Asbestos in Beer and Other Alcoholic Drinks Filters
Asbestos had a wide range of uses in the industry of the last century, with construction being one of the major branches that absorbed large quantities of this toxic mineral. However, this doesn't exclude other applications of asbestos-containing products, as everyone wanted to make the most of the material's versatility and low price.
Breweries also used asbestos in various ways, including brewing filters, equipment, and construction products used in buildings built before 1980. As a result, breweries may have put people who entered their gates at risk of asbestos exposure:
- workers
- visitors
- consumers
The fibrous texture of asbestos made it a fixture in the brewing industry for filtering impurities from alcohol. The material's heat and chemical resistance made it ideal for insulating brewing equipment, and construction materials made with asbestos were found in older buildings at breweries.
Asbestos filters were paper filters enforced with asbestos fibers to enhance their durability. Breweries used them to remove impurities from the beverages, clearing sediments and microorganisms from beer and other drinks before bottling. It wasn't a common occurrence, but at times, pure carded asbestos fibers were explicitly used in beer and wine filtration. Some written sources date the procedure's history back to the 1910s and link filtering with asbestos with successful beer bottling, emphasizing that the best beer is achieved when asbestos fibers are added to the pulp's washing process at least once weekly. Statistically, in the early 1970s, around 900 tons of asbestos per year were used for filtration or to make filters.
While there is no data on which type of asbestos was used for beer filtration, the general use of chrysotile in the wine filtration industry suggests that it was most likely used for beer filtration. Some brewery filters contained nearly 50% chrysotile asbestos.
Asbestos is a health risk when products become crumblesome with wear and tear, and disturbing them releases toxic microscopic fibers into the air. The continuous use of asbestos-containing filters often wore them out, requiring their frequent replacement, sometimes even 100 times per day. It led to beverages being constantly contaminated with hazardous asbestos particles. Moreover, pure carded asbestos fiber filters had to be replaced after each use. The replacement procedure put workers and bystanders at risk of inhaling or ingesting hazardous asbestos fibers. EPA's data from 1979 shows that asbestos was used in active breweries such as:
- wine producers
- beer producers
- alcohol producers
However, asbestos-containing filters were in use until the 1980s. Nowadays, breweries in the U.S. use other materials for filtration.
When Is Asbestos a Threat to Your Health
First and foremost, asbestos is not to be feared when encased in an object, but it becomes dangerous when its fibers become airborne. Even though asbestos use is banned and newly built homes are not contaminated with it, older buildings likely contain asbestos in some form, mostly as insulation. You can reduce asbestos exposure risks if you follow preventive measures when remodeling, even in DYI projects. Given that no amount of asbestos exposure is safe, hiring licensed professionals to handle asbestos from testing to abatement or removal is best.