girderednerve reblogged
Item: in the 1950s research was starting to suggest smoking cigarettes might be bad for you, so one company beefed up their filter with asbestos
#blue asbestos! crocidolite!#mostly mined in south africa! so if you are like 'wow this was bad for consumers' yes but it was worse for miners#there was reasonable evidence in the 50s that asbestos was dangerous too actually so this was a real grift#the mesothelioma connection was made in 1960 with evidence from a black south african mining township actually. bad.