In short: The dangers of asbestos dust were reported in 1898. Asbestosis was named in 1927, asbestos was shown to cause lung cancer in 1955, and its link to mesothelioma was established in the early 1960s. Australian manufacturers kept selling asbestos products into the 1980s, and asbestos was not fully banned in Australia until 31 December 2003.
James Hardie and other manufacturers of products containing asbestos made products they knew would kill some of their employees and consumers. The extent of the death and suffering caused by their actions remains an underexplored and understated scandal.
The risks of asbestos have been known for a long time. Asbestos manufacturers kept making and selling asbestos products for decades after those risks were known.
The Australian Government’s Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency estimates that about 4,000 Australians die each year from asbestos-related diseases. That is about three times the national road toll, which was 1,333 deaths in the year to April 2026.
When were the first warnings about asbestos?
The first mention of asbestos disease is often credited to Pliny the Elder, a Roman writer and military commander of the first century AD, who is said to have described a “disease of the slaves” affecting the lungs of slaves who wove asbestos into cloth.
Modern knowledge of asbestos disease dates from 1898. That year, Lucy Deane, one of England’s first women factory inspectors, wrote a Report on the health of workers in asbestos and other dusty trades, published in the annual report of HM Chief Inspector of Factories. She described “the sharp glass-like jagged nature of the particles” of asbestos dust, and found that where the dust stayed in the air, “the effects have been found to be injurious as might have been expected”.
By the time of the First World War, records showed increasing deaths among asbestos workers.
When was asbestosis recognised?
In 1924, Nellie Kershaw, a young woman who had spun asbestos into yarn at a factory in Rochdale, England, died of fibrosis of the lungs. Dr William Cooke reported her case in the British Medical Journal that year under the title “Fibrosis of the lungs due to the inhalation of asbestos dust”. In 1927, in a fuller report of her case, Dr Cooke gave the disease the name asbestosis. Nellie Kershaw’s image is at the top of this page.
The first claim against James Hardie was brought in 1939.
When was asbestos linked to cancer?
The suggestion that asbestos could cause cancer was first raised in 1935, when doctors reported lung cancer in workers with asbestosis.
In 1955, the British epidemiologist Richard Doll published a study of men who had worked for 20 years or more at an asbestos textile factory in Rochdale, the same town where Nellie Kershaw had worked. He found their rate of death from lung cancer was about ten times that of the general population. His paper, “Mortality from lung cancer in asbestos workers” (British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1955, vol 12, pages 81 to 86), established that asbestos causes lung cancer.
In 1960, Dr Christopher Wagner and his colleagues published a study of mesothelioma in the asbestos mining area of South Africa’s North Western Cape Province. It linked asbestos to mesothelioma, including in people who had never worked in the mines but lived nearby. Further studies through the early 1960s confirmed that link.
In 1965, a London study by Newhouse and Thompson found mesothelioma in people whose only exposure was living with an asbestos worker or living near an asbestos factory. By this time it was clear that even small exposures to asbestos dust could cause mesothelioma.
What was known in Australia?
Australia was one of the highest users of asbestos per person in the world.
The dangers were understood here too. In his 1948 report, Dr Smith, Director-General of Health in New South Wales, confirmed the concern of industrial physicians and hygienists about exposure to even small amounts of asbestos. Writing about a metal casting process, Dr Smith said (at page 70):
“The exposure to asbestos was intermittent and of short duration, about five minutes at each pouring, and, as at the time asbestos was being used two or three times a week the dust hazard was considered to be small. However, in view of the dangers associated with asbestos dust it was advised a substitute such as magnesia… should be used.”
Blue asbestos was mined at Wittenoom in Western Australia from the 1940s until 1966, by a subsidiary of CSR. Blue and brown asbestos were banned in the mid-1980s, but white asbestos was not banned until 31 December 2003, when a total national ban came into force.
Courts have accepted that the risks of asbestos were known (or should have been known) to manufacturers, like James Hardie, from at least 1953, decades before they stopped making and selling asbestos products (see John William Booth v Amaca Pty Limited and Amaba Pty Limited [2010] NSWDDT 8). That they kept selling these products through the 1960s and 1970s and into the 1980s is an outrage.
What does this mean for people with asbestos diseases?
Because the risks were known, the companies that made asbestos products, and employers who exposed workers to asbestos, can be held responsible. Almost everyone diagnosed with mesothelioma is entitled to compensation.
The rules for asbestos claims differ between states and territories, including which court hears the claim, how quickly it can be heard, and what happens if the person dies before the claim is finished. We have acted for people in every Australian state, and we can tell you how the rules apply to you.
If you have been diagnosed with an asbestos disease, call us on 1800 430 855 for a free, confidential conversation about your options.
Read more
- Common questions about mesothelioma and asbestos
- Facts: asbestos exposure and cancer risk
- What is the difference between asbestosis and mesothelioma?
- Exposed to asbestos while undertaking home renovations?
- Asbestos products
Reviewed by David Taylor, Segelov Taylor Lawyers, September 2026.