For almost all areas of application of Asbestos, substitutes are currently available. Since in industrial nations an average of 15 years are necessary to develop a product from laboratory scale to the marketing stage, it can be assumed that Asbestos will be pushed out of all areas by substitutes in a few years.

In developing countries product introduction cycles are much longer and hard to predict. The currently only limited use of substitutes will therefore continue in the near future. This is especially to be expected, because substitutes are almost without exception developed in industrialized countries, and consequently the need for imports would exist at least temporarily. The know-how transfer to self-sufficient production of substitutes in the developing countries is very difficult and hindered by rivaling interests.