chrysotile

noun

chrys·​o·​tile ˈkri-sə-ˌtī(-ə)l 

: a mineral consisting of a fibrous silky variety of serpentine and constituting a common form and principal source of asbestos

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

Such deposits are sometimes laced with actinolite, anthophyllite, chrysotile, and tremolite. —Casey Cep, The New Yorker, 12 Sep. 2022

OxyChem used chrysotile, or white asbestos, the most common type. —Kathleen Mcgrory, ProPublica, 22 Oct. 2022

However, according to internal documents, dozens of tests have found minerals such as tremolite, chrysotile, and actinolite—which, in certain forms, constitute asbestos—in the company’s talc. —Casey Cep, The New Yorker, 12 Sep. 2022

In Lowell, Vermont, for instance, stands a pile of tailings hundreds of feet tall, from what was once the United States’ largest chrysotile asbestos mine. —Eliza Griswold, The New Yorker, 26 Aug. 2022

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday proposed to ban chrysotile asbestos, the most common form of the toxic mineral still used in the United States. —Anna Phillips, Anchorage Daily News, 5 Apr. 2022

Most consumer products that historically contained chrysotile asbestos have been discontinued. —CBS News, 5 Apr. 2022

Blue water now fills the Jeffrey Mine, where workers mined tons of chrysotile asbestos, providing crucial material for fire insulation, including equipment for soldiers of two world wars. —Marie Fazio New York Times, Star Tribune, 21 Oct. 2020

The town was built up around the massive Jeffrey Mine, once the largest opencast chrysotile asbestos mine in the world. —Washington Post, 20 Oct. 2020

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Word History

Etymology

borrowed from German Chrysotil, from chryso- chryso- + Greek -til-, taken to mean "fiber," base of tíllein "to pluck, pick," of uncertain origin

Note: Term introduced by the German mineralogist Franz von Kobell (1803-82) in "Ueber den Spadaït, eine neue Mineralspecies, und über den Wollastonit von Capo di bove," Journal für praktische Chemie, Band 30 (1843), p. 469. Kobell cites chrysós "Gold" and tílos "Faser" ("fiber") as sources, but a noun tílos only exists in ancient Greek as a plural tíloi "the fine hair of the eyebrows."

First Known Use

1850, in the meaning defined above