Asbestos: 2014, the small town of Asbestos, Quebec, was once home to the largest asbestos mine in the world. At the time, the widely-used natural resource was considered to be the town's "white gold." But in the 1990s, after it was found that prolonged exposure to asbestos and its dust/filaments was linked to lung cancer, the mining and use of asbestos was phased out of most western industrial nations. However, it was only a little less than 2012 that mining finally ceased in the town of Asbestos. In 2020 the name of the town has been changed: "Val-des-Sources".