For over a century, manufacturers from around the world relied on asbestos to produce a multitude of fire-retardant products from building materials to auto parts to household appliances. As use of the mineral became more widespread, medical professionals discovered it also had harmful effects on human health. Mining and manufacturing companies downplayed the risks to workers and the general public, but eventually, as the devastating nature of asbestos-related deaths became common knowledge, the industry suffered a slow, terminal decline. A Town Called Asbestos looks at how the people of Asbestos, Quebec, worked and lived alongside the opencast Jeffrey Mine, the largest chrysotile asbestos mine in the world. Dependent on this deadly industry for their community’s survival, the town’s residents developed a unique, place-based understanding of their local environment; the risks they faced living next to the giant opencast asbestos mine; and their place within the global resource trade. This book unearths the local-global tensions that defined Asbestos’s proud and painful history and reveals the challenges similar resource communities have faced – and continue to face today. | A Town Called Asbestos by Jessica van Horssen, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters