About Pumice

Born of Earth and Fire, Pumice is a Natural, Sustainable Volcanic Glass with Amazingly Versatile Properties Widely Utilized by Industry.

Volcano eruptions produce pumice

PUMICE IS BORN in pyroclasic events, typically spewed as ash that falls and drifts into deposits or as part of a massive pyroclastic flow. Many factors affect the useful quality, color, and purity of a pumice deposit, but on a chemical analysis level, pumice is basically an aluminum silicate. With no crystalline structure, pumice is a naturally calcined amorphous glass made up of a maze of air-filled vesicles.

      Pumice made its mark in history as being of value to industry when Roman engineers combined pumice aggregate and fine-grained pumice (a pozzolan) with their hydrated lime cement to make a lightweight, enduring concrete. Today, pumice is still being used as a superior pozzolan to super-charge concrete, but is also used widely in a variety of industrial process and product applications.

      Pumice enjoys a well-deserved green credibility, as it is an abundant and sustainable resource, easily mined from surface deposits, and by virtue of being naturally calcined in the fiery heat of a volcano, the only refining needed is to crush it to grade.

sourcing pumice
Hess pumice mine

Pumice is found around the globe in various standards of color and purity. But the world's purest, whitest commercial pumice is mined, refined and shipped world-wide by Hess Pumice of Malad City, Idaho USA. [MORE]

pumice information
pure white pumice refined to any spec required

Pumice is essentially a foam of volcanic glass—highly vesicular strands permeated with tiny air bubbles. It is these frothy, friable glass vesicles that, when carefully refined to various grades, give pumice its unique and infinitely useful qualities. [MORE]

uses for pumice
non-crystalline, finely processes pumice makes an ideal filler for paint

Pumice is amazingly versatile—used as a gentle polishing and cleansing abrasive, as lightweight aggregate and/or ultra-refined pozzolan in concrete, as a non-crystalline silica filler for paints, plastics and rubber compounds, as a soil conditioner, and more. [MORE]