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Jobs in Naval Shipyards That Put Civilian Workers at Risk of Mesothelioma

Civilians have worked in naval shipyards for decades – often working side by side with enlisted men and women. Many of these shipyard workers are now suffering from mesothelioma or other asbestos-related diseases. Although there are many different types of jobs in which veterans and civilian shipyard workers may have been exposed, these five are among the most common:

1. Electricians. Electricians commonly worked on naval ships installing wiring systems, fixing and upgrading existing electrical systems, replacing older fuse boxes with circuit breaker boxes and repairing electrical equipment, generators and transformers. They also installed motors on pumps, electrical wire, boxes, fuses and conduit. They also were exposed to asbestos from pumps and turbines. Electricians likely encountered asbestos that was used as insulation wrap around conduits, electrical transformers and piping as they worked in enclosed workspaces. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, electricians are one of the largest construction trades associated with malignant mesothelioma mortality.
2. Machinists. The Navy has employed shipyard machinists for decades to work on equipment to be installed above and below deck in ships, including:
  - installing steam boilers, winches, propellers and propulsion motors
  - making gaskets and seals
  - overhauling pumps
  - overhauling valves
  - using portable grinders

The types of equipment machinists worked with produced heat and generally contained asbestos gaskets and packing. Many had asbestos coverings. Working with asbestos material generates asbestos dust. It was very common for machinists to wear aprons and gloves when handling hot materials.

Steamfitters/Pipefitters/Insulators. Pipefitters and steamfitters installed and maintained the pipe systems for propulsion and heating. They handled asbestos gaskets and seals. Insulators cut and installed asbestos insulation in bulkheads and hulls.
Painters. Professional painters worked in naval shipyards and on ships and may have been exposed to asbestos, as many of the products they used contained asbestos additives. Those include textured paints, caulks, spackling and joint compounds. They may have been exposed when sanding, scraping, taping and preparing surfaces for painting. They also worked in areas with asbestos-containing equipment including pumps and valves.
Welders. Welders were employed at naval shipyards to weld equipment and pipe. Welders may have used gloves when welding. Welding rods may have also contained asbestos. A 2010 study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine identified welders as among the highest risk occupations for developing mesothelioma.
Engineers. Engineers were commonly involved in the design, construction and renovation of naval ships and were often present at job sites to oversee the process. These engineers now have a higher occupational risk of contracting mesothelioma.

All of the above jobs may have exposed veterans and Navy civilian workers to asbestos and are at risk of developing mesothelioma. Veterans were likely to be exposed to asbestos as late as the 1990s – only 20 years ago.

Failure to Warn Can Make Manufacturers, Distributors & Sellers Liable

Asbestos manufacturers, distributors and sellers knew that asbestos products increased the risk of developing mesothelioma. However, they failed to warn shipyard workers about these known dangers.

This failure makes manufacturers liable for asbestos-related injuries – even if your exposure occurred 20, 40 or 60 years ago. The statute of limitations for most asbestos lawsuits doesn’t begin to toll until you discover that you’ve been injured – not when you were exposed.

Contact an experienced mesothelioma injury lawyer today to analyze your situation and determine your legal options so that you can make an informed decision about what’s right for you and your family.

Testimony of Dr. Philip Landrigan

TESTIMONY BEFORE

United States Senate
Committee on the Judiciary

by Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc, DIH

Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine
Chairman, Department of Community and Preventive Medicine
Professor of Pediatrics
The Mount Sinai School of Medicine

“A Fair and Efficient System to Resolve Claims of Victims for Bodily Injury Caused by Asbestos, and Other Purposes”

April 26, 2005

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee on the Judiciary,

I am pleased to appear before you today to review the impacts that asbestos has had on the health of American workers, and to discuss the legislative remedies that have been proposed for dealing with the asbestos epidemic.

My name is Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc, DIH. I am a physician, a board-certified specialist in occupational medicine, and Chairman of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine in the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. I am Editor-In-Chief of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. I am President of the Collegium Ramazzini, an international scientific society in occupational and environmental medicine. I have had many years of experience of dealing with the clinical manifestations and studying the epidemiology of the diseases caused by asbestos. A copy of my biographical sketch is appended to this testimony.

The late Irving J. Selikoff, MD, the “Father of Asbestos Research in the United States”, was one of the founders of the Department that I now chair at Mount Sinai. This Department contains New York’s largest clinical facility in occupational medicine and one of the nation’s largest research and training programs in occupational health, a program that Dr. Selikoff established 30 years ago. We have been designated by the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH) as the major provider of diagnostic services to the men and women who worked at Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Center in the terrible days and weeks that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001. We have now examined over 12,000 of those workers – police officers, firefighters, construction workers, paramedics, and building cleaners. Many of them were exposed in their work to asbestos.

The testimony that I shall be presenting today reflects the collective knowledge and experience of our occupational medicine group at Mount Sinai, and most especially the thoughts of my colleague, Stephen Levin, MD, Director of the Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

The Asbestos Epidemic

Asbestos has been and continues to be an occupational and environmental hazard of catastrophic proportion. Asbestos has been responsible for over 200, 000 deaths in the United States, and it will cause millions more deaths worldwide. The profound tragedy of the asbestos epidemic is that all illnesses and deaths related to asbestos are entirely preventable.

Clinical and epidemiologic studies, many of them initiated by Dr. Selikoff at Mount Sinai, have established incontrovertibly that asbestos is a human carcinogen. All forms of asbestos are carcinogenic. Asbestos has been shown to cause cancer of the lung, malignant mesothelioma of the pleura and peritoneum, cancer of the larynx and certain gastrointestinal cancers. Asbestos also causes asbestosis, a progressive fibrotic disease of the lungs.

Asbestos has been declared a proven human carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and by the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization.

Asbestos and cigarette smoke are powerfully synergistic in the causation of lung cancer. Nonsmoking asbestos workers have five times the background risk of lung cancer. Smokers who have had no exposure to asbestos have 10 times the background risk of developing lung cancer. But asbestos workers who also smoke have 55 times the background risk of lung cancer. This is the classic and best-studied example in the medical literature of a synergistic interaction between two proven human carcinogens.

New use of asbestos has almost completely ended in the United States and in most other developed nations as a result of government bans and market pressures. Those forces were stimulated by the epidemiologic studies that I have noted above and by the release of information on the carcinogenicity of asbestos that previously had been suppressed by the asbestos industry. By contrast, extensive and aggressive marketing of asbestos continues in the developing world, where sales remain strong and worker protections are too often weak.

Problems with the Proposed Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act

The proposed Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act contains serious scientific problems as currently written. It creates criteria for assessing the causation of disease by asbestos that are not based on scientific evidence and that are not consistent with current knowledge in occupational medicine.

Difficulties with the proposed exposure criteria

The bill contains medically unsupported requirements for minimum duration of exposure to asbestos.

Contrary to the requirements for minimum duration of exposure set forth in the bill, there is clear evidence from carefully conducted epidemiological studies that exposures to asbestos for even one month under heavy exposure conditions can increase the risk of lung cancer two-fold and also increase the risk of death from asbestosis.

The requirement for 5 or more weighted years of exposure to asbestos to establish a diagnosis of asbestosis is not supported by scientific evidence.

Also unsupported by the published medical literature are the minimum requirements set forth in the bill of 8, 10 or 12 years of exposure for establishment of asbestos causation in a case of lung cancer.

The bill contains a medically unsupported proposal for discounting exposures to asbestos.

The bill establishes three exposure classifications:

Moderate exposure for persons who worked in areas that experienced “regular airborne emissions of asbestos fibers”,
Heavy, for persons who worked in direct installation, repair or removal of asbestos, and
Very heavy for those who worked in primary asbestos manufacturing or a WWII shipyard

Each year worked in these categories counts as 1, 2 and 4 years respectively.

However, these years of work are discounted depending on when they occurred. Every year of exposure that occurred after 1976, no matter what was the level or circumstance of occupational exposure, counts as only one half of a year. Every year of exposure that occurred after 1986 counts as only one tenth of a year.

The plan to discount exposures from 1976-1986 by half is without medical or scientific basis. Many workers had exposures during this period that were no different in intensity from those that preceded 1976.

Similarly, discounting post-1986 exposures to 1/10 the accumulated years is without medical or scientific basis. Removal or other disturbance of asbestos in place has yielded exposure levels in the past two decades that are no different from those encountered before 1986 or 1976.

It may be illustrative to see how application of this proposed discounting formula will work when applied to the situation of individual cases. It would appear, for example, that no claims for lung cancer level VII (with bilateral plaques, without asbestosis), will be paid for anyone with “moderate” exposure to asbestos prior to 1972. Or put another way, a person with lung cancer could have worked in areas with “regular airborne emissions of asbestos fibers” since 1973 and still not quality for compensation under this bill because he or she would fail to meet the substantial exposure criteria set forth in the bill.

Specifically, for lung cancer level VII (with bilateral pleural disease) a claimant would need 12 years of weighed exposure (pg 82). Only those exposures that occurred before 1976 would count at full value. If exposure for a lung cancer victim with pleural disease started in 1972, it would take 30 years of exposure to meet this 12-year exposure requirement. For every year later that the person started occupation exposure (1973, 1974 etc) it will take an extra 10 years of occupational exposure to meet the criteria for compensation in the bill. Thus a person with lung cancer and pleural plaques who began occupational exposure to asbestos in 1974 would need 52 years of work exposure (through 2025, or “until” 2026) to meet the 12-year weighted exposure criteria in the bill.

For cancers other than lung (malignant level VI) the proposed situation is still more difficult. A person with colorectal, laryngeal, esophageal, pharyngeal or stomach cancer would need 15 years of weighted occupational exposure to asbestos to qualify for compensation under this bill for any of those diseases. If all of that person’s exposure occurred after 1976 it would take 105 years to meet the criteria. This would seem an unattainable goal.

Difficulties with the proposed diagnostic criteria

The bill contains medically unsupported criteria for diagnosis of non-malignant disease.

The requirement that pleural disease be bilateral to be considered the consequence of exposure to asbestos is not warranted by medical evidence. Asbestos-related scarring often develops unevenly and almost always begins unilaterally. Miller and Lilis showed a clear relationship between degree of pleural scarring and loss of FVC independent of whether the pleural changes were bilateral.

The criteria set forth in the bill require that there be no evidence of obstructive airway disease (i.e. that the FEV1/FVC ratio be >= 0.65) in order to compensate for loss of FVC is not consistent with the medical literature. There are many cases of combined restrictive and obstructive disease in workers with airway disease and asbestos-related scarring.

The bill contains medically unsupported criteria for diagnosis of cancer

I am deeply troubled by the requirement that no lung cancer case will receive compensation without evidence of “bilateral pleural plaques, bilateral pleural thickening, or bilateral pleural calcification” (pg 82), or grade 1/0 asbestosis (pgs 83-84). In other words, lung cancer in a person who has been exposed to asbestos but who does not have asbestos-related scarring in both lungs will not be compensated, even if there is unilateral scarring/calcification. This is problematic for two reasons; one, is that many cases of lung cancer caused by asbestos occurs without any radiographic evidence of pleural plaques or asbestosis; asbestosis is not a necessary precursor to asbestos-induced lung cancer. Moreover, requiring that the damage be bilateral, has no basis in biology or medicine.

In summary, the proposed Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act establishes barriers to the diagnosis of asbestos-related disease that are arbitrary, that are not based in science, that are not based in medical knowledge, and that would appear, almost without exception, to make extremely difficult – indeed, well nigh impossible – any diagnosis of causation of disease by asbestos.

The approach to the diagnosis of disease caused by asbestos that is set forth in this bill is not consistent with the diagnostic criteria established by the American Thoracic Society. If the bill is to deliver on its promise of fairness, these criteria will need to be revised.

I shall be pleased to answer questions.

Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., M.Sc.
Chair, Department of Community and Preventive Medicine
Director, Center for Children’s Health and the Environment
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
New York, NY

Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., M.Sc. is the Ethel H. Wise Professor and Chair of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He holds a Professorship in Pediatrics at Mount Sinai. He directs the Mount Sinai Center for Children’s Health and the Environment. He is a board-certified specialist in pediatrics, general preventive medicine and occupational medicine.

Dr. Landrigan obtained his medical degree from the Harvard Medical School in 1967. He interned at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital. He completed a residency in Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston. In 1977, he obtained a Master of Science in occupational medicine and a Diploma of Industrial Health from the University of London.

From 1970 to 1985, Dr. Landrigan served as a commissioned officer in the United States Public Health Service. He served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer and then as a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. While with CDC, Dr. Landrigan served for one year as a field epidemiologist in El Salvador and for another year in northern Nigeria.

Dr. Landrigan is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine and previously was Editor of Environmental Research. He has chaired committees at the National Academy of Sciences on Environmental Neurotoxicology and on Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. Dr. Landrigan’s report on pesticides and children’s health was instrumental in securing passage of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996.

In New York City, he served on the Mayor’s Advisory Committee to prevent Childhood Lead Paint Poisoning and on the Childhood Immunization Advisory Committee. He is Chair of the New York State Advisory Council on Lead Poisoning Prevention. From 1995 to 1997, Dr. Landrigan served on the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veteran’s Illnesses. In 1997 and 1998, Dr. Landrigan served as Senior Advisor on Children’s Health to the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He was responsible at EPA for helping to establish a new Office of Children’s Health Protection.

Dr. Landrigan served from 1996 to 2005 in the Medical Corps of the United States Naval Reserve and rose to the rank of Captain. He served overseas with the Navy in London, Singapore, Korea and Ghana and was Officer-in-Charge of the West Africa Training Cruise, a medical humanitarian mission to Senegal that saw over 11,000 patients in rural West Africa in July, 2004. He has been awarded the Navy Commendation Medal (2 awards), the National Defense Service Medal, and the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service.

To read more about asbestos related law in the United States information can be found here.

Sources:

Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
http://www.mountsinai.org/patient-care/service-areas/occupational-health
International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization
http://www.iarc.fr/
American Thoracic Society
http://www.thoracic.org/

Jobs on Navy Ships that Put Veterans at Risk of Mesothelioma

Veterans who worked on Navy ships often worked directly or indirectly with asbestos and are at a greater risk of developing mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases.

Although there are many different jobs that exposed Navy veterans to asbestos, these seven jobs on Navy ships put veterans at a very high risk of developing mesothelioma:

Boilermen. Boilermen, also referred to as boiler tenders, boilermakers, boiler technicians and boiler repairmen, operated, repaired and maintained the powerful steam boilers that propelled US Navy vessels. These men and women were exposed to the dangerous fibers through the widespread use of asbestos in boiler rooms in valves and valves on ships.
Engine Mechanic. Engine mechanics were generally responsible for the operation, maintenance and upkeep of numerous types of equipment, such as engines and turbines, anchor equipment and pumps. This equipment used asbestos – and released deadly fibers when repairs had to be made.
Maintenance Mechanic. Maintenance mechanics repaired a wide range of machinery aboard ships, including pumps and valves. Their duties generally required them to handle and remove asbestos gaskets, and packing from equipment. Once asbestos is broken, it releases fibers that, when inhaled, cause those who breathe the fibers to have a greater chance of developing mesothelioma.
Shipfitter / Pipefitter / Steamfitter. Shipfitters, pipefitters and steamfitters, maintaining the structural integrity of the hull and the deck, connect pipes to equipment and help repair machinery. Shipfitters’ duties often included cutting, shaping and replacing asbestos packing and gaskets. Pipefitters and steamfitters also installed and repaired pipe systems for propulsion, electric power and temperature control. They also often handled gaskets, seals and insulation laced with asbestos.
Hull Technician. Hull technicians are responsible for numerous tasks, including:

installing, maintaining and repairing valves, piping, plumbing system fittings and fixtures

pipe cutting, threading and assembly

repairing installed ventilation ducting

installing and repairing insulation and lagging

operating marine sanitation systems

Hull technicians were also exposed to asbestos in insulation materials, packing, electrical seals and pipe gaskets.

All of the above jobs exposed veterans to asbestos in one way or another and are only some of the many jobs that exposed millions of civilian workers and veterans to asbestos. For questions, check out our FAQ page.

Holding Manufacturers, Distributors & Sellers Responsible

Asbestos manufacturers, distributors and sellers knew that asbestos products increased the risk of contracting mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases. However, they failed to warn civilian workers and veterans about the known dangers of asbestos – thereby preventing them from protecting themselves by wearing respiratory protection.

Every manufacturer has a legal duty to warn of their products’ known dangers. When they don’t, they can and should be held responsible for their actions.

Navy veterans, civilians and their families may have a claim against asbestos manufacturers – even if exposure to asbestos occurred 50 or more years ago. The statute of limitations for filing most asbestos lawsuits isn’t triggered until you discover that you’ve been injured such as when you receive a diagnosis of mesothelioma.

Anyone who has been injured is encouraged to contact an experienced mesothelioma injury attorney who understands this debilitating and deadly disease and knows how Navy veterans and civilians were exposed.

Daughter Encourages Her Father, and Other Mesothelioma Patients, to Be Open to Help from Others

My father has been through seven months of treatment for his pleural mesothelioma: surgery, rehabilitation, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy; but now he is back to living life as normal as possible. He has returned to work and this helps him find normalcy again, for he has always been a very hard worker and does not like to be idle.

His work requires him to walk around a lot in a large warehouse. This is both good and bad. It’s good that he is getting exercise to help his lungs become stronger, but he does have to take frequent breaks and sometimes use his oxygen in his office. Besides returning to work, he also does his daily, routine work around the house, such as taking care of the pool, trimming back trees, moving and stacking firewood for the woodstove, and decorating for Christmas – there really isn’t much he has stopped doing since his diagnosis.

It is so great to see my dad back to his old self, but I have to remind him sometimes to ask for help. He’s a man of action and wants to get things done, so he takes a lot on himself. Just over Thanksgiving, while I was home visiting for the holiday, he was getting dressed to go outside to bring in firewood. I said to him, “Dad, I hope you’re not going to the back of the yard alone to get a load of firewood.” His shocked response to me was, “Well yeah, why not?”

I rounded up my two brothers and we walked behind his pickup truck to help. When we got to the back of the yard, he attempted to load up the firewood to fill the bed of the truck. Well, within a few minutes he was huffing and puffing and had to take a break. I said to him, “Dad, we’re here, and we can do it. You watch.” I could see him struggle to take a step back and accept our help, but he listened, and my brothers and I were very happy to help.

While he was in the hospital recovering from his extrapleural pneumonectomy surgery, I wrote him a letter to encourage him and to let him know what I was feeling. One thing that I asked him to do was to please open up to us and accept help from others – he is one that never asks for help and he takes care of everyone else before himself.

I wrote: “I have found out recently that talking about your feelings and anxieties and accepting help from others makes you feel so much better and it does not make you seem weak. It brings you closer to people. Who knows though, maybe you will return to your complete normal life, but please know that we are here for anything that you need, even if it is just making you a grilled cheese sandwich.”

My message and advice to other mesothelioma patients is to accept help and to not feel ashamed about it. Your friends and family want to help you – they don’t want to see you struggle. Like I said to my dad, it does not show that you are weak when you accept help, rather it brings you closer to the people who love you.

Mesothelioma Widow Adjusts to New Routine

Day-to-day life has changed greatly for my whole family since Dad passed away, but no one’s more so than Mom’s. She and Dad spent all of their time together and she has had to adjust to not having him always there.

Every morning, my parents sat and had coffee. Now, Mom has a cup without him. They would go and run errands together – everything from going out to eat to going to the post office. Now, these are things that Mom has to do by herself.

Little things that Dad always took care of now fall to Mom. Dad always cut the grass, took out the garbage, fixed anything and everything that might need fixing. Thankfully, other people have been filling in to help out with a lot of these kinds of things, but it was still different when Dad would do them.

Mom has been spending a lot of time visiting us at our home, spending time with family and friends, and doing her best to enjoy her new retirement. But it’s still not the same. There will always be a void there that only Dad could fill.

I have mentioned many times how much I admire my Mom and how strong she is. She inspires me every day to do my best to handle every situation and challenge with grace. Please pray for her and for all who have lost a loved one. Every one of us needs your prayers.