The following images and information is linked to the Asbestos Oddities Found in the Home and on eBay guide. Additional Asbestos Oddities inlcude: Sports Equipment Padding; Cigarette Filter; Home Hot Pads; Artificial Snow; Modeling Clay; Sad Irons; and Tokens, Tags and Poker Chips. Use the guide Asbestos Historical Products and Literature to help in your search.

Asbestos Pages

The earliest book entirely printed on asbestos paper appears to be Dorillo Dafnejo's [psued. of Count Carlo Castone Gaetano Della Torre di Rezzonico]: L'Eccidio Commense Vendicto Poemetto di Dorillo Dafnejo Pastor Arcade. Como, C. Ostinelle, 1816, 4to, pp.32. The dedication leaf announces that this is: 'il primo libro stampato in carta incombustibile di Amianto.'

There is also a reference to a geological work by Ernst Bruchmann published between 1725 and 1730, which is partly printed on asbestos paper.

The Simthsonian Instution's National Museum of Natural History has on display a copy of a newspaper printed on asbestos. The newspaper is a special edition of 'The Gold Fields', edited by Wilson Foster and printed in St. Louis, Missouri. This newspaper was distributed at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

S. Diane Shaw, Special Collection Cataloger, Smithsonian Institution Libraries.

The Philistine - Up the outer edge in red it reads 'This Number is Printed on Asbestos and is Intended for Neither Child nor Fools.' More likely a commentary than actual asbestos paper

A photomicrograph of commercial asbestos paper showing thin filamentous chrystals from 91 Papermaking Fibers by Charles H. Carpenter and Lawrence Leney, 1952

Books Covered in Asbestos

As a promotional item two books have been covered with asbestos:

Stephen Kings' Firestarter had 26 copies covered with an aluminum-coated asbestos cloth.

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 published in New York in 1953 also has an asbestos binding. 200 copies signed and numbered were bound in Johns-Manville Quinterra, an asbestos material with exceptional resistance to pyrolysis.