Jock McCulloch is asking about asbestos mining in the Americas, South Africa
and Australia.
I visited Pomfret asbestos mine in South Africa in the 1980s and wrote it up in
Mining Magazine (MM, September 1983, pp 153-159).
Also in Mining Mag, although not in your geographical area, there was an article
on "Europe's largest indigenous source of asbestos", the Balangero mine in
northern Italy (MM, July 1987).
Again in Mining Magazine (November 1989, pp 411-414) is an article on Asbestos,
reviewing world production with particular reference to Canada "the leading producer
amongst market economy countries", together with Brasil, South Africa, Zimbabwe,
Italy and Greece.
For many years (I can vouch for the 1980s and most of the 1990s) the January issue
of Mining Magazine each year carried a mine survey covering the then non-communist
world, in which all non-coal mines producing over 150,000 tonnes per annum of ore were
listed country by country, product by product, and graded by size. This list included
asbestos mines.
Each year Mining Journal Ltd's Mining Annual Review (which started in 1935 to mark the
centenary of MJ itself) carried reviews of mining country by country, and also commodity
by commodity. I am not sure when industrial minerals began to be covered, but again
asbestos was certainly included from the 1980s, if not from much earlier.
There was a book called "Asbestos", probably long out of print, published I guess in the
1950sby Mining Publications Ltd (the book arm of Mining Magazine before it was purchased
by Mining Journal in the 1960s) by a mining consultant called Sinclair. I used to have a copy,
but gave it away to a mining student some years ago.
All the above publications are held by the former Institution of Mining and Metallurgy library,
now housed in the Institute of Materials HQ at 1, Carlton House Terrace, London. If you
need a contact, let me know.
Tony Brewis
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