbestos caused cancer since the 1930s—and suppressed the evidence for 40 years
- Modern consequences: Why mesothelioma claims 3,000 American lives annually, and why $30+ billion sits in asbestos trust funds waiting for victims who never file
- The science of denial: How manufactured doubt delayed regulation for decades, using the same tactics as the tobacco industry—sometimes with the same scientists
Whether you're a history enthusiast, legal professional, medical researcher, or someone seeking answers after asbestos exposure, this podcast reveals the uncomfortable truth: the longest-running industrial cover-up in human history isn't ancient history. It's still happening.
The History of Asbestos Podcast is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano, a nationwide mesothelioma law firm with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims.
If you or a loved one has mesothelioma, visit Dandell.com for a free consultation.
Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
The First Victims? The Pliny Mistranslation That Fooled Scholars for a Century
Did ancient Romans know asbestos was dangerous? The widely-cited "proof"—Pliny the Elder's passage about workers wearing bladder-skin masks—is a mistranslation.
The passage appears in Natural History Book 33, Chapter 40, which discusses cinnabar (mercury sulfide) workers, not asbestos. Scholars Browne and Murray documented this correction in The Lancet in 1990, yet the myth persists in textbooks, litigation documents, and Wikipedia. This episode examines why ancient observers couldn't have connected asbestos to disease: mesothelioma's 20-50 year latency period exceeded Roman life expectancy of 25-40 years for laborers.
In this episode:
- The famous "bladder-mask" quote and its century-long misattribution to asbestos workers
- Why Pliny's Natural History Book 33 describes mercury poisoning, not asbestos exposure
- Strabo's "sickness of the lungs" passage: another misattribution (arsenic mines in Pontus, not asbestos)
- The latency problem: 20-50 years for mesothelioma vs. 25-40 year ancient lifespans
- What we know about slave labor in ancient asbestos production
- Why the absence of ancient documentation isn't a cover-up—it's the limits of observation
Who this episode is for: History enthusiasts, researchers investigating asbestos exposure claims, and anyone who has encountered the claim that "the Romans knew asbestos was deadly 2,000 years ago."
Sources cited: Pliny the Elder's Natural History (c. 77 CE), Strabo's Geography (c. 20 CE), Browne & Murray's "Asbestos and the Romans" (The Lancet, 1990), Bianchi & Bianchi (La Medicina del lavoro, 2015).
Resources:
- What Is Mesothelioma? — Learn about symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options
- Mesothelioma Latency Period — Why symptoms appear 20-50 years after exposure
- Asbestos Exposure History — Common exposure sources and occupations at risk
- Meet Our Team — Paul Danziger, Dave Foster, Anna Jackson, and the patient advocacy team
- Free Consultation — Talk to someone who understands what you're facing
Learn more: Dandell.com
Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.
Resources:
→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/
→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/
→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/
→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/
Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:
http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/
Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
Episode 4: The First Victims?
Full Transcript
Series: Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
Episode: 4 — The First Victims?
Produced by: Danziger & De Llano
Runtime: Approximately 10 minutes
Episode Summary
This episode examines the widely-repeated claim that ancient Romans knew asbestos was dangerous. The famous passage about workers wearing "bladder-skin masks" to protect their lungs—attributed to Pliny the Elder—is actually about cinnabar (mercury sulfide) workers, not asbestos workers. A second commonly-cited passage from Strabo describes arsenic mines, not asbestos production. Modern scholars documented these corrections in 1990, but the misattributions persist. The episode explains why ancient observers couldn't have connected asbestos to disease: the 20-50 year latency period for asbestos-related diseases exceeded the typical lifespan of ancient laborers.
Key Takeaways
- The "bladder-mask" passage is not about asbestos. Pliny's Natural History Book 33, Chapter 40 describes cinnabar (mercury sulfide) workers grinding pigment—not asbestos workers.
- Strabo's "sickness of the lungs" passage describes arsenic mines. The passage in Geography Book 12.3.40 refers to sandarake (red arsenic sulfide) mines in Pontus, where 200+ slaves died rapidly from acute poisoning.
- Pliny mentions asbestos in three separate books (19, 36, 37) and never describes illness, masks, or health hazards in any of them.
- The misattribution persisted for over a century until Browne and Murray published "Asbestos and the Romans" in The Lancet (1990).
- Ancient observation of asbestos disease was scientifically impossible because mesothelioma takes 20-50 years to develop, while Roman laborers typically lived 25-40 years.
- The absence of ancient documentation is not a cover-up—it reflects the limits of pre-modern observation when dealing with a disease that takes decades to manifest.
Transcript
Introduction
Speaker 1: Here's a quote you've probably seen before.
Speaker 2: Go ahead.
Speaker 1: "Persons polishing the mineral in workshops tie on their face loose masks of bladder-skin, to prevent their inhaling the dust in breathing, which is very pernicious."
Speaker 2: Pliny the Elder.
Speaker 1: That's what everyone says. This quote appears in litigation documents. Medical textbooks. Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: Proof the Romans knew.
Speaker 1: Two thousand years ago, they understood asbestos was deadly. Workers wore masks. The evidence is right there in the primary sources.
Speaker 2: Except?
Speaker 1: Except that passage isn't about asbestos.
The Pliny Mistranslation
Speaker 2: Okay. What do you mean it's not about asbestos?
Speaker 1: That quote is from Pliny's Natural History. Book 33, Chapter 40.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Book 33 is titled "The Natural History of Metals."
Speaker 2: Metals.
Speaker 1: Gold. Silver. Mercury. The chapter where that quote appears? It's about cinnabar.
Speaker 2: Cinnabar.
Speaker 1: Mercury sulfide. The Romans ground it into powder to make vermillion—the most expensive red pigment in the ancient world.
Speaker 2: So the workers wearing bladder masks—
Speaker 1: Were grinding mercury ore. Not asbestos.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: Mercury causes acute symptoms. Tremors. Confusion. Madness. You'd see it within days or weeks.
Speaker 2: The "mad hatter" thing.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Visible. Obvious. Easy to connect cause and effect.
Speaker 2: And scholars just... missed this? For how long?
Speaker 1: Over a century. The misattribution appears in academic papers, legal briefs, documentaries. Everyone citing everyone else.
Speaker 2: Classic peer review. "I didn't read it, but someone definitely did."
Speaker 1: It wasn't until 1990 that researchers Browne and Murray published a correction in The Lancet. They actually went back to the Latin.
Speaker 2: Revolutionary concept.
Speaker 1: They titled the paper "Asbestos and the Romans." Their conclusion? There's no ancient evidence that Romans recognized asbestos as hazardous.
Speaker 2: None?
Speaker 1: None. Pliny mentions asbestos in three separate books—19, 36, and 37. Describes the cloth, the fire resistance, the value.
Speaker 2: And?
Speaker 1: Never once mentions workers getting sick. Never mentions masks. Never mentions lung disease.
Speaker 2: The one passage everyone cites—
Speaker 1: Is about mercury.
The Strabo Misattribution
Speaker 2: But wait. What about Strabo?
Speaker 1: You've seen that one too?
Speaker 2: "Sickness of the lungs." Greek geographer describing asbestos miners.
Speaker 1: Same problem. Different mineral.
Speaker 2: Oh no.
Speaker 1: Strabo's Geography, Book 12, Chapter 3. He describes mines in Pontus—modern-day Turkey.
Speaker 2: And?
Speaker 1: The mines are on a mountain called Sandaracurgium. Named after the mineral they extracted.
Speaker 2: Which was?
Speaker 1: Sandarake. Red arsenic sulfide. Also called realgar.
Speaker 2: Arsenic.
Speaker 1: Strabo writes that the air in those mines was—quote—"both deadly and hard to endure on account of the grievous odour of the ore."
Speaker 2: Grievous odour.
Speaker 1: He says the workmen were "doomed to a quick death." Two hundred slaves, constantly being replaced because they kept dying.
Speaker 2: Quick death. That's not asbestos.
Speaker 1: Asbestos doesn't smell. Doesn't kill quickly. Takes decades.
Speaker 2: So that's arsenic poisoning.
Speaker 1: Acute arsenic poisoning. Obvious. Immediate. The kind of thing you can actually observe.
Speaker 2: And Strabo never mentions asbestos.
Speaker 1: Not once. In seventeen books of geography covering the entire known world.
Speaker 2: So the two most-cited ancient sources for "they knew asbestos was dangerous"—
Speaker 1: Are about mercury and arsenic.
Speaker 2: That's... actually kind of impressive. Wrong for a hundred years in two different languages.
Why Ancient Observation Was Impossible
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. Even if those passages were about asbestos—
Speaker 2: Which they're not.
Speaker 1: Which they're not. But even if they were, there's a deeper problem. The ancient world couldn't have connected asbestos to disease. It was scientifically impossible.
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 1: Latency.
Speaker 2: The gap between exposure and symptoms.
Speaker 1: Mesothelioma takes twenty to fifty years to develop after exposure. Sometimes longer.
Speaker 2: Twenty to fifty years.
Speaker 1: Asbestosis—the scarring disease—takes ten to forty years.
Speaker 2: Okay. And Roman life expectancy was...?
Speaker 1: At birth? About twenty-five years.
Speaker 2: Twenty-five.
Speaker 1: Now, that number is skewed by infant mortality. If you survived childhood, you might live to your fifties or sixties.
Speaker 2: But a slave working in hazardous conditions?
Speaker 1: Much shorter. Thirty-five, forty if they were lucky.
Speaker 2: So the disease took longer to kill them than they had left to live.
Speaker 1: Exactly. A worker exposed at age twenty wouldn't develop symptoms until age forty or fifty. By which point—
Speaker 2: They're already dead from something else.
Speaker 1: Malnutrition. Infection. Accident. Violence. A dozen other things that killed people faster.
Speaker 2: The slow poison never got its chance.
Speaker 1: Right. And even if someone did live long enough to develop symptoms—how would you connect it? There's no ancient epidemiology. No concept of long-term occupational disease.
Speaker 2: You'd just be an old man who couldn't breathe.
Speaker 1: In a world where lots of old men couldn't breathe.
Speaker 2: If you were lucky enough to become an old man at all.
The Visibility Problem
Speaker 1: And there's one more factor.
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: The diseases ancient people could identify were the ones they could see.
Speaker 2: Mercury tremors.
Speaker 1: Right. Mercury poisoning: your hands shake, you act erratically, you go mad. Visible within weeks.
Speaker 2: Arsenic?
Speaker 1: Rapid death. The "grievous odour" Strabo mentions. Workers dying so fast they had to constantly replace them.
Speaker 2: Lead?
Speaker 1: Abdominal pain, paralysis, behavioral changes. The Romans actually knew lead was toxic—they just used it anyway.
Speaker 2: Bold choice.
Speaker 1: But asbestos? Nothing visible. The fibers are microscopic. The damage accumulates silently, invisibly, over decades.
Speaker 2: The perfect crime.
Speaker 1: In a sense, yes. The perfect occupational poison. By the time it kills you, everyone's forgotten where you worked thirty years ago.
Speaker 2: That's going to matter later, isn't it.
Speaker 1: We're going to spend a lot of time on that. Later.
Speaker 2: Looking forward to it.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be.
Speaker 2: And in the ancient world—you probably haven't been keeping records anyway.
Speaker 1: You're a slave. You're not keeping anything.
The Slaves
Speaker 2: Speaking of which.
Speaker 1: The workers.
Speaker 2: We've been talking about what ancient observers could or couldn't know. But what about the people actually doing the work?
Speaker 1: We don't have their accounts. Slaves didn't write memoirs.
Speaker 2: Shockingly, their owners didn't encourage literacy.
Speaker 1: What we do have are descriptions of mine conditions generally. Diodorus Siculus describes Egyptian gold mines—men working in chains, in the dark, until they dropped.
Speaker 2: But nothing specific to asbestos?
Speaker 1: Nothing. And remember—asbestos was rare. Worth the price of exceptional pearls, Pliny said.
Speaker 2: Small-scale production.
Speaker 1: Very small. You didn't have thousands of workers in asbestos mines the way you did in gold or silver mines. Maybe a few dozen people across the entire ancient world who worked with it regularly.
Speaker 2: Not exactly a large sample size.
Speaker 1: And scattered across different regions—Cyprus, Greece, maybe India. No central workforce to observe.
Speaker 2: So even if they were getting sick—
Speaker 1: Nobody was in a position to notice a pattern.
Speaker 2: They suffered. We just have no record of it.
Speaker 1: Almost certainly. But the absence of documentation isn't a cover-up. It's the limits of ancient observation.
Speaker 2: The cover-up comes later.
Speaker 1: Much later. Different era. Different story.
Closing
Speaker 2: So the famous passage isn't about asbestos.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: The ancient Romans didn't document asbestos disease.
Speaker 1: Not because they hid it. Because they couldn't see it.
Speaker 2: The poison was too slow.
Speaker 1: The workers died too young.
Speaker 2: And the connection was invisible.
Speaker 1: For four thousand years, asbestos remained a curiosity. A marvel. A magic mineral worth more than pearls. Nobody understood what it really was—geologically. Nobody understood what it did to the human body. That knowledge would come eventually. But not for a long, long time.
Speaker 2: And when it did come—
Speaker 1: That's a story for later in this series.
Speaker 2: So what's next?
Speaker 1: Next time: the economics. Why was asbestos so valuable? Where did it come from? How did you turn rock into cloth?
Speaker 2: The supply chain.
Speaker 1: Trade routes, production secrets, and why this magic mineral stayed rare for four thousand years.
Speaker 2: Episode 5: The Economics of Magic.
Sponsor Message
Speaker 1: You know, we just spent this whole episode talking about latency. Twenty to fifty years between exposure and diagnosis.
Speaker 2: Which means people getting diagnosed today were exposed decades ago.
Speaker 1: In the seventies. The sixties. Sometimes earlier.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly why Danziger and De Llano exists.
Speaker 1: If you're just learning about a mesothelioma diagnosis—yours or someone you love—you probably have questions about what that latency period means. Where the exposure happened. What your options are now.
Speaker 2: The team at Dandell.com has been doing this for over thirty years. Paul Danziger, the founding partner, has spent his entire career on asbestos cases. And the patient advocates—people like Dave Foster, who lost his own father to asbestos lung cancer, and Anna Jackson, who lost her husband—they're not just processing paperwork.
Speaker 1: They've lived it.
Speaker 2: They've lived it. So when we say Danziger and De Llano has recovered nearly two billion dollars for asbestos victims, that's not just a number. That's thousands of families who got answers.
Speaker 1: And compensation.
Speaker 2: And compensation. If you want to understand more about mesothelioma, latency periods, or what a diagnosis means for your family, Dandell.com has resources that explain all of it. And if you're ready to talk to someone, the consultation is free.
Speaker 1: Dandell.com.
Speaker 2: Dandell.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Pliny the Elder write about asbestos causing illness?
No. The passage commonly cited—describing workers wearing "bladder-skin masks" to protect their lungs—appears in Natural History Book 33, Chapter 40, which discusses cinnabar (mercury sulfide) workers, not asbestos workers. Pliny mentions asbestos in Books 19, 36, and 37, but never describes health hazards, masks, or illness in any of those passages.
Did ancient Romans know asbestos was dangerous?
There is no evidence that ancient Greeks or Romans recognized asbestos as hazardous. Scholars Browne and Murray documented this in their 1990 paper "Asbestos and the Romans" published in The Lancet. The misattribution of the "bladder-mask" passage persisted for over a century before being corrected.
Why couldn't ancient people observe asbestos-related disease?
Asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma have a latency period of 20-50 years between exposure and symptom onset. Roman life expectancy for laborers was approximately 25-40 years. The disease took longer to develop than most workers lived, making it impossible to connect exposure to illness.
What does Strabo's "sickness of the lungs" passage actually describe?
Strabo's Geography Book 12.3.40 describes sandarake (red arsenic sulfide) mines in Pontus, not asbestos production. He writes of 200+ slaves dying rapidly from the "deadly air" and "grievous odour"—symptoms of acute arsenic poisoning, not asbestos exposure.
Did ancient asbestos workers suffer from exposure?
Almost certainly, though we have no direct documentation. Asbestos production was small-scale and geographically scattered, and slaves—who performed the dangerous work—did not leave written records. The absence of documentation reflects the limits of ancient observation, not a cover-up.
What should I do if I've been diagnosed with mesothelioma?
If you or someone you love has received a mesothelioma diagnosis, you may be entitled to compensation. Danziger & De Llano offers free consultations with experienced mesothelioma lawyers who can help you understand your options. Contact them at Dandell.com.
Resources
- What Is Mesothelioma? — Symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment overview
- Mesothelioma Diagnosis — Understanding the diagnostic process
- Asbestos Exposure — Common exposure sources and occupations at risk
- Mesothelioma Compensation — Financial recovery options for victims and families
- Meet Paul Danziger — Founding partner, decades of mesothelioma litigation experience
- Meet the Client Advocates — Dave Foster, Anna Jackson, and the patient support team
- Free Consultation — Talk to someone who understands what you're facing
Sources Cited
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History (c. 77 CE) — Books 19, 33, 36, 37
- Strabo, Geography (c. 20 CE) — Book 12.3.40
- Browne, K. and Murray, R. "Asbestos and the Romans." The Lancet (August 1990)
- Bianchi, C. and Bianchi, T. "Asbestos between science and myth." La Medicina del lavoro (2015)
- Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica — on ancient mining conditions
Series Information
Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is a documentary podcast series tracing the history of asbestos from ancient times through the modern era. Produced by Danziger & De Llano, a nationwide mesothelioma law firm with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims.
For more information: Dandell.com
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