Eternit: the story of a promise of eternity

The name was a promise. "Eternit", from the Latin aeternitas, eternity, was meant to stand for a building material that does not rot, does not burn, does not pass away. A hundred years later the promise has been fulfilled in a way no one intended: the substance in the material, asbestos, really is practically imperishable, and its consequences reach into the present.

The invention

In 1893 the Upper Austrian entrepreneur Ludwig Hatschek (1856 to 1914) bought a disused paper mill in Schöndorf near Vöcklabruck and founded the "First Austro-Hungarian Asbestos Goods Factory" there. In the years up to 1900 he searched for a way to manufacture durable, frost-resistant roofing slabs from asbestos fibres and a binder by machine. The result is known as the Hatschek process: finely opened asbestos fibres are processed with Portland cement and water into a thin, strong fibre cement. The original recipe consisted of around 90 percent cement and around 10 percent asbestos.

In 1900 Hatschek applied to patent his process; the Austrian patent No. 5970 was granted to him on 15 June 1901. He gave the product the brand name Eternit in 1903. The idea was compelling: a material as formable as cardboard, as strong as stone, non-combustible, weather-resistant and cheap.

The triumph

The material conquered the world within a decade. By about 1910 Eternit works had sprung up in France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Romania, Russia, the USA and Canada. Asbestos cement became the material of the modern age: corrugated sheets on roofs and facades, window sills, flower troughs, and above all pipes; entire water-supply networks were built from asbestos cement. Anyone who needed a roof or a pipe in the twentieth century often reached for Eternit, without even perceiving the brand name as a brand.

The price

The catch lay in those 10 percent. Asbestos in hardened fibre cement is firmly bound: as long as the sheet stays intact, it releases almost no fibres. It becomes dangerous as soon as the material is worked or destroyed, when it is sawn, drilled, sanded or broken, and over decades through weathering. Then exactly those microscopic fibres come loose that can trigger asbestosis and cancer in the lung, among them pleural mesothelioma, a tumour of the pleura caused almost exclusively by asbestos.

In Austria, between 1950 and 1990, around 30,000 to 40,000 tonnes of asbestos were processed each year, predominantly chrysotile (Arbeitsinspektion). In the 1960s and 1970s up to 3,000 asbestos-containing products were in circulation, from insulation materials and brake linings to the roofing slabs and pipes made of Eternit. The treachery lies in the long latency: between fibre exposure and illness there are often several decades. The number of people falling ill today from the consequences of earlier exposure is therefore still rising.

The reckoning

Austria strongly restricted asbestos with the Asbestos Ordinance of 1990 and largely banned it from 1994; only demolition and remediation work under strict protective conditions remained permitted (Arbeitsinspektion). That the late consequences were not thereby settled is shown by the map of illnesses: counselling centres for asbestos-exposed people exist today in Vienna, Linz, Kapfenberg, Klagenfurt, Innsbruck, and in Vöcklabruck, where Hatschek's works stand. The district of Vöcklabruck is among the leaders in Austria for mesothelioma cases (Falter 13/2026, citing the Arbeitsinspektion).

The Hatschek process itself has survived: fibre cement boards are still made today, only the asbestos has been replaced by harmless fibres. The Eternit brand, on the other hand, which had outlasted the asbestos scandal for decades, is now being abandoned (NZZ).

Why the story is not over

Eternit is the story of industrially added asbestos, of a deliberately manufactured material. It explains why almost every building from before 1990 may still contain asbestos-bearing substance, and why one does not tear it out oneself but has it tested and removed professionally (more on this: → Recognising asbestos).

But there is also the other path by which the same fibre reaches buildings and roads: naturally occurring asbestos in rock, used as gravel and grit. That is the story currently unfolding in Burgenland (→ Asbestos in Burgenland). Two different paths, the same fibre, the same disease. The promise of eternity from 1903 was kept, only not in the way it was meant.

Sources

• Austrian Biographical Lexicon, „Hatschek, Ludwig (1856 to 1914)": biographien.ac.at
• OÖ Nachrichten, „Hatscheks Patent für Eternit" (patent No. 5970, 15 June 1901)
• Wikipedia, „Faserzement" / „Eternit" (Hatschek process, composition, spread)
• Arbeitsinspektion, „Asbest: Kein Thema der Vergangenheit" (quantities 1950 to 1990, ban, health consequences, counselling centres): arbeitsinspektion.gv.at
• NZZ, „Was der Asbestskandal nicht schaffte: Jetzt verschwindet die Marke Eternit"
• Falter 13/2026 (mesothelioma distribution, district of Vöcklabruck), see also Asbestos in Burgenland