Glitch Baum's List: Asbestos

Asbestos is a magnesium silicate with a crystalline fibrous structure. The word asbestos derives from an ancient Greek word meaning 'inextinguishable.' It refers to a group of at least 6 varieties of asbestos: chrysotile actinolite, amosite, anthophyllite, crocidolite and tremolite. 95% of all asbestos is chrysotile.

An estimated 30 million homes in this country, mostly in the Midwest and Northeastern states, still have attics with Zonolite insulation, which contains the asbestos-filled vermiculite. It’s where a lot of Americans go each December to find their stored-away holiday decorations.

"Fake snow" is nothing new. People have been attempting to either create or simulate snow since at least the last decades of the 19 th century. At that time, it was made from cotton batting in a factory located, ironically enough, in Quebec , Canada . Other methods of creating fake snow included the use of jeweler's cotton, popcorn, Epsom salts, ammonia and mica.
Then, in 1928, a fire fighter wrote an article on the subject in which he advised not to use flammable cotton. "Use asbestos snow and mica."

Young Judy Garland and Bert Lahr - as Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion - danced merrily through the snow 27 times during the shooting of the poppyfield scene in "The Wizard of Oz." Only it wasn't snow. It was asbestos. An industrial hygiene expert says Hollywood relied on this potentially deadly material to imitate snowfalls through more than 20 years of movie-making. Last year, about 67,000 cancer cases were attributed to asbestos exposure. Page 2.

Anyone who remembers the 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz probably recalls a scene in which Dorothy and her companions, having been placed under a sleep spell by the Wicked Witch, began getting snowed on while lying unconscious in the poppy field. Another film of that era, Holiday Inn, showed singer Bing Crosby in the final scene with snow falling all around as he sang the popular Irving Berlin song White Christmas.