Artex Asbestos

Artex is a product that people use mostly to be able to texture ceilings.  The name Artex is a trademark of Artex Ltd., it's a company based in the United Kingdom.  Artex Ltd started making textured finishing for walls, and ceilings in 1935, and up until the mid 1980's they used something in their mixture called Asbestos to strengthen it.

Asbestos is actually a natural mineral that is long, thin fibrous crystals.  It looks a lot like white hair.  Except is is 6x smaller, when it was discovered the Greeks they considered it the miracle mineral because it was such an easy thing to work with, and it also was able to withstand heat very well. 

Not only the resistance to heat but other qualities like, resistance to electrical and chemical damage, was great at absorbing sound, and its tensile strength those things are what made it so popular in usage for so many different things in the 1800's.  Because of its resistance to heat it was mixed with cement, or woven into fabric and mats.  It also was used on electric oven and hotplate wiring because of it's electrical insulation properties at higher temperatures.

It wasn't until the 1940's that the United States started regulating the ventilation in facilities that made asbestos materials, and made asbestosis an excusable work related disease.  Asbestos is known to cause lung cancer, a disease called asbestosis, and malignant mesothelioma.  These are very dangerous diseases and not irreversible. 

Many other countries have banned it from usage in commercial and residential properties.  Other states are going the same way but a much slower pace then the U.S. and Europe.  There are some countries that still use asbestos despite the damaging effects of it.  These countries find benefits of the things that are made with asbestos bigger then the harm that they cause.

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