Occupational Asbestos Exposure

Occupational exposure is the primary cause of mesothelioma in the U.S. Workers in construction, shipbuilding and manufacturing faced higher risk. Because these diseases take decades to develop, many diagnoses are still occurring today. Workers and their families have legal options.

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What Is Occupational Asbestos Exposure?

Occupational asbestos exposure is any contact with asbestos fibers that happens on the job. That includes workers who handled it directly, like cutting insulation, mixing asbestos cement or replacing vehicle clutches and brakes. It also includes workers who never touched it themselves, but were nearby when someone else disturbed it. The second type is called bystander exposure, and it carries the same health risks as direct contact.

Some knew they were around asbestos every day, but for many workers that exposure was invisible. Many workers were simply in the same room while someone else scraped pipe lagging or demoed a floor with asbestos tiles, with no indication that anything harmful was in the air. Many were never warned.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration didn’t establish asbestos exposure limits until the 1970s, and most workers exposed before that had no regulatory protection at all. Even after OSHA’s limits were announced, enforcement was uneven for years. OSHA’s position today is straightforward: There’s no safe level of asbestos exposure. If you worked around asbestos at any point in your career, you may have a right to compensation.

Higher-Risk Asbestos Occupations

Workers in some fields faced notably higher risk of heavy and prolonged asbestos exposure. They handled asbestos-containing materials as a routine part of their daily work, often in tight, poorly ventilated spaces where asbestos fibers remained in the air around them. But higher-risk occupations aren’t the only jobs that exposed workers, leaving those diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases with valid legal claims.

Boilermakers

Boilermakers spent their careers building, maintaining, and tearing down the boilers and pressure vessels that powered American industry. The materials they worked with daily, including lagging, gaskets, packing and refractory cement, were loaded with asbestos. Boiler rooms were enclosed and poorly ventilated, which meant airborne fibers had nowhere to go.

Insulators

Insulators applied and removed asbestos block, pipe lagging, spray insulation and insulating cement across virtually every commercial and industrial setting in the country. Decades of research consistently place insulators among the occupations with the highest mesothelioma mortality rates in the U.S.

Pipefitters and Steamfitters

Pipefitters and steamfitters worked with steam and process piping that ran through asbestos-lined valves, wrapped in asbestos insulation and sealed with asbestos rope and gaskets. They also worked side by side with insulators in the same confined mechanical spaces, which significantly compounded their exposure.

Electricians

Electricians worked in environments laden with asbestos. They pulled wire through asbestos-insulated conduit, worked around panels and switchgear clad in asbestos and handled asbestos cloth and tape as a routine part of working around heat-generating electrical components. Much of the exposure came from the work happening around them, not just their own.

Shipyard Workers

Shipyard workers built and repaired vessels where asbestos was used in virtually every below-deck system, from engine rooms and boiler rooms to berthing areas and machinery spaces. The confined quarters of a ship concentrated airborne fibers in ways few other jobsites could match. Civilian shipyard workers and Navy veterans who served aboard those ships share elevated mesothelioma risk.

Other High Risk Trades

Many additional trades carried significant occupational asbestos exposure, including construction workers and demolition crews, welders, HVAC mechanics, auto and aircraft mechanics, machinists, firefighters and first responders, railroad workers, refinery and chemical plant workers, mineworkers, plumbers, sheet metal workers and military veterans across all branches.

Industries Where Workers Were Exposed to Asbestos

Asbestos wasn’t incidental to these industries. It was built into their infrastructure because it solved real problems. It resisted heat, dampened fire risk and held up under conditions other materials couldn’t. Industries didn’t just use it, they engineered around it, which is why exposure was so pervasive and so difficult to avoid.

Higher Exposure Industries

• Shipyards and shipbuilding: Civilian and Navy shipyards built asbestos into nearly every system on a vessel. Insulation, gaskets, packing and fireproofing all heavily used it. Private yards including Bethlehem Steel, Newport News and Bath Iron Works, along with Navy yards in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Norfolk and Long Beach, were among the most significant exposure sites in the country.
• U.S. military service: Veterans who served in the Navy or Marine Corps aboard ships built before the mid-1980s faced some of the heaviest asbestos exposure of any group, particularly in engine rooms, boiler rooms and berthing compartments. Army, Marine Corps and Air Force veterans were exposed in motor pools, vehicle maintenance bays and in base buildings constructed with asbestos materials.
• Power generation: Fossil-fuel power plants wrapped whole systems in asbestos, including boilers, turbines and steam piping. The buildings themselves were often constructed with asbestos-containing materials. Workers in construction, operations and maintenance all shared the risk.
• Oil refining and chemical processing: The extreme temperatures inside refineries and chemical plants made asbestos the standard insulating material for pipes, pressure vessels and reactors throughout these facilities.
• Steel mills and foundries: Asbestos was present in refractory linings, heat-protective gear and process equipment throughout steel and foundry operations. Exposure cut across job titles, from furnace operators to maintenance crews.
• Construction and demolition: Workers who installed asbestos-containing materials during new construction faced exposure. So did those who disturbed those same materials during renovation or demolition decades later.
• Manufacturing: Auto parts plants, textile mills, paper mills, and industrial gasket and packing manufacturers put workers in direct contact with asbestos-containing products on a daily basis.

In addition to exposure at jobsites, workers inadvertently brought asbestos fibers home on their clothing, skin and hair. Hugs, sitting together on upholstered furniture and  laundering work clothes  transferred fibers to loved ones. These fibers were then inhaled or ingested. This is known as secondary, secondhand or para-occupational exposure.

Secondary asbestos exposure caused mesothelioma diagnoses in family members in the same way it did in workers with primary exposure. But workplace protections and early compensation frameworks were built around workers. People with a history of secondary exposure  fell outside these protections and frameworks. But experienced attorneys like the team at Nemeroff Law Firm have built legacies of significant settlements and verdicts in secondhand cases.

Diseases Linked to Workplace Asbestos Exposure

Decades of occupational health research have produced a clear picture of what asbestos does to the people who work around it. These conditions are among the most well-documented consequences of workplace exposure and are recognized across compensation systems, including trust funds, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and workers’ compensation. Workers and their families may be eligible for compensation from more than one system.

Asbestos-Related Diseases

• Asbestosis: Inhaled asbestos fibers cause this chronic, progressive scarring of lung tissue. There is no reversal once it develops and it tends to worsen over time.
• Lung cancer: Asbestos workers face a significantly elevated lung cancer risk compared to the general population. Research shows that people exposed to asbestos exposure who smoke face a risk of developing lung cancer far beyond the risk for each individual cause.
• Mesothelioma: This is a rare and aggressive cancer that develops in the lining of the lungs, abdomen, heart or testes. Asbestos exposure is the primary cause and symptoms often don’t appear until 20 to 60 years after the initial exposure.
• Other linked cancers: Laryngeal, ovarian and certain gastrointestinal cancers have all been associated with occupational asbestos exposure in peer-reviewed research.
  Pleural plaques and pleural thickening: These are physical markers of past asbestos exposure visible on imaging. They’re not cancerous, but both conditions can cause shortness of breath and chest pain and serve as confirmation that significant exposure occurred.

Many people diagnosed today were exposed decades ago and have long since left the trades or jobsites where that exposure occurred. Symptoms from the variety of asbestos-related diseases typically take anywhere from 10 to 60 years to appear, which is why diagnoses are ongoing among workers from the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

For legal claims, the clock starts at diagnosis, not at the time of exposure. So a recent diagnosis usually means there’s still time to pursue a claim.

How Nemeroff Law Helps Workers and Their Families

Nemeroff Law Firm helps workers and their families who were exposed to asbestos on the job bring the best claim forward.  Families often have more than one compensation option, and many qualify for several at the same time. Our attorneys help build the full picture of workplace exposure. We consider the trade, jobsites, manufacturers whose products were involved and whether the worker served in the military. Nemeroff Law will recommend the best options for your family.

Compensation Options You May Qualify For

1. Asbestos trust funds: When asbestos manufacturers went bankrupt, many set aside money for future payouts for the harm their products caused. More than 60 active trusts currently hold an estimated $30 billion for current and future claimants. Workers in trades that handled products from multiple manufacturers often qualify for claims against several trusts at once, and most resolve within 30 to 90 days.
2. Personal injury or wrongful death lawsuits: Many asbestos manufacturers, premises owners and contractors are still in business today and can be held liable in civil court. For workers and families whose exposure traces back to solvent companies, a personal injury or wrongful death lawsuit offers a way to pursue both compensation and accountability for companies.
3. VA benefits: Veterans exposed to asbestos during military service, particularly those who served in the Navy or Marine Corps aboard ships built before the mid-1980s, may qualify for VA disability compensation and dependency benefits. Those benefits are separate from any civilian legal claims and filing for one does not reduce the other.
4. Workers’ compensation: Workers diagnosed with an occupational asbestos-related disease may have a claim through their state’s workers’ compensation program. Eligibility and value vary by state, and these claims can often be pursued at the same time as trust funds or civil claims.

Our investigators will document your full work history from union records, Social Security earnings data, employer archives, ship deployment records and coworker accounts. The more jobs and products involved, the more compensation options you may be eligible to file for simultaneously. We’ll manage the complexities of these individual claims for you from our initial consultation through any and all payouts.

How We Build Asbestos Cases Across Trades

Nemeroff Law has recovered more than $650 million for more than 3,000 clients. Together, our attorneys have a combined 150 years of experience handling asbestos cases.

Our Case Approach

• We start with your story, not your paperwork. Our investigators rebuild work histories from union records, Social Security earnings data, employer archives, ship deployment records and coworker accounts.
• We identify every trust fund and defendant involved in your case. Workers in industrial trades typically worked with products from many manufacturers, and that history often opens up multiple claims.
• We pursue claims in parallel. Trust fund claims, lawsuits, VA benefits and workers’ comp aren’t mutually exclusive. Pursuing them simultaneously protects the full value of a claim and can bring resolution faster.
• We represent workers and family members. Spouses and children exposed to take-home asbestos may have separate, valid claims and Nemeroff Law can pursue those with the worker’s case when the whole family has been affected.
• No upfront cost. Free case review. You pay nothing unless we recover compensation.

The initial case review is free. We work on a contingency fee basis, so you pay nothing unless we secure compensation for you. And workers and their families don’t need to have everything figured out before reaching out to us. Nemeroff Law handles evidence gathering.

Frequently Asked Questions

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