The Center was conceived in the late ’90 and officially established in 2000. Asbestos were then being progressively banned in most European Countries, in Italy from 1992. It was becoming clear day after day that Piedmont was one of the regions more attained by asbestos damage. In Casale Monferrato, thanks to the work of the research groups coordinated by professor Mollo and professor Terracini, the extent of tragedy caused by the Eternit asbestos cement factory was revealed by the increasing number of mesotheliomas and lung cancer registered, among both workers and the general population, much largely in excess by respect to the expected values. The open pit dismissed asbestos Balangero mine needed remediation and in the Piedmont alps in the large domains of ophiolites, not only the well known asbestos forms chrysotile and tremolite , but also newly discovered asbestiform minerals were discovered and characterized by the groups of professor Compagnoni and professor Ferraris. Many industries in the urban areas had largely employed asbestos and many public and private buildings, including the major Turin hospital, had made large use of asbestos. Consequently the department of Occupational Medecine, directed by professor Scansetti - who left us just before the establishment of the Center - was facing a large number of asbestos diseases and of worried exposed people. Decontamination procedures properly carried out required enormous amounts of money.

What the mission of the Center? It was clear that asbestos was a problem in circumstances very different one from the other and that the knowledge of its mechanism of action at the molecular level would have helped most of the actions to be taken, from new decontamination procedures to the action to be taken with the ex exposed population. In the meanwhile bad care or ignorance of asbestos risks, excessive alarms, illusions of non validated new treatments of asbestos diseases, claimed for a correct information. Both kind of actions require not only a multidisciplinary approach, i.e. the presence of experts from the various fields, but also interdisciplinarity, ie. experts able to dialogate with the various fields concerned. Clearly the mechanism of action of any solid material in living matter is regulated by surface chemistry and interphase phenomena, a field much developed within the Chemistry department by a large number of researchers, among which the few who were already involved in the study of the role of chemistry in particle related pathologies, who, associated to biochemists, appeared to be the candidates to act as a clue to link earth science to pathology.