Yes, it is, and it wasn’t just wives who got asbestos disease from, what is known as, secondary exposure to asbestos.  Some children who gave their fathers a hug every night after Dad returned home from work, still clad in overalls caked in asbestos dust, also went on to get asbestos disease.
Wives of some asbestos workers were exposed to asbestos as a result of washing their husbands’ overalls by hand. It is a macabre quirk of fate that the only form of asbestos disease that can be got in this manner, is mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is incurable. Mesothelioma sufferers tend to have a life expectancy of between 12 and 24 months.