Document dmkrBRGYbGx3nV3LXm3Q0GLq

uuu uses When fact is stranger than fiction Industrial applications for Quebec's chrysotile asbestos fibre include the i items listed to the left. Resistant to heat, friction and corrosion, as& ps is a poor conductor of elecJe trie'ity and its fibres form a tough, interlocking web when combined with many materials. Except in textile products, asbestos is seldom the main ingredient of any manufactured article. Major worldwide fibre users are the construction and transportation indus tries, although general industry con sumes vast tonnages of asbestos each year. ! Subject of old and oft-told tales in the mystic annals of the Ancient World, the magic of asbestos was almost unknown in Canada and Quebec on Confedera tion Day in 1867. A rural Canada dreamt little of its industrial future in which it would employ this magic to help others send the first rockets to the moon. Scholars, of course, recalled that the Greek, Herodotus, the world's first his torian, reported the use of asbestos in the making of cremation cloths in which were wrapped the bodies of distinguish ed dead. Indeed, the word Asbestos is derived from the Greek; its meaning, unquenchable. Plutarch, whose researches were in to the lives of the Ancients rather more than into their resources, nevertheless commented on the strange attribute which enabled wicks of asbestos to keep perpetually alive the holy flames in Roman temples. And it was that medieval travel-writ er, Marco Polo (much of whose writing was regarded as more fiction than fact) who during his many adventures in the land of Kubla Khan came upon an incom bustible substance which he described as ''of the nature of the salamander", a kind of lizard reputed to live in the flames. On closer examination, the hair of the salamander turned out to have been mined, much as asbestos was mined in Quebec eighty years ago. Few of Marco Polo's stay-at-home readers. however, were likely to accept without a grain of salt such an improbable tale. Of such legends and reports few peo ple living in the remote Eastern Town ships settlements in the late 19th center were probably informed. Even less aware were they that they were creatln z a new asbestos legend of their own. Farmers tilling the soil in the Eastern Townships came in almost daily contac with the magic mineral in their rocky fields and in the hills. Their wives and daughters carefully extracted the silkethreads from the rocks and used them for knitting socks or mittens. Occasion ally, braving possible accusation of witchcraft, they tossed their knitted products on the hot stove to dry. Nobody told them they were living on the lid of a vast treasure house con taining one of the world's largest hoard* of one of its most valuable minerals. J An Old Wives' Tale in a new age of industry , What, where and why is asbestos? The age of legends, however, was dying owned by eight major companies now Like iron or copper or nickel or gold, as Canada along with the rest of the produce some 1,500,000 short tons of asbestos is a mineral. But, look at it as world was entering the era of scientific asbestos fibre a year. Ninety-five per it is plucked out of the rock and you pr ption. There were men, of course, cent of it is exported, to become one of would think, as one visitor to Quebec's wh<- .Jnew about asbestos and under Canada's largest revenue producers- asbestos country suggested, that it was stood its unusual properties and how it nearly $160,000,000 in cash a year, grown from a seed. Or, as another visi could be mined. Geologists and mining $60,000,000 of this sum from the tor, an enterprising entrepreneur seek engineers and one or two astute busi- United States alone. ing new products for his assembly line, | nessmen heard about the silky, rock An Old Wives' Tale became indus believed, that it was made in a factory. | fibres in the fields, and a new industry trial reality in 1877. That year, just 10 The second observer was actually [ was on its way to be.ing born. years after Confederation, the new in nearer the truth though he mistook the Eighty years later men are still explor dustry mined exactly fifty tons of manufacturer's identity. Asbestos ore ing, and drilling and testing; mountains asbestos. is the product of one of the longest, of mine tailings continue to grow and toughest and most haphazard of manu open pits become wider and deeper, big facturing processes. It is contained, enough in some cases to contain the geologists say, in rock which has been entire communities which work them. twisted, shredded, squeezed and super Diesel trucks of immense capacities heated by primeval convulsions of the have replaced pit ponies, and the mills earth's crust. Millions of years of time, erected to crush the asbestos ore and combined with heat, pressure and grad shake loose the fibres are a mechanical ual cooling, crystallized the rock and maze which would have astonished left it in a fibrous state lying in serpen nineteenth century producers. tine veins. Since 1876, when asbestos was first Nature was the manufacturer and commercially produced in Quebec, though modern scientists and engineers men and machines have drawn out of have tried again and again to duplicate the earth more than 30 million tons of its processes and produce asbestos the fibrous minera I. From a geographical synthetically, they have never succeed rectangle fifty miles long and fifteen ed in developing a satisfactory product. miles wide, they extract each year forty Instant asbestos is still no more than a per cent of the entire world's supply. glint in a scientist's eye. There may be enough there still to last Outcroppings served the Ancients another hundred years. It will need to and attracted the womenfolk in Que be ,ed with care, and with firm but bec's Eastern Townships. Modern man inc. .^singly costly efficiency. has discovered it in more substantial Within the rectangle eleven mines quantities underground and has mined ^00990 Hr $ * 8 $ J0 ee## & \ e g & $ o w- & o s $ e o o a o -~- --------------- ##C-OG0 Jtk A\> 1 &( ee; : $$&&C ec ^ 'it in Russia, Rhodesia, South Africa, & Cyprus, Italy, United States, Australia, China, France, Japan, and in several pC. ''her countries as well as in Canada. Vlore asbestos lies beneath the East- glgt at n Townships rectangle than under any other comparable area of the earth's surface. Or so today's geologists be lieve. But in Canada new deposits are constantly being discovered; important ones at Cassiar, in British Columbia, in Newfoundland and up north in New Quebec near Hudson Strait. To the chemist. Asbestos is spelled 3MgO, 2Si02, 2H20. These are the symbols for the magic formula which created chrysotile, a hydrous magne sium silicate-the type of asbestos mined in Quebec. Its specific gravity is from 2.53 to 2. 59. Although its fibres may seem silky-soft, and fragile, they are so tough that even when ex posed to ordinary acids, they maintain their strength. Don't let the silky feel of thefibres fool youjwhen twisted,they possess the tensile strength of steel. In Canada-it's Chrysotile Unlike other minerals such as copper, coal or zinc, asbestos comes in different varieties, each with its own set of char acteristics. Commercially, the most valuable kind of asbestos is chrysotile (from the Greek words meaning fine h^ir of gold). Chrysotile is the only iety mined in Canada. ^ rts /wy v.-1 C r ^ & S $ 5; V- Sir . O f" *'. 'ecsoeccooc*: ^ $,. * '.C003D ; ) $ o v' o o o o 00 O e c c- o o r- <: 3 o'^c-ec&ec O0 > 0$ o^0 -: *.- ^ 5S? ec-oeo 9 o U0V w > o- " ssaeodotees ;> soe < Jt c: >< - .. v - * c^seeae99c f 4 C.` O L O - &&. c --r V e 0 e- I .A Asbestos-bearing rock, mined in the same manner as many other minerals, goes not to a smelter but to a mill. In the mill it is crushed in tough steel i' s, screened, fiberized, graded and jed, ready for shipment to fabricat ing plants. Air is the lifeblood of the asbestos mill. To separate a ton of the thistledown-soft fibres from its motherrock as it is ceaselessly agitated on screens, roughly ten tons of air, in the form of suction, is required. The resi due of crushed rock is deposited on the tailings piles, or dumped into an abandoned open pit. Of the many types of equipment used in the milling proc ess, the most elaborate, and most costly are the ventilating and air sys tems that remove asbestos dust from the air. As in all other industries, however, it is the man behind the machine that makes the mine. In the 1880's, a Quebec asbestos miner spent his days, winter and summer, in an open pit gathering by hand chunks of crude asbestos-bear ing rock. These he deposited in a horsedrawn cart. For this task he was paid an average of one dollar a day. Today, the crude-picker has almost disappeared. In his place is the "team", the miner and mill worker who operate mechanical equipment in open pit, underground mine or modern mill. Ex'-'^sives, air drills, trucks and other m mized equipment of high safety standards and great variety are their implements. They earn more than $2.7 an hour with additional welfare benefit which add fifty cents or more to their hourly wage. Quebec's 6,000 asbestos workers are some of the highest paid hourly wage earners in the Province. Before a pound of asbestos goes tc market, however, an asbestos mine must have on its staff not only miners and millworkers but a whole host of modern technologists, many of whom may seem to have little to do with min ing-accountants, tinsmiths, electronic technicians, diesel mechanics, black smiths, maintenance engineers, safety experts, lawyers, nurses, railroadmen, millwrights, carpenters, purchasers computer technologists, draftsmen, re search scientists, market research men <j>41? '<if v, i v &>$***O : *u>.- 9 69&C ccK &<>*ec>Cuct C i<:?$<4! - C* Z C ' . O C- v . C Scf ^ ec 0 &- ; r'. c f 0 c- _- f - ` f vfj . *$' W t* . V* ?:} <4v 'Asbestos is mined at depths ranging from ground level to 1,500 feet, or more, below the surface. At one mine, a lake was drained so that miners could {e access to the ore. As vast open pits mined deeper and deeper, it is ne cessary to widen them. Surface build ings, including schools, shops and dwellings, have had to be relocated so that the supply of job-creating wealth from the earth may continue. There are two kinds of asbestos mines-the underground mine and the open pit. Asbestos companies prefer open pit mining because it is not only cheaper, but permits the fibre to reach the mill in a better state for processing. First step in the asbestos-mining process is to blast the rock from the ground. Huge air drills punch a pattern of holes, into the "bench" of ore to receive the blasting agent. With their benches-staggered mining levels ex tending around the pit-many of Que bec's asbestos mines resemble vast Roman amphitheatres. Dynamite, which can be awkward to transport, store and, at times, to deto nate, is no longer the blasting agent exclusively used. Chemical fertilizer is used instead. Ammonium nitrate-the fertilizer that Prairie farmers use to produce their wheat- is mixed with diesel-fuel at the blast hole to become owerful and reliable explosive. ie, too, are the days of the dra matic blasts when smoke and rock would plume high to the heavens in a deafening reverberation. Such explo sions mean energy gone to waste and today's asbestos mine engineers prefer quiet blasts that, without fuss or flurry, topple thousands of tons of rock at a time. Mining is a more complex business in underground asbestos operationsthere are two of them in Quebec, both in Thetford Mines. The technique is called "block-caving" and it consists of undercutting the ore deposit-its di mensions having been previously de termined by geologists-and mining the asbestos ore from below. Conducted at depths ranging from 300 to 1,200 feet below the surface, the block-caving method employs the sheer dead weight and immense downward pressure of the ore to assist the mining process. Underground asbestos mining is safe. The rock is stable and no explo sive gasses are present. Whether the surface temperature is 90 degrees or a crisp 30 below, the air temperature in the underground mines is a steady 55 degrees the whole year round. From the underground mine or open pit, the asbestos-bearing ore is trans ported by truck, or in underground mines by trains, to the crushers. The huge jaw-crushers chomp away and re duce rocks to rubble in a matter of sec onds. Then the ore is dried and stored until it is needed in the mill. Once there, it is subjected to fur ther crushings and repeated shaking, screening and fiberizing, all aimed at separating the last shred of fibre from the smallest particle of asbestos rock As this occurs, powerful air suction through the massive aspirator hoods draws the fibre away for grading, pac/ ing and final shipment. Asbestos is valueless as long as it lies in the ground. Quebec's eight min ing companies which recover it have invested hundreds of millions of dol lars in plant and equipment. They spec: more millions each year on materials and supplies, maintenance, moderniza tion, expansion, wages, salaries, trans portation and other services. The continuing investment in im provements during the past ten years has cost Quebec's asbestos mines an average of $12,000,000 a year. Investment on this scale enables the mines to employ directly some 6,000 men and women and to give indirect employment to approximately 48.000 other Canadian workers in the indus tries from which Quebec's companies purchase the goods and services need ed to keep the 10 asbestos mines and 11 mills operating. /|\ ^ & 1 $ 09 *$*$' 9 .* -i.* `T? ^ @ - ^eoo- 0&': S993K MG ouico auu ^wvviiu Asbestos mining is not only a major Quebec industry; it is also a community builder, seriously concerned about the health and happiness of its employees. ?e ore-bearing region of the Eastern . -wnships, it is responsible for cities like Thetford Mines and towns like As bestos, Black Lake, Coleraine, Danville and East Broughton and contributes to the prosperity of nearby communities. Without the capital which has poured into the area by way of the mining com panies and the skills and research that have been applied to the industry, many of these prosperous and lively commu nities would be tiny, unknown hamlets, if indeed, they existed at all. These are the communities asbestos built. They are remarkable not only for the product which sustains them but for the spirit and enthusiasm that carries them on. Like miners everywhere, as bestos miners are realists. They know that someday, long after they are gone perhaps, the mines Will be exhausted and the communities' reasons for being will disappear. Yet, encouraged by the companies, they have developed all the civic ameni ties. They have concert halls and re creation centres, sports arenas, schools and colleges, fine stores, clubs and movie houses, and all the municipal services. They take pride in their ievements, and produce stalwart, . .oponsible citizens. Among the principal mining commu nities is Asbestos, whose 10,000 in habitants produce more chrysotile fibre per capita than anyone in the western world. The site of Quebec's largest as bestos mine and mill, it produces al most half the Province's output of fibre. Some 65 miles northeast, Thetford Mines, with a population of more than 20,000, is the largest of the asbestos mining centres. Thetford is an impor tant regional centre and federal govern ment statistics show that in 1966 its citizens were second only to Montreal ers as the highest average income earn ers in Quebec. Mines are also operated in Black Lake, Coleraine, East Broughton and Norbestos. In common with other mining indus tries, asbestos mining and milling have been regarded as sources of respiratory diseases. This has been a constant con cern of the mining companies and has led to extensive engineering develop ment and regular inspection routines to reduce the presence of dust to a minimum. In 1966, the companies through their association, established with the co operation of international medical ex perts and university staffs, an institute of Occupational and Environmental Health to examine, study and preserve the health of the industry's present and future employees and extend the benefits of this research to asbestos workers around the world. Many people, too, think of mining as hazardous. Statistically, a man's chance of being involved in an accider at an asbestos mine is much less than when he's at home or driving his car. Safety engineering has made asbesto mining safe; the occupation in Quebe is classified as that of a "light indus try" and every year, millions of man hours of accident-free labor are worke. in the mines. <*in i lie mayie iiuiieiai promising TU'Uf; For another century or more, it is ex pected men will be mining chrysotile asbestos in Quebec. Methods will change to become more efficient and more economical. The people who wc in mines and mills will chance, becc r ing each year more highly trained an e more technically skilled. Most of the hard labor of the esriy days of asbestos mining will have dis appeared. Life in the mining commu nities will have become even more comfortable and affluent and the peopi e of asbestos-land will more and more be able to combine the enjoyments of rura and urban living. Some mines now operating will dis appear; new ones will be opened-snd developed. As new ore bodies are un covered, municipal boundaries, streets and buildings will change but change will be preceded by thoughtful plannir-r Cultural, economic and health stand ards will be raised in the mining com munities as the new generations of mining folk take over. The aid that has been provided for today's schools, re creational and medical institutions is evident throughout the asbestos com munities. All this will be possible-and all will come true-because within the Quebec mining and processing industries, the research will go on, seeking constantly new ways to make chrysotile asbestos fibres of use to Man and his World. Mine talk Like every business, mining has a lan guage all its own. These are just a few of the words that asbestos mine or mi I i workers use in their everyday work: Cobber: a person who separates by hand crude fibre from rock. Cyclone: a piece of milling equipment Dryer: the plant where crushed ore is heated and its water content removed, feed: the supply of ore to the mill. Grizzly: griliwork in an underground mine preventing the passage of over size ore. Jumbo: a piece of equipment in the crushing section. Nipper: an underground miner whose job it is to deliver supplies. Skip: a container in which ore is raised to the surface. Spotter: a man who controls the move ment and positioning of trucks un loading. Sump: the lowest part of mine, where pumps are located. Tailings: pulverized waste rock dis charged from a mill. Whizzer: piece of high-speed equip ment used in milling fibre. CC- h>* ? S C C c; ? -$ ' O C v. C *-'$ < o r-1 occQ-:`'$!'^'`' ,srs.f\ >* 0/'^- /' /*\ .r r. - * <0 s' %-. V, V c o . < \.V ?;' f1 ooc uuaiuf 10 4.1 <o cvcjf u* iiuio VVIIVI UUCO WiiUh Vfifeii UJUCOIWO IIUIC l Not all chrysotile asbestos fibres are the same. Some are better suited than others for a specific manufacturing purpose. Quebec's asbestos mines produce _ .ost 150 different grades of fibre, determined by combination of its length, strength, absorptivity and other varying characteristics. In the 1930's, asbestos mining companies decided to establish these grades on a rational ba sis so that purchasers anywhere in the world would be assured of the uni formity and quality of the Quebec as bestos they bought. The standard they adopted is known throughout the world as the Quebec Standard. It is as valid a symbol of in tegrity in the mineral world as is the label Manitoba Number One Hard when applied to wheat. To a miner, a silky fibre of chrysotile asbestos drawn from a chunk of Que bec rock is a lovely thing to behold. To him, it represents not just a rare min eral. It is the very staff of life. From billions upon billions of fibres such as these, he and over 6,000 co-workers earn their livelihoods. His fibre would be worthless, however, had not other men developed for it more than three thousand industrial uses. Even more uses for it are constantly being found through intensive research. In one way or another, most people use asbestos, or the products and serv ices produced with the aid of asbestos, every day of their lives. They use it be cause asbestos resists fire, heat, fric tion and corrosion. And it is a poor conductor of electricity. These charac teristics, plus the ability of fibres to form a tough, interlocking web when combined with many substances, make chrysotile asbestos an invaluable substance. Principal users of asbestos are the manufacturers of construction mate rials. Combined with cement, asbestos is used in siding and shingle materials, wallboard, roofing and in water and sewage pipes. It is found, too, in plastic tiling, in paints and caulking compounds. Next largest user is the transporta tion industry. Asbestos fibre goes into brake linings and pads, not only for cars and trucks but in the largest jet aircraft. It is also used in gaskets and facings for automatic and manua I power transmission systems. General industry demands huge tor nages of asbestos, too. Combined v/itr other materials, asbestos goes into high-temperature insulation, machin ery packings, and special lubricating compounds. It is also part of firemen s suits and fireproof draperies including of course, the theatre curtain. Inside operational rockets and missiles, insu lating materials and asbestos-rein forced plastic components are wideiy used because of their high strength-toweight ratio and resistance to searing temperatures. In Canada and the United States, an increasing number of government au thorities specify the use of asbestos as an additive to highway asphalt. This combination results in a tough yet resili ent paving that resists the hammering of heavy axle-loads and expansion and contraction caused by sharp tempera ture changes. Men do all these things with asbes tos today. Tomorrow, they will use it in ways now undreamed of. In the mining industry's laboratories and in the re search departments of the manufactur ing companies, the search goes on-to find new and better ways to employ the magic mineral forthe benefit of mankind. rvi m viuiwio lii^ivuiuiih unu on economic law Asbestos is seldom the main compo nent of any of the manufactured arti cles into which it enters. Its production, sale and use are, therefore, subject to ar ^versal economic law which, in all co^. xries and under ail but the direst circumstances, determines where, how and why certain products of everyday use are to be made. Like salt, also the product of a mine, asbestos fibres that form part of an other product are seldom seen and never heard. In a vastnumberof finished goods they are an essential but invisi ble ingredient. Because they are so in dustrially desirable, however, many people believe that their ultimate proc essing, or conversion into parts of finished products should always be un dertaken either at the mine site or at least within the provincial or national boundaries of their country of origin. It is as if the salt miners were to in sist that all bread must be baked in some remote mining area to be conve nient to their salt supply. Obviously, the baker prefers to have his bakeshop in a metropolitan centre close to his market and to have the salt shipped there. Asbestos manufacturers share his feelings. Where it is economically practical, the Quebec asbestos mining industry vfencourages the establishment of con?n industries in Quebec or in other pa.of Canada, and their number grows continually as the Canadian mar ket increases. But at home, as abroad, asbestos fibre sales ultimately depend upon what suits the buyer, rather than convenience of the seller. To maintain its position in a highly competitive world market, where Quebec asbestos faces not only the competition of other asbestos-producing countries but that of manufacturers of other natural and synthetic materials as well, it becomes a matter of giving the non-Canadian customer guaranteed continuity of sup ply of high-quality fibres at a competi tive price which will enable him to use them economically in products of his own manufacture. Asbestos cement sheets, for exam ple, are a popular construction material both here and abroad. They contain ten per cent asbestos and 90 per cent ce ment. Simple logic dictates that these sheets shall be manufactured not at the fibre source but at the site where the cement is manufactured or the sheets are to be used. It is much more economi cal to ship a hundred pounds of asbes tos fibre to the market and add it to the cement, than it is to mix the ingredients together at the mine site and ship a thousand pounds of asbestos-cement sheets to the customer. Few countries have their own asbes tos fibres; most can and do make ce ment. To suggest that in order to make asbestos-cement sheets available to their construction industry, they must also import Canadian cement would quickly drive them to substitute materials. Quebec's asbestos mines and their 6,000 workers-together with the many thousands employed in allied tradesdepend for their security upon a steady flow of asbestos exports. The world is their market; without it, their industries would die and their jobs disappear. In the natural processes of industrial ma terial integration, the mineral they mine disappears into almost complete ano nymity. Invisible ingredient it will usu ally be; essential it will remain only as long as it is economically available. [I .-a## *S4.