Asbestos Advertisements

The document we are looking at today is a collection of asbestos advertisements from 1946 by the Ruberoid Company. The primary product for sale was the "handy home use roll" of asbestos paper.

The image describes many uses for asbestos paper, including protecting furniture from fire, use in the oven, and fixing things around the house. Thus, asbestor paper is portrayed as being able to fit in to any part of the house, filling every need.

Advertisements used the post-war economic boom, as well as government incentives to sell a whole range of asbestos products. They claimed that using their products, like the "Ruberoid Asbestos Range Boiler Jacket" would make homes more energy efficient, thus cooperating with the "governenment's fuel saving program."

The Ruberoid Company even provided applicators and "insulating technicians" to make installations of their asbestos products easier:

"Ruberoid provides the best that modern insulating research and technlogy can offer—the right method for every problem."

The asbestos industry continuously projected theselves as part of a modern, technologically driven future. By associating themselves with government programs and postwar living, they made themselves a symbol of domestic prosperity and economic growth in the eyes of the consumer.