Asbestos, "The Most Dangerous City In Canada" - Steemit

Nestled in the rolling green countryside of southeastern Quebec, there is a place that has been described as the most dangerous city in Canada.

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In this quiet place, hidden in the rocks for more than 110 years.

Mining was so important to the local economy that the city adopted its name: welcome to Asbestos.

The home of the largest asbestos mine in the world until 2012, called the Jeffrey mine, changed forever when the poisonous nature of the ore - also known as asbestos - forced the final closure of the deposit.

The closure marked the end of an industry that had provided stable and reliable jobs for generations, but which had also claimed casualties among the local population.

It also left another legacy almost as controversial as the mineral he extracted: the name of the city itself.

Local businesses, for example, had difficulty crossing the US border. with products or vehicles with the word "asbestos".

However, in 2006 the municipal council voted unanimously to cling to the name and since then it has adhered to the decision.

For a place that owes its existence to a substance now increasingly prohibited, progress from the shadow of the mine has involved imagination and risk taking.

But Asbestos may finally be leaving behind its toxic past.

Magical mineral

Asbestos is the name given to a set of six silicate-based minerals that naturally form and create long, fibrous crystals.

It has been extracted throughout the world since antiquity for its fire-resistant properties.

During the nineteenth century, settlers discovered that southeastern Quebec contained several substantial deposits of asbestos, large enough to justify large-scale mining.

The Jeffrey mine provided half the global supply of asbestos at some point and helped make Canada the world's largest exporter of the material in the 1970s.

Once known as the "magic mineral", it became a widely used resource in many industries, particularly in construction, where it was commonly used as an insulator, and in shipbuilding.

However, in recent decades, growing evidence has pointed out how harmful to health is asbestos.

Exposure to asbestos is now closely related to the development of lung disease and mesothelioma, an aggressive form of cancer that has become the dark card of presentation of the substance.

Asbestos cancer uncovered
Today, the large open-pit mine in Asbestos lies quietly, but it has left an open scar 350 meters deep and an area of ​​more than six square kilometers.

Canada is still struggling with the lethal legacy of the substance expelled from this hole. Years after the mining activity ceased, Quebec leads in Canada in notified cases of mesothelioma.

This year, the government will finally ban the "manufacture, use, import and export" of asbestos and products that contain it.

The fact that this deadly substance has only been completely banned this year, decades after other countries made its use illegal, indicates how long asbestos has been an important part of Canada's export economy.

Now the city of Asbestos has had to find other ways to support its population.