California and the Serpentine Debacle

   Serpentine is a natural stone commonly used in jewelry making and carved stone art. It can come in many colors ranging from white to yellow to green to brown to black. Why is such a beautiful stone coming under attack in California? Because the word “asbestos” is being tossed around recklessly.

So, the more important question remains: Can one get sick from wearing serpentine jewelry?

The bottom line: NO! There is nothing wrong with or dangerous about wearing serpentine jewelry. Don’t let the yahoos who know nothing about geology scare you off from some really gorgeous works of serpentine jewelry.

Senator Gloria Romero of California is on a crusade against asbestos, prompted by a heavily equipped (i.e. with oodles and oodles of money) mesothelioma lobby. Which is fine, actually. Mesothelioma is a terrible cancer and we should not make little of the fact that asbestos is a known carcinogen. Nonetheless, her plan of displacing serpentine as the State Rock of California is a desultory move at best, because (and this is important now):

1) Not all serpentine contains asbestos. Moreover, not all the rocks with asbestos content can readily free asbestos fibers. The forms of serpentine usually used for making jewelry, many commonly found in California, have little to no asbestos content, or cannot release the asbestos as an airborne fiber. NON-FIBROUS serpentine is totally SAFE.

2) Serpentine can only contain crysotile, a less dangerous form of asbestos.

3) It is extremely rare today for someone to get mesothelioma outside of an occupational environment (mining for crysotile, for instance).

4) All the money used in legislation and bureaucracy regarding this symbolic dethroning of asbestos would be much better used to fund research into mesothelioma and programs for victims of this disease.

Discussion follows:

Antigorite is almost always the type of serpentine we see in jewelry. It is rare for antigorite (or lizardite, another form of serpentine that is used often for marble flooring) to form fibrous serpentine asbestos. Bowenite, a hard stone and a type of antigorite, is widely used in carving and formed into cabochons—it is also the State Rock of Rhode Island. Why not get rid of it as well because of its tenuous relationship with asbestos?

Two types of asbestos exist: crysotile from serpentine and amphibole from several types of rocks. Crysotile is far less dangerous to breathe because its curly/wavy fibers are less prone to being lodged in our bodies (amphibole asbestos is composed of straight, piercing fibers). The highly carcinogenic asbestos from the amphibole group has been banned from most of the western world since the 1980s. It should be noted, however, that almost all of the asbestos used in American buildings is crysotile (about 95%), and though it is difficult to get sick, it is absolutely possible to inhale loose fibers of asbestos from the crysotile found in older buildings. Non-fibrous serpentine exists, however, and it will never flake off asbestos and become lodged in your body—it is a shame that the Californian legislature does not understand that.

Some will say, did you know that tens of thousands of people have died from asbestos related diseases? Indeed, back when we had no idea of the problems it could cause, many people were over-exposed to the asbestos fibers (including the more vicious amphibole type of asbestos). Today, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has put into place many, many regulations to protect the health of miners and construction workers dealing with asbestos. Here’s some food for thought:

“In a 1999 National Academy of Sciences (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. vol. 96) study on the health effects on miners exposed to grunerite asbestos, the researchers concluded the lifetime risk of death by lung cancer and mesothelioma for the miners was similar to that of being killed by a lightning strike or by a plane falling from the sky (averaged over the entire U.S.).”

Also keep in mind that over-exposure to any chemical—even some of the most quotidien and useful ones—causes detrimental results. Gasoline contains many known carcinogens and ammonia gives you brain damage. Inhaling stone particles will never be healthy: quartz, the most common mineral we can dig up, can lead to silicosis if one breathes silica dust. There is no legitimate reason for anyone to attack serpentine alone.

California politicians have bigger things to deal with than rocks. Budget, maybe? Sheer foolishness.