Asbestos Exposure in Roofers

If you worked as a roofer — 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. The same dust came home on the work clothes that spouses and children shook out and laundered, and it reached the laborers and helpers who tended the tar kettle and cut felt alongside him.

A roofer breathed asbestos from the roof itself, going on and coming off. The built-up roofing felt he cut and fit, and the cement and mastic he troweled and patched with, were made with asbestos for most of the twentieth century. Cutting and tearing off that asbestos roofing felt has been measured at 0.54 fibers per cubic centimeter, more than five times today's federal limit, and the dustiest work of all was the tear-off: stripping old, weathered, crumbling roofs down to the deck before the new one went on.

You don't need to remember which company's felt or roofing cement you used, 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 job that used it is typically enough to qualify, so you don't have to prove a heavy dose. If you can say "I was in the Roofers local for thirty years" or "my dad ran a built-up roofing crew," we have a starting point.

Why roofers were exposed to asbestos

Roofing put workers in daily contact with asbestos for a simple reason: a roof has to shed water and resist fire, and for most of the twentieth century asbestos was what manufacturers added to roofing products to do both. The felt that built up the membrane, the cement and mastic that sealed every edge and penetration, the coatings, and the cement shingles were all made with asbestos by design. A roofer encountered it constantly because the roof itself was built out of it.

The exposure came from the ordinary, repeated motions of the trade, not from anything unusual:

• Cutting and fitting roofing felt. Built-up roofs were layered from asbestos-saturated felt, cut to size and laid course over course into hot asphalt. Cutting and tearing off that felt has been measured at 0.54 f/cc.
• Mixing and troweling roofing cement and mastic. Flashing compound, plastic roofing cement, and mastic were stirred up and troweled around chimneys, vents, edges, and seams, and the asbestos in them went into the air as the material was mixed and worked. Handling that cement has been measured at 0.4 f/cc.
• Tearing off old roofs. The dustiest work was demolition. Stripping a weathered, brittle old roof down to the deck broke up felt and cement that years of sun and weather had dried into friable (crumbly and dusty) debris, which came up in clouds as it was pried and shoveled.
• Working asbestos shingles. Cutting, snapping, drilling, and nailing asbestos-cement roof shingles released fiber, and pulling old shingles off broke them apart.

Two things multiplied all of this. The first was the tear-off. Roofing that had baked in the sun for twenty or thirty years had gone brittle and friable, and ripping it up released far more fiber than laying new felt ever did. The second was repetition: a career roofer cut felt, troweled cement, and stripped old roofs across thousands of jobs over thirty or forty years, and the dust built up shift after shift. Roofing was outdoor work, which helped, but a man bent over a cut, a mixing bucket, or a tear-off was breathing straight from the dust at his hands, and open air didn't clear the cloud coming off a roof being stripped.

Through all of it, the men doing the work were given no warning and no protection. They cut and tore bare-handed, swept debris with no mask, and went home in dusty clothes to their families, while the companies that made the products knew what the dust was doing.

The asbestos products a roofer handled, and why they add up to more than one claim

Over a career, a roofer handled several different asbestos products, each made by a different set of companies, and that combination is what shapes the claim. Understanding the products is how we identify who's responsible and which claims you can bring.

Roofing felt. Built-up and saturated felt was the core of a commercial roof, laid into hot asphalt course after course, and cutting it and tearing it off released fiber. The makers behind it include companies now covered by bankruptcy trusts, such as GAF and Celotex. See how asbestos roofing felt and paper products caused exposure.

Roofing cement, mastic, and flashing compound. Troweled around every edge, vent, and penetration to seal the roof, these compounds were loaded with asbestos and went airborne when they were mixed and applied. They trace back to makers including Flintkote and the major adhesive and coating lines, some covered by trusts and some still in business. See how asbestos adhesives, mastics, and roofing cements caused exposure.

Asbestos roof shingles. Asbestos-cement shingles were cut, snapped, drilled, and nailed in place, and removing old ones broke fiber loose. These trace to makers including Johns-Manville and Owens-Corning, most of which now pay through trusts. See how asbestos cement shingles caused exposure.

This is why a roofer's case is rarely a single claim. Because the work touched felt, cement, mastic, and shingles from many different manufacturers, the typical recovery runs against several bankruptcy trusts at once, plus lawsuits against the manufacturers still in business and the building or site owners who controlled the job. You don't need to remember which company made the felt you laid in 1974 or the cement you troweled in 1981. Give us the work history, and we trace each product back to its maker, and each maker to its trust or its place in a lawsuit.

Where you worked, and why the setting still matters

A roofer carried the exposure with him from job to job, so the trade put him at risk across almost every kind of building. Where he worked still matters to the case, though, because it decides which general contractors and building owners can be named as premises defendants alongside the product makers, and whether a federal benefit channel comes into play.

Most roofing exposure happened in construction, across the full range of the industry:

• Commercial and industrial built-up roofing. Flat and low-slope roofs on factories, warehouses, schools, hospitals, and office buildings were built up from asbestos felt and hot asphalt, which is the heaviest and most repeated roofing exposure. Construction industry asbestos exposure.
• Residential and re-roofing work. Older homes carried asbestos shingles, felt underlayment, and flashing cements, and tear-off and re-roofing disturbed all of it.

If your loved one roofed at a federal facility or a military base, tell us. Civilian roofing work at a federal site can open FECA (Federal Employees' Compensation Act) benefits that run alongside the trust and lawsuit claims.

What the asbestos industry's own magazines said about roofers

The asbestos industry's trade journal, Asbestos, and Johns-Manville's employee magazine, the J-M Circle, wrote about roofing for decades. They wrote to sell more of it. Read today, they show what roofers handled, how the work was done, and which buildings got asbestos roofs.

The roofs and how they went on

In 1921 the magazine described two kinds of asbestos roof. One was "ready roofing" in rolls. The other was the built-up roof, made of "numerous plies of Asbestos Paper saturated with Asphalt" (Asbestos, Jan. 1921). The felt was "shipped to the job in rolls." It was put down the same way as tar-and-gravel roofing, but bonded with hot asphalt, and usually by the same roofing contractor (Asbestos, Apr. 1921).

Asbestos shingles were a roofer's job too. In 1924 the magazine said they "are generally placed by the roofer or building contractor" (Asbestos, Mar. 1924). In 1927 it listed "the contractor or roofer, who handles asbestos shingles and corrugated sheathing" (Asbestos, Oct. 1927).

Shingles had to be cut to fit at ridges, valleys and edges, and the trade press sold tools for it:

• In 1929 an ad offered a machine for cutting asbestos shingles with carborundum wheels, with a "water connection for wet cutting or exhaust system for dry cutting" (Asbestos, Oct. 1929).
• In 1932 a portable cutter was built for cutting asbestos shingles "right on the job" (Asbestos, May 1932).
• In 1938 hand cutters were offered to "all roofers, contractors, carpenters, mechanics" to cut asbestos roofing to any notch or angle (Asbestos, Nov. 1938).

Old roofs came off as well. In a 1941 time test near Washington, asphalt shingles were "ripped off" and asbestos-cement shingles put on by "two roofers and a helper" (Asbestos, June 1941). That same year, Johns-Manville took 31-year-old asbestos shingles off a building at the Greenport Ship Yard on Long Island (Asbestos, Jan. 1944). Big built-up jobs took big crews. On one Iowa plant in 1929, the roofing contractor "operated with four kettles and thirty men" (J-M Circle, Feb. 1930).

Play the film from 18:22: A Hundred Years of Roofing Experience (1958) from 18:22

Buildings the magazines named

What the magazines didn't say

None of the pages we read about roofing says anything about dust or breathing it. The 1929 cutting-machine ad offered an "exhaust system for dry cutting" without saying why. By 1957 the magazine was boasting that roofers "have never seen one wear out" and that asbestos roofing from torn-down buildings was being reused (Asbestos, Mar. 1957). In 1978 a Quebec mill that shipped most of its output to the United States said its roofing felt had "an 85% asbestos content" (Asbestos, Jan. 1978).

How a roofer's case can come together

The following is a composite example, not a real client, but it reflects how these cases typically come together in our experience.

Hank spent thirty years as a commercial roofer, most of it running built-up roofs on schools, warehouses, and office buildings. The work was the same wherever the crew went: tear off the old roof down to the deck, cut the asbestos felt to fit, mop down hot asphalt and lay the felt in course by course, and trowel roofing cement and flashing compound around the vents and edges. The tear-offs were the dustiest days of all, prying up brittle, weathered felt and cement that came up in clouds. In early 2026, after a cough and chest pain he'd chalked up to a long career outdoors, a biopsy confirmed pleural mesothelioma of the epithelioid type.

For Hank's family, the case moves on several tracks at once, which is typical for the trade. Trust claims go in against the makers of the felt, cement, and mastic he handled across his career, several different companies and several different trusts. Lawsuits go against the roofing-product manufacturers still in business and against the general contractors and building owners who controlled the jobsites. Because mesothelioma is treated at only a handful of specialized centers, getting Hank to the right one may mean travel, and the firm advances the cost of travel and lodging when the best center isn't close to home. How legal recovery funds mesothelioma treatment access. Hank's wife, who shook out and laundered his dust-heavy work clothes for three decades, is eligible for free asbestos health screening as part of the representation. The screening is a chest X-ray read by a B-reader, with a CT scan if needed; it looks for asbestos-related changes in the lungs and isn't a diagnosis or a reliable way to find mesothelioma early.

This example is general. Every case depends on the diagnosis, the exposure history, the dates, the defendants, the applicable law, and the available evidence.

Sources of compensation for roofers

A roofer's recovery usually comes from more than one place, and the different channels run in parallel without canceling one another out. We file across all of them that apply.

• Asbestos bankruptcy trusts. The companies that made the felt, cement, and shingles he handled and later went bankrupt set aside money in trusts to pay the people they harmed, names like GAF, Celotex, Flintkote, Manville, and Owens-Corning. 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. Some roofing-product makers, such as CertainTeed, are still in business and can be sued directly for making and selling a product they knew was dangerous. How product liability lawsuits work.
• Premises liability against the site owners. The building owners and general contractors who controlled the jobsites 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. For most roofers this means Social Security disability if the illness stops them from working, and it's paid on top of any trust and lawsuit recovery. Civilian roofing work at a federal facility can also support FECA benefits. How asbestos disability and benefit claims work.

When a roofer's case goes to court, the manufacturers raise the same handful of defenses they raise in most asbestos 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 your loved one actually did, and the evidence answers them. The detail is below for anyone who wants it.

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.