Mineralogical Characteristics of Carbonate Rock-Hosted Naturally Occurring Asbestos

Naturally Occurring Asbestos (NOA) occurs in rocks and soils as a result of natural weathering and human activities. The parent rocks of asbestos have been associated with ultramafic and mafic rocks, and carbonate rock. The previous studies on naturally occurring asbestos were mainly limited to ultramafic and mafic rock-hosted asbestos and studies on carbonate rock-hosted asbestos are relatively rare in South Korea. Therefore, this study was aimed to characterize mineralogy of carbonate rock-hosted NOA at Muju and Jangsu, Jeonbuk province and Seosan and Asan, Chungnam province. The rock types at the four sites are consisting mainly of Precambrian metasedimentary rock. XRD and PLM analyses showed fibrous minerals in the sites were tremolite and actinolite of acicular and columnar forms. SEM-EDS analyses showed that asbestiform tremolite and actinolite had various ratios of length and diameters over 12:1, and needle and columnar forms. A columnar forms of tremolite and actinolite were showed small acicular at the edge of the particle. Its main chemical compositions are mainly Si, O, Mg, Ca, which were identical to tremolite. Actinolite contains Fe in addition to Si, O, Mg, Ca. EPMA analyses of asbestos occurred at Muju indicated that chemical composition are 55% SiO2, 23.2% MgO, 13.1 % CaO, and 0.61 % FeO and the chemical formula calculated as (K0.01Na0.01)Ca2.01(Mg4.94Fe0.05) (Al0.004Si7.98)O22(OH)2, which is close to ideal tremolite. In addition to tremolite, actinolite was also occurred at Seosan, Chungnam. XRD analyses showed that antigorite was existed at Muju, but PLM and SEM analyses showed the antigorite was platy structure, not asbestiform. These results indicate that asbestiform tremolite and actinolite with acicular forms contains in carbonate rocks at Muju and Jangsu, Jeonbuk and Seosan and Asan, Chungnam province South Korea.