Turner Brothers Asbestos & Textiles - Rochdale - November 2012

[PhilR]

"It has been suggested that the story of the asbestos industry is one where known facts about health and safety were suppressed for the sake of profit." This is probably true, just as in the tobacco industries - where the carcinogenic nature of cigarette smoking was suppressed, along with the risk of having other breathing ailments. But since there was a very real need for the insulating and fireproof properties of asbestos fabrics, what alternatives were available at the time? Nowadays fibreglass and plastics of many types have taken over the roles once performed by asbestos. And today all manner of plastics are condemned. Handling fibreglass loft insulation is not hazard free. Total freedom from risk appears to be wishful thinking. And all risks are relative.

To think, and itching powder, that joke shops sold, was fibreglass. The needle like structure of it could see it being regarded in the same way as asbestos, and in the future.

 

[Sarah Waldock]

To think, and itching powder, that joke shops sold, was fibreglass. The needle like structure of it could see it being regarded in the same way as asbestos, and in the future.

we never used commercial itching powder when we could make something as good for free by extracting the seeds from rose hips and taking off the fluffy outside which works just fine.

 

[Hayman]

To think, and itching powder, that joke shops sold, was fibreglass. The needle like structure of it could see it being regarded in the same way as asbestos, and in the future.

Where can I find a reference to fibreglass being used as itching powder? The only thing I found online was about rose hips and mucuna pruriens - including this: "Itching powder was created from Mucuna pruriens in the early 19th century as a cure for lost feeling in the epidermis. When a person would lose feeling on their skin in conditions such as paralysis, the powder (mixed with lard to form an ointment) was used as a local stimulant believed to treat the condition".

However, I can personally testify to loft insulation in the form of rolls of fibreglass being a very real cause for itchiness. One of the agency fill-in jobs that I had was working in a stinking hot warehouse near Heathrow Airport, stacking artic trailer-loads of loft insulation fibreglass. The lorries would come from south Wales, with the maximum-length-and-height trailers stuffed to their roofs with the rolls contained in thin (sometimes torn) plastic wrapping. It was mid-summer, and the warehouse was just a great single-skin metal shed. Standing on scaffolding planks, we would stack the rolls to the roof of the shed, as if placing bales to make a haystack. And hay can be pretty itchy too. The sweat would run off us, and - yes - we would scratch our bare arms and legs (I was wearing shorts) from the itchiness the air-borne fibres produced. I was very relieved to be able to get home at the end of a day, and have a good shower to get rid of any fibres still clinging to my body. No one talked of using fibreglass to make itching powder. This was in the days when wearing
face masks was just not heard of. I've no idea what volume of the fibres we inhaled, but we worked a full eight hour day, unloading more than one trailer a day.

The job lasted only a few weeks, because I found long-term employment elsewhere. Maybe I was lucky. I now use an asthma inhaler - but I am 81 years old.

 

[PhilR]

we never used commercial itching powder when we could make something as good for free by extracting the seeds from rose hips and taking off the fluffy outside which works just fine.

 

[PhilR]

What kind of fiendish mind thought up using the innocent rosehip for such a foul purpose?

 

[Sarah Waldock]

What kind of fiendish mind thought up using the innocent rosehip for such a foul purpose?

Well, I and my fellows were given the information by a schoolteacher in a rare unbending to tell of his childhood misdeeds, but I suspect it was discovered by a rose thief - new species started to be found from the end of the 15th century, and if someone concealed seeds in his shirt in case his belt pouch was searched....