Agreed. Asbestos is a wonder material that the world is unironically worse-off without. To be fair, putting it in brake pads which get worn down into dust probably wasn't a great idea...
Its thermal insulation/fireproofing properties are incredible, it's basically a material out of science fiction.
A few years ago I acquired a pair of asbestos gloves at a flea market. They are absolutely mind blowing. I have held glowing red-hot pieces of metal for upwards of a minute at a time with my hands only feeling mildly warm. You might be able to do this with certain welding gloves, but they would be thick like oven mitts, leaving you with basically no dexterity. These asbestos gloves are no thicker than ordinary leather work gloves, are lightweight and permit your full range of motion. As an experiment to see how far I could push them, I poured a bit of molten lead over them (my hand was not inside this time) and it just beaded up and wicked off, like water does on a waxy or oily surface. If my hand was inside, I'm sure it would have been fine. I'd even go so far as to say that you'd probably be fine if you submerged your hand in molten metal, since the pores in the woven asbestos are so small that the metal would probably be prevented from seeping in by its surface tension.
All that said, they probably do release microscopic fibers into the air, so I wear an N95 when using them and store them in a sealed ziploc bag.
I think it depends on the level of fibre release you expect. I don't think the issue is that the fibres bypass an N95 mask, but that if there are many fibres in the air you want to filter out a much higher proportion than 95%.
In the UK for non-licensed work (removing things like asbestos floor tiles which have low levels of asbestos that are bound in another substrate) you only need to wear the equivalent of an N95 mask.
