Steamfitters and mesothelioma are unfortunately common. If you are or were a steamfitter and mesothelioma has impacted your life, you may be eligible for compensation. Contact our office today to learn more about mesothelioma compensation.
Steamfitters are tradespeople who install specialized piping in factories and other types of industrial buildings. They install piping in commercial structures and aboard ships. The pipes that steamfitters install typically carry gases under high pressure—the most common gas being steam. In other instances, the pipes have liquified chemicals.
Frequently, the gasses and chemicals carried by these pipes can pose a danger to people and property were they to leak. But something else that can leak from pipes and also poses a threat is the mineral asbestos if they were constructed during the middle of the last century. It was common practice between the decades of the 1940s and 1980s or later to incorporate asbestos into the manufacture of products and materials utilized by steamfitters.
Steamfitters can still be exposed to asbestos today because they can work on disposing of or repairing pipes installed whenever asbestos is still in use. If they are told and aren't adequately protected, serious health problems can happen, and one of them is mesothelioma.
This cancer attacks the layer of tissues that keep your lungs, heart, and intestines safe. Asbestos can also lead to other diseases such as asbestos lung cancer and the scarring of the lungs, known as asbestosis. You can fight and eventually recover from these illnesses, but it can be costly, and money problems can quickly rise. Many affected by asbestos steamfitters decide to go the legal route and attempt to hold the companies that caused them to be exposed in the first place accountable.
Companies can be held accountable by plaintiffs seeking to gain asbestos-related compensation, and the money they give you can help improve your health, give you back wages lost during the time you were sick, and also help you get your life back on track.
Steamfitters and mesothelioma are unfortunately common. If you are or were a steamfitter and mesothelioma has impacted your life, you may be eligible for compensation. Contact our office today to learn more about mesothelioma compensation.
A steamfitter is an individual who—with or without the benefit of licensure or certification—installs, repairs, upgrades, or dismantles piping through which is transported gasses or liquids under high pressure. These pipes can be situated inside manufacturing facilities, power plants, institutional buildings, commercial buildings, residential complexes, or aboard ships. Pipe systems installed by steamfitters may incorporate a storage tank, boiler, or furnace. Other items that may be incorporated include pumps, valves, meters, regulators, connectors, and caps.
Tasks typically performed by steamfitters include:
There are specialized types of steamfitters. These include gasfitters and sprinkler fitters.
A gasfitter works with pipes carrying natural gas or propane. A gasfitter also installs and maintains gas meters, valves, and burners. Additionally, a gasfitter connects gas-powered appliances to the pipes.
A sprinkler fitter works with pipes carrying water, gasses, or chemicals intended to suppress or extinguish accidental fires inside or upon a structure's roof and other exterior areas.
Steamfitters and Asbestos Exposure. Steamfitters work with and around materials of many types. The one perhaps posing the greatest danger to the health of steamfitters was asbestos—a cheap, abundant mineral that up until the 1970s was employed in an array of products and materials for steamfitter use. These included:
Steamfitters and mesothelioma are unfortunately common. If you are or were a steamfitter and mesothelioma has impacted your life, you may be eligible for compensation. Contact our office today to learn more about mesothelioma compensation.
Asbestos was added to steamfitter products and materials to improve their performance and safety profiles. Asbestos could be coated over a steampipe, and even when that pipe was filled with raging hot steam, someone could pick it up and not get burned. This was due to asbestos around extreme temperatures, which could block heat. It could also do the same for extreme cold. If the outside of the pipe were cold, the cold would not penetrate the asbestos layer and get into the interior.
Asbestos also enhanced a pipe's durability, ensuring the finished piping would be lighter, stronger, longer lasting, and resistant to corrosion. However, asbestos did have a problem. If you cut, threaded, filed, hammered, drilled, fastened, or even jostled too hard, the asbestos would leave the pipe and go up into the air.
Steamfitters and mesothelioma are unfortunately common. If you are or were a steamfitter and mesothelioma has impacted your life, you may be eligible for compensation. Contact our office today to learn more about mesothelioma compensation.
Asbestos particles would float in the air like dust and could stay up in the mood for hours or even days before floating to the ground. While in the air, they had a much higher risk of being inhaled or swallowed by a steamfitter. Additionally, steamfitters could often be found in areas with no ventilation, so the risk was even more significant, and a higher quantity of asbestos would enter the lungs. Even the lightest inhalation or ingestion of asbestos would be enough to start the process. They would travel down the body and go deep into the lungs and the stomach lining, unable to be naturally dislodged or defended against. Then the asbestos would infect all the healthy cells around the lungs or stomach. This process would be slow, and it would sometimes take several decades before an asbestos-related health problem would show up at a steamfitter's doctor's visit.
Companies that manufactured asbestos products stopped making them in the 1970s after a huge public outcry and governmental action. Steamfitters continued to encounter asbestos products long after because it took years for distributor and retailer inventories of those carcinogenic wares to be used up. And steamfitters, even today, can still come into contact with asbestos products if they work on old systems or inside old structures.
Steamfitters and mesothelioma are unfortunately common. If you are or were a steamfitter and mesothelioma has impacted your life, you may be eligible for compensation. Contact our office today to learn more about mesothelioma compensation.
Steamfitters often performed their work in places constructed of materials that also contained asbestos. From the 1940s to the 1970s, construction materials made with asbestos included:
Drywall was a hazardous material because of the ease with which the asbestos it contained could be released into the air. One such scenario that could lead to a release was when steamfitters needed to install pipes and had to open up the drywall. They could bash the wall open with a sledgehammer, cut into the wall with a bladed saw, or even use a drill if the pipe was small enough. Regardless of how the wall was opened up, a cloud of asbestos would rise, and it was there to provide some benefits.
The reason drywall contained asbestos in the first place was to make it sturdier, weigh less, block noise better, provide an extra layer of insulation against heat and cold, and help prevent the spread of accidental fire. However, now that the hole was opened, the asbestos fibers would come out and float around the steamfitters, and if they didn't have any protection, they would be engulfed by these fibers. They'd ingest or swallow the threads, and the same thing happened to anyone who disturbed a material made of asbestos.
The particles will get into the steamfitter's lungs and stomach, burrow in, and then start messing with all the healthy cells to form cancer or other asbestos-related diseases in the long term. Not every steamfitter who inhales or ingests asbestos develops cancer. But, when cancer does strike, it multiplies and requires an aggressive medical response.
Steamfitters and mesothelioma are unfortunately common. If you are or were a steamfitter and mesothelioma has impacted your life, you may be eligible for compensation. Contact our office today to learn more about mesothelioma compensation.
Wrenches were a mainstay tool for steamfitters but far from the only one. They frequently also employed electrically operated drills, saws, and screwdrivers. The power tools of the past tended to have a powerful motor system, which would cause a lot of heat. Since asbestos is very good at handling heat, the power tool's inner workings would have an asbestos lining.
It would also prevent the steamfitter from being shocked as well. Wear-and-tear from the regular operation of a tool containing asbestos would cause asbestos fibers to spew into the air. As the device was used, the asbestos-containing components inside it would be subjected to stresses and strains to allow fibers to break free and be ejected into the air. These fibers would often go right up into the faces of the steamfitters working with the tools, giving them a very high chance to ingest or inhale the fibers.
Another way asbestos could be emitted during servicing is when the tool housing is opened to provide access to its internal parts. As the housing was separated from the tool body, clumps of caked asbestos built up within might become dislodged and fall to the workbench or floor.
However, the wear and tear and the continued usage of the power tool could cause strands of asbestos to come out of the instrument and get into the steamfitter's space. Additionally, whenever the power tools were opened and cleaned for service, the clumps of asbestos dust would either be cleaned out by the cleaner using a compressed air blast or fall to the floor, which caused asbestos to become airborne.
Steamfitters and mesothelioma are unfortunately common. If you are or were a steamfitter and mesothelioma has impacted your life, you may be eligible for compensation. Contact our office today to learn more about mesothelioma compensation.
Steamfitters, in some instances, risked exposure to asbestos by being present at a job site where there also were workers from other trades. The products used by those other trades—which included painters, electricians, ironworkers, and masonry workers—contained asbestos if they were made between the 1930s and 1970s.
All of these trades would be disturbing asbestos in some way. Masonry workers would be cutting asbestos-lined bricks, painters would paint with asbestos-lined paint, and electricians would knock holes in the drywall to get to the asbestos-covered circuits and wiring. These actions would send the asbestos into the air and move it around the job site.
Sometimes a steamfitter would be in the area whenever a release of asbestos from another part of the Jobsite occurred, and other times they would come in days after the jobs were done and still encounter the asbestos floating around in the air. What this meant was that not only were they being exposed to the asbestos from their job but also to all the other jobs at the site as well.
Steamfitters and mesothelioma are unfortunately common. If you are or were a steamfitter and mesothelioma has impacted your life, you may be eligible for compensation. Contact our office today to learn more about mesothelioma compensation.
Mesothelioma, asbestos lung cancer, asbestosis, and several other asbestos-related diseases are caused by and have been linked to asbestos exposure. This has been proven repeatedly, and you can use this to your advantage when getting compensation for your asbestos exposure.
The asbestos exposure is classified as an injury, and the compensation can cover your medical bills, hospital stay, and any wages you may have lost while being ill. To get your payment, you can attempt to bring a lawsuit against the company that exposed you to asbestos in the first place. Call
While you can achieve victory in the courtroom by winning a legal battle, several companies don't want to do that. Because they knowingly sold asbestos products and exposed the plaintiff steamfitters, they aren't trying to deny it; they are trying to downplay your suffering, which isn't something any company wants to do.
So often, most of these suits will never see the inside of a courtroom as they settle out of court. The compensation for an out-of-court settlement is very generous and should be more than enough to remove your emotional stress about the bills.
If the company you want to sue has declared bankruptcy to avoid these personal injury lawsuits, you won't be able to sue them, but don't give up. These companies are forced to set aside an asbestos trust to pay the compensation of anyone with a provable connection between their disease and the company's product.
Steamfitters and mesothelioma are unfortunately common. If you are or were a steamfitter and mesothelioma has impacted your life, you may be eligible for compensation. Contact our office today to learn more about mesothelioma compensation.
