Longshoremen

By the mid 1980s, asbestos use had pretty much stopped. Before that, though asbestos was used in many different ways in many different industries. Oil refineries, power plants, paper mills, chemical plants and the construction industry are all known to have had high exposure risks. Ships for both the military and commercial shipping were also known to be asbestos hotspots. The sailors and longshoremen working in the shipping industry were exposed to very high levels of asbestos fibers.

Asbestos Exposure

While there were suspicions that asbestos may have been harmful to people who were around it, these potential hazards were ignored because asbestos was so inexpensive and plentiful. Hundreds of thousands of people were exposed to asbestos before the cost in human life became overwhelming. There are still suits being filed in American courts regarding asbestos exposure.

For those of you who don't know, longshoremen were the workers who loaded and unloaded cargo from the ships. These dock workers came into contact with asbestos fibers all the time. Ships were often built using asbestos as an insulator and sound dampener. Once the ship was built the asbestos would break free and float around the interior of the ship, infecting anyone working in these areas.

Not only was asbestos used in the ship construction, but many of the over 3,000 products made with asbestos were transported by ship. Heck, plain asbestos bails were carried in the bellies of these cargo ships. Even when the products being carried didn't contain asbestos, the dust was still present and would be disturbed when work was going on. These longshoremen didn't wear any kind of respirator or protective gear. They didn't know that they needed to. The ships were also poorly ventilated. The concentration of fibers onboard a ship was phenomenal and the workers would breathe it in every working day. They would even carry the dust home in their clothing and expose their families.

Asbestos Uses

Found in natural deposits all over the world, the mineral asbestos is easy to mine and cheap. It's found in the form of long, thin crystals that are very easy to work with. It can be combined with a variety of items to enhance a product's strength without adding a lot to the weight. It doesn't burn and is even resistant to heat, which makes it great for use as insulation. Asbestos doesn't conduct electricity and doesn't react with many chemicals or acid. Being inexpensive and having such good qualities made it very appealing for many industries as the industrial revolution got rolling in the mid and late 1800s.

It's estimated that asbestos was added to over 3,000 fairly common products. Even though asbestos use was stopped, for the most part, by the mid 1980s, you can still find it all over the place, not only as insulation, but in some other surprising places. It was used in the manufacture of products like house siding, roofing shingles, cement blocks, floor tiles, ceiling panels and wallboard, to name just a few. Suits were even made from asbestos to protect employees who worked in industries that used extreme heat in their manufacturing process.

What Longshoremen Should Know

Asbestos falls apart easily when it's messed with. It crumbles into a dust that contains millions of microscopic fibers. As with all dust, these fibers become airborne very easily. When a person passes through an area that has been infected by asbestos dust, they swallow it and draw it into the lungs. A lot of the time swallowed fibers pass through the body with little to no damage, although there are cases where it has affected the health of an individual. The real damage comes about when the fibers enter the lungs. There isn't anyplace else for the fibers to go once they are in the lungs, so they sit there. As a person who has inhaled asbestos breathes, and the lungs expand and contract, the fibers damage the delicate issues in the lungs. After a certain amount of scar tissue appears in the lungs, the victim may start having issues with breathing. This medical condition is known as asbestosis. Asbestosis has claimed the lives of many, many people, but it is treatable if it's caught early enough.

Mesothelioma isn't treatable and is incredibly deadly. Eighteen months is the average lifespan of an individual diagnosed with this kind of cancer. The fibers cause tumors to form in the mesothelium, which is the lining that covers and protects most of the vital organs in the body. Not only do these tumors inhibit the operation of the organs, they also metastasize quickly and spread cancer to other parts of the body.

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