Mineral Mineral Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral that when mined and processed, takes the form of small fibers which are usually invisible to the naked eye. The fibers are heat-resistant and extremely durable. Because of these qualities, asbestos has historically been widely used in construction for both fireproofing and insulation.
Asbestos is a general term for a number of naturally occurring fibrous mineral silicates.
As minerals, they crystallize in narrow veins as parallel bundles of extremely minute fibers. Any physical disturbance of these compact bundles generally breaks them down into individual fibers or finer bundles. The optical and other crystallographic properties of the fibrous and nonfibrous forms of a given mineral are substantially identical. Fibrous tremolite and nonfibrous tremolite show the same refractive indices and the same lattice spacings by x-ray diffraction. Some fibrous forms of a given mineral have a special name while others are simply called fibrous or nonfibrous forms of a particular mineral.