Is fiber glass like asbestos?
Fiber glass is fundamentally different from asbestos, both in its physical and chemical properties. Fiber glass is a man-made material. In contrast, asbestos is a naturally occurring, inorganic fiber. Our bodies can remove most types of fiber glass through a variety of mechanisms (it dissolves in the lungs, for example), while asbestos is more durable and stays in the body a lifetime. “Synthetic vitreous fibers [fiber glass] differ from asbestos in two ways that may provide at least partial explanations for their lower toxicity. Because most synthetic vitreous fibers are not crystalline like asbestos, they do not split longitudinally to form thinner fibers. They also generally have markedly less biopersistence in biological tissues than asbestos fibers because they can undergo dissolution and transverse breakage.
