Too little, too late? The home office and the asbestos industry regulations, 1931

Asbestos is the generic term for a group of fibrous minerals.Virtually indestructible and of high tensile strength, it is both fire and acid resistant, and yet can be spun into yarn and woven into cloth.Although there is evidence of the use of asbestos in the ancient world, it acquired commercial importance only in the late nineteenth century.Thereafter it was employed for numerous purposes, including in fire proofing, insulation and the automobile industry.But, while asbestos was in many ways a boon to humanity, it possesses one major drawback: exposure to its dust can cause fatal diseases, including fibrosis of the lungs (asbestosis) and cancer.As awareness of these dangers emerged, its use came to be first regulated and, subsequently, curtailed, so that today an asbestos industry hardly exists.While the asbestos industry might be virtually extinct, no branch of the history of occupational health has received more attention than asbestos-related disease.Much of this attention has focused on the USA, but several studies have discussed British developments, particularly during the first third of the twentieth century.1 When scholars independently investigate almost any subject, the usual outcome is debate and controversy.However, in relation to asbestos and health there is a high degree of consensus, not only that asbestos was "a bad thing" but that a chapter of errors and omissions occurred in the discovery and eradication of that bad thing.As far as early-twentieth-century Britain is concerned there is broad agreement on a number of points.First, that regulation arrived "late", that is long after the hazards were understood.Second, that certain groups and individuals, including manufacturers, medical scientists, and Factory Inspectors, deserve censure for the belated introduction of regulations.Third, that the regulations were the product of more or less "cosy" negotiations between asbestos manufacturers and civil servants which took little account of trade union views.The purpose of this article is to appraise these assessments, to question the prevailing consensus, and to argue that hitherto studies of the early history of asbestos and occupational health have been dominated by that most beguiling, though misleading, of distractions: hindsight.