Ambler Asbestos Manufacturing
Mattison made a fortune by capitalizing on as many uses of asbestos as possible. America’s first asbestos textile plant opened in Ambler in 1896. Ambler’s factories began producing corrugated asbestos cement sheets in 1907.
Other asbestos-containing products manufactured in Ambler included shingles, millboard, tiles, artificial lumber, gloves, gasket material, brake pads and spray-on fireproofing.
Keasbey & Mattison ran into financial trouble during the Great Depression. The company was bought by Turner & Newall in 1934 and purchased by the Certainteed Corporation and Nicolet Industries in 1962.
However, the Ambler Asbestos brand endured through all the changes in ownership.
Public awareness about the dangers of asbestos exposure grew in the 1970s, and the Environmental Protection Agency began to intervene in Ambler.
Asbestos manufacturing continued in Ambler until 1987, when Nicolet Industries filed for bankruptcy protection, facing thousands of asbestos-related lawsuits.
Mesothelioma in Ambler, Pennsylvania
In June 2021, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania received a grant. They will study asbestos exposure pathways that lead to mesothelioma in and around Ambler.
The grant will also fund research on the bioremediation of asbestos and the biological mechanisms that contribute to the development of asbestos-related diseases.
In 2011, a Pennsylvania Department of Health study confirmed there is an elevated rate of asbestos-related cancer among residents of Ambler.
The researchers examined cancer diagnoses reported between 1992 and 2008. They found the rate of mesothelioma in Ambler’s zip code to be three times higher than the average rate in Pennsylvania.
For more than 40 years, factory debris dumping had piled up. They were nicknamed the “White Mountains of Ambler” because of their high-asbestos content. Children regularly played on the piles. The wind often blew asbestos dust into the yards and homes of nearby residents.
The worst exposure undoubtedly occurred in Ambler’s asbestos textile plant, where workers processed raw asbestos for spinning into yarn. Pulling asbestos fibers apart created extreme concentrations of toxic dust in the air.
Work areas were not well-ventilated because it would have interfered with the yarn-making process. Workers on all the other asbestos product lines also suffered high levels of exposure. They had no safety gear, training or warning about the long-term risks of inhaling asbestos.
Factory owners continued this policy of neglect even after the company’s medical officer identified an elevated cancer risk among asbestos-exposed workers in the early 1950s.
Executives chose to profit off the Ambler Asbestos brand for another 30 years rather than preventing decades of workplace asbestos exposure and countless deaths.
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Ambler Asbestos Piles Superfund Site
By 1996, trees had grown on the site, and the erosion and sedimentation controls implemented were deemed successful. The EPA removed the Ambler Asbestos Piles from its National Priorities List, but they will remain surrounded by locked gates and warning signs for the indefinite future.
BoRit Asbestos Superfund Site
The BoRit Superfund site was another asbestos dumping area used by Ambler factories from the early 1900s to the late 1960s.
Part of it hosted a park area and a playground for a time. Though the park was closed and fenced off in the mid-1980s, the BoRit site did not receive Superfund status until 2009.
The BoRit site gained the EPA’s attention thanks to campaigning by the Citizens for a Better Ambler Group. A land developer proposed building a high-rise on the site, which would have disturbed the asbestos-containing waste and potentially contaminated the surrounding community.
The EPA completed its initial cleanup phase of the site in 2015, but tensions remain between people who want more development in the area and locals who want the BoRit site left undisturbed.
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