The ADAO’s "7 Facts for 7 Days" campaign today shares: "Asbestos fibers can be nearly 700 times smaller than human hair and are odorless, tasteless, indestructible fibers that can remain suspended in the air for seconds."
The tiny size of asbestos fibers means that many who worked with or near asbestos, had no idea they were breathing in a carcinogenic dust. Ventilation systems could easily carry it throughout workplaces, contaminating even areas where workers were not directly working with asbestos.
An effect known as called "Tyndall scattering" has been used to highlight just how much dust might be in a room that with normal lighting doesn’t appear particularly dusty.
Named after Irish physicist John Tyndall, the effect describes the scattering of light created by particulate matter in air, another gas, or liquid. You can see an example of asbestos dust being lit typically and using a light to show Tyndall scattering here.