Asbestos Exposure by Occupation

If you worked a job that put you around asbestos, or if someone in your family did, and a mesothelioma, lung cancer, asbestosis, or other asbestos diagnosis has now come in, this page is the place to start. Whatever the trade, the same dust reached the wives, husbands, and children who washed the work clothes, and the other workers who shared the shops, mechanical rooms, and job sites where it was raised.

For most of the twentieth century, almost any job that put you around heat, pressure, or friction meant breathing asbestos. The country built it into the boilers, pipe, furnaces, gaskets, brakes, floor tile, and wallboard that these trades installed, serviced, and tore out, so the people working on those systems breathed the fiber as a matter of course. And you didn't have to be the one handling it. On a shared job site the dust one trade raised filled the air every other trade breathed, and most workers never knew it was dangerous until decades later, when the illness finally appeared.

You don't need to know exactly what your trade was called, you don't need to remember which company made the products you worked with, and you don't need old job records or union cards in hand. The bankruptcy trusts that pay many of these claims are built to compensate exactly this kind of work: for mesothelioma, even brief asbestos exposure on a worksite that used it is typically enough to qualify, so you don't have to prove a heavy dose. If you can say "my dad ran maintenance at the mill for thirty years" or "I spent my life in the building trades," we have a starting point.

Why so many different jobs were exposed

For most of the twentieth century, asbestos was the material the country reached for whenever something ran hot, held pressure, or wore under friction. It lined boilers, furnaces, and kilns; wrapped pipe and ductwork; sat in the gaskets and packing of every pump and valve; and went into floor tile, ceiling texture, roofing, joint compound, brake and clutch linings, and a hundred other building and industrial products. That's the plain reason the exposure crossed so many trades at once. The men weren't doing anything unusual. They were working on systems and buildings that were built out of asbestos.

So on most of these pages the real question isn't whether a trade was exposed, it's how. A pipefitter scraped and ground old gaskets. An insulator cut and tore off pipe covering. A drywall finisher sanded joint compound smooth. An auto mechanic blew out brake drums with compressed air. Different products and different tasks, but the same fiber ended up in the air.

And here's the part that catches families off guard: you didn't have to handle asbestos yourself to breathe it. On a job site, the dust one trade raised filled the air every other trade breathed. A welder working a few feet from an insulator breathed the insulator's dust; a laborer sweeping up at the end of the shift breathed what everyone had stirred up all day. That's occupational bystander exposure, dust that drifted to you on the worksite, and it can be the basis for a claim just like hands-on work. (It's a different situation from environmental exposure in a neighborhood near a plant, which has its own rules.) If your work kept you near asbestos even though you never touched it, bystander asbestos exposure may be the page that fits.

Then the dust went home. It settled on clothes, hair, and tools and rode home on them, so the spouse who shook out and laundered the work clothes and the child who hugged a parent at the door breathed it too. That's why a diagnosis can trace back to this work even in someone who never set foot on the job.

Find your trade

Find your job below, or the one closest to it, for the products you handled, the tasks that raised the dust, and the claims that tend to follow. If you don't see your exact trade, call anyway; the same handful of products reached far more jobs than we can list, and we'll place yours.

Pipe and mechanical trades. The crews that built and maintained hot piping and machinery.

• Pipefitter and plumber asbestos exposure — gaskets, packing, and the insulators' dust on every hot line.
• Boilermaker asbestos exposure — building and tearing down boilers wrapped in asbestos block and insulation.
• Millwright and machinist asbestos exposure — installing and rebuilding machinery sealed with asbestos gaskets and packing.
• Welder asbestos exposure — cutting and welding alongside insulation, under asbestos blankets and shielding.

Insulation and high-heat trades. The trades closest to the rawest asbestos in the building.

• Insulator asbestos exposure — the trade that cut, mixed, and wrapped the asbestos itself, the heaviest exposure of any.
• HVAC and furnace asbestos exposure — duct insulation, furnace cement, and gaskets on heating systems.
• Refractory bricklayer asbestos exposure — laying and tearing out the asbestos refractory and mortar lining furnaces and kilns.

Building and finishing trades. The trades that built out and finished the structure.

• Carpenter asbestos exposure — cutting asbestos board, panel, and ceiling products on the job.
• Drywall finisher asbestos exposure — sanding asbestos joint compound smooth, clouding the room with dust.
• Flooring installer asbestos exposure — cutting and ripping out asbestos floor tile and the black adhesive under it.
• Roofer asbestos exposure — handling asbestos roofing felt, shingles, and flashing cement.
• Electrician asbestos exposure — drilling through asbestos walls and working around asbestos cloth, panels, and insulation.

Vehicle and brake work. Friction products, and the contested brake-dust argument we answer head-on.

• Auto mechanic asbestos exposure — blowing out and grinding asbestos brake and clutch linings.

Oilfield and drilling crews. The hands who turned dry asbestos powder into drilling mud.

• Oil and gas drilling asbestos exposure — sacking and mixing the dry asbestos additive that dusted the rig.

Exposed without handling it yourself. Dust that drifted to you, or came home on someone else's clothes.

• Bystander asbestos exposure — the worker who never handled asbestos but breathed another trade's dust, and the family who breathed what came home.

Sources of compensation for asbestos-exposed workers

A worker's recovery usually comes from more than one place, and the different channels run in parallel without canceling one another out. Which ones apply depends on the trade, the products, and where the work was done, and we file across all of them that fit.

• Asbestos bankruptcy trusts. Many of the companies that made the asbestos products these trades handled later went bankrupt and were ordered to set aside money in trusts to pay the people they harmed. These are paper claims that don't require a lawsuit or a courtroom, and a single career often supports filings against several trusts at once. How asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Many asbestos product makers are still in business and can be sued directly for making and selling products they knew were dangerous. How product liability lawsuits work.
• Premises liability against the site owners. The plants, refineries, yards, and other operations that controlled the worksites can be held responsible for the conditions they allowed, separate from the companies that made the products. How premises liability claims work.
• Federal and disability benefits. These depend on where and how the work was done, and they're paid on top of any trust and lawsuit recovery. Military service, especially in the Navy, can support VA disability benefits; civilian shipyard and maritime work can support Longshore benefits under the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act (LHWCA); civilian work at a federal facility can support benefits under the Federal Employees' Compensation Act (FECA); and Social Security disability is available to anyone whose illness stops them from working. How asbestos disability and benefit claims work.

When an asbestos case goes to court, the manufacturers raise the same handful of defenses they raise in most of these cases, and none of them is new to us. The short version is that the arguments describe a cleaner, smaller version of the job than the one that was actually done, and the evidence answers them. The specific arguments differ by trade and product, so each occupation page lays out the ones that come up for that work and how we handle them.

All of this applies only to the lawsuit side of a case. The trust claims are a paper process: no opposing lawyer raises defenses, no one is deposed, and no one goes to court.