Secondhand Asbestos From Work Clothes: Carol's Story

On June 29, 2026, we posted a short video, Secondhand Asbestos Exposure from Work Clothes. It runs under half a minute.

Play video: Secondhand Asbestos Exposure from Work Clothes 0:29

Video · 0:29 Secondhand Asbestos Exposure from Work Clothes

It tells the story of Carol, whose father worked at Firestone and came home in work clothes that carried asbestos dust. Her story shows how a worker's wife and children could be exposed through the laundry, a hug at the door and ordinary family life, without ever working near asbestos themselves.

How the dust came home

Carol's story is a common one. The National Cancer Institute says family members of workers heavily exposed to asbestos face an increased risk of mesothelioma, because fibers were carried into the home on the workers' shoes, clothing, skin and hair. Today federal rules require some workers who handle asbestos to shower and change before they leave work, so the dust stays behind. For most of the twentieth century, nothing like that protected the families.

The dust reached the household in a few ordinary ways:

• The laundry. Shaking out dusty work clothes before washing them threw fibers into the air, and the person doing the wash breathed them, week after week.
• Closeness. Children hugged a parent at the door, sat on laps and played on floors where dust had settled.
• The house and the car. Fibers settled into carpets, furniture and car seats, and went back into the air each time someone swept or shook out a rug.

What the research shows

Researchers have studied these families for decades. In 1991, Dr. Irving Selikoff and his colleagues at Mount Sinai reported on the deaths among family members of men who worked at an asbestos factory in New Jersey. In 2013, a review that pooled twelve studies found that people living with workers in the highest-risk trades (asbestos product manufacturing, insulation work, shipyards and asbestos mining) had about five times the mesothelioma risk of people without that exposure.

Asbestos diseases appear long after the exposure, often decades later. A child who breathed the dust on a parent's coveralls can be diagnosed in middle age or later. That is why people who never set foot in a plant or a shipyard are still being diagnosed today.