Identifying asbestos: can you tell from a photo?

We sent six samples from Burgenland to a laboratory for analysis. Before the results come back, we let you guess: what rock, what asbestos minerals, what percentage. Spoiler: you cannot answer this from a photo alone. That is exactly the point.

→ jump to the photo quiz · → What is asbestos?

What is asbestos, and why Burgenland?

Asbestos is a collective term for six fibrous-crystallising minerals: chrysotile (serpentine group) and actinolite, tremolite, anthophyllite, amosite, and crocidolite (all amphiboles). When inhaled, the fine, nearly indestructible fibres lodge permanently in lung tissue. After a long latency period, often 20 to 40 years, they can cause pleural plaques, lung cancer, and the nearly always fatal mesothelioma. There is no safe threshold; risk scales linearly with cumulative fibre dose.

Most people associate asbestos with industrial products: fibre-cement sheets, old floor adhesives, gaskets. In Burgenland, however, there is also a naturally occurring source. In the so-called Rechnitz Window, a geological structure at the Austrian-Hungarian border, a strip of metamorphic rock surfaces beneath the nappes of the Eastern Alps. Among these rocks is serpentinite: a dark-green rock formed from the mantle mineral olivine that can contain chrysotile veins in its fractures. In immediate proximity lie amphibole-bearing rocks whose fibrous forms are actinolite or tremolite asbestos.

Exactly this rock was quarried at sites such as Pilgersdorf, Bernstein, Rumpersdorf, and Badersdorf, crushed, and distributed as grit, chippings, gravel, and milled material. What cannot be determined from this material is its asbestos content. If you have a photo of a chunk, you see a piece of rock. If you have a laboratory microscope, you see the fibres. We cannot guess the difference.

More on the Burgenland case and its sources →

Photo quiz: six samples from Burgenland

Click your guess for each sample. Your guesses are stored locally in your browser. To show you the aggregated guesses of all participants at the end, each guess is also sent anonymously to our server (data.ungiftig.at): no name, email, or account, just the answer and a random per-browser identifier. Details: privacy policy. Once the lab results are back, the page will compare your guesses with the actual values.

Sample 001

1) What type of rock do you see?
2) Which asbestos minerals? (multiple choice)
3) What is the asbestos content? (0 to 100 percent) (not yet chosen)

Sample 002

1) What type of rock do you see?
2) Which asbestos minerals? (multiple choice)
3) What is the asbestos content? (0 to 100 percent) (not yet chosen)

Sample 004

1) What type of rock do you see?
2) Which asbestos minerals? (multiple choice)
3) What is the asbestos content? (0 to 100 percent) (not yet chosen)

Sample 005

1) What type of rock do you see?
2) Which asbestos minerals? (multiple choice)
3) What is the asbestos content? (0 to 100 percent) (not yet chosen)

Sample 006

1) What type of rock do you see?
2) Which asbestos minerals? (multiple choice)
3) What is the asbestos content? (0 to 100 percent) (not yet chosen)

Sample 009

1) What type of rock do you see?
2) Which asbestos minerals? (multiple choice)
3) What is the asbestos content? (0 to 100 percent) (not yet chosen)

Guesses stay local; an anonymous aggregate is sent to our server (see intro). Answers follow with the lab results.

Photo credits and acknowledgements

The sample photos on this page were provided by Mag. Julia Stipsits, who does essential awareness-raising work on the asbestos issue in Burgenland through her social media channels. We thank her for providing the images and for her tireless commitment to public outreach.

Instagram: @MissJulsi · TikTok: @MissJulsi