Asbestos and the American Worker

by Mike Riley

 
The story of asbestos in the United States is the worst industrial tragedy in our nation's history.  Decades ago, the asbestos industry made decisions that later destroyed the lives of thousands of American workers.
 
When the United States entered World War II, we needed to build lots of ships, and fast.  The American shipbuilding effort was one of the great success stories of the war.  Thanks to workers in shipyards across the country, this effort produced thousands of naval vessels at a record pace.  These ships helped give the United States the naval advantage it needed to turn the tide in the Pacific Theater and eventually win the war.
 
However, the shipyard effort came at a great human cost to those who worked in the shipyards.  Asbestos was heavily used on every ship that was built during this time, including as insulation on steam pipes, boilers, turbines and other high temperature applications.  The shipyard workers who breathed in the dust and fibers from that asbestos did not know at the time that they were risking their own lives, and even the lives of their family members.
 
By the 1940s, the asbestos industry had already conducted medical research on the health effects of asbestos.  This medical research made it clear that when asbestos fibers were inhaled, dramatic consequences would follow.  People who worked with asbestos were suffering severe lung problems, even death, as a result of breathing the asbestos fibers.
 
The asbestos companies had a decision to make:  whether to warn the public about this medical knowledge, or to continue using asbestos in their products while covering up the important information.  Insulation products could be manufactured without using asbestos, but asbestos was very inexpensive, so using asbestos fibers as an ingredient in insulation meant that profit margins would be greater for the asbestos companies.
 
The asbestos companies decided not to tell the public about their research showing that asbestos exposure could be deadly to workers.  The asbestos industry knew that safer substitutes for asbestos could be used in insulation products.  They also knew that even if asbestos was used, safety measures could be taken to reduce the risk to exposed workers.  Not only did the industry not disclose what it knew about the health risks of asbestos, it even took steps to prevent information about safety measures from being shared with American workers, because the industry did not want those workers to know that working with asbestos could be dangerous.
 
Malignant mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is caused by exposure to asbestos.  One of the most sinister aspects of mesothelioma is its latency period, which means the period of time between the asbestos exposure and the manifestation of the cancer.  Generally, when a person develops mesothelioma, the diagnosis occurs anywhere between twenty and sixty years AFTER the person's exposure to asbestos.
 
Following World War II, our nation went through a period of industrialization that resulted in an explosion of building and trade unions.  This also meant that there were many union members working with and around asbestos on job sites, in everything from power plant workers using asbestos to insulate boilers, to drywall workers using asbestos joint compounds in residential construction.  Meanwhile, the asbestos industry succeeded in continuing the cover-up of medical knowledge that asbestos was deadly to humans.
 
Pipefitters, sheet metal workers, carpenters, insulators, boilermakers, electricians and many others were among the thousands of tradesmen who were routinely exposed to asbestos at work from the 1950s and into the 1970s while the asbestos companies continued to manufacture asbestos products.
 
These very workers have suffered for the decisions of the asbestos corporations that decided to increase profits at the expense of workers’ health.  Following in the steps of the shipyard workers before them, American building and trade union members have developed asbestos diseases at a tragically high rate.  Even today, union members who worked around asbestos decades ago are still being diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma.  The American workers have still not finished paying the price for decisions made decades ago by the asbestos industry, when those companies decided that lives of workers were expendable for the sake of increased corporate profits.