Asbestos & Mesothelioma for Electricians
In this episode, we outline where electricians encountered asbestos across industrial job sites, the diseases linked to exposure, and what workers and families should consider medically and legally after a diagnosis.
John Maher: Hi, I’m John Maher, and I’m here today with Paul Kelley. Paul is a partner with the Kentucky personal injury law firm Satterley & Kelley, which has over 45 years of collective experience in litigating mesothelioma and asbestos claims. Today we’re talking about asbestos exposure and mesothelioma with electricians. Welcome, Paul.
Paul Kelley: Hey, John. How are you doing today?
John: I’m doing well. How are you?
Paul: Doing great, thank you.
Workplaces Electricians Served and Asbestos Risk Factors
John: Paul, what kinds of companies or job sites did electricians typically work at, and still do? And why are those environments high risk for asbestos exposure?
Paul: So electricians, it’s probably a trade that people are very familiar with. Electricians have historically worked in every type of environment you can imagine. Certainly, residential, in people’s homes, office buildings, schools, banks, hospitals, retail facilities. But certainly, what we’ve seen a lot of is electricians that worked in your manufacturing facilities, your factories, warehouses, distribution centers, power plants, the substations associated with the power plants, airports, bus depots, train stations, train yards, shipyards, steel mills, foundries. A lot of those places, depending on when they were built, have historically contained high levels of asbestos. A lot of it depends on the type of work that electricians did. Some folks may say, “Well, I was an electrician, but all I did was residential work, so I must be safe.” Well, the answer to the question is, it depends.
There are homes that contain asbestos or apartment complexes that contain asbestos. And then there are more of, what I call, the industrial electricians that worked on heavy equipment and worked in powerhouses and factories, and had to work on machinery that was lined with asbestos frequently. They worked in those kinds of environments for years. It has been well documented in the medical and scientific literature that electricians have historically been amongst our workforce that’s most at risk for contracting asbestos-related diseases. Electricians that started in that trade in the ’50s and ’60s. I mean, it’s virtually certain that they received significant asbestos exposure over the course of their life.
As new electricians came into the industry in the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s, they’re not off the hook. They worked at places that still had those materials in their facilities in the ’80s and ’90s and 2000s. Depending on the information that was provided to them and depending on the efforts made by those facilities to mark or remove, remediate the asbestos, then that trade has been unfortunately subject to environments for decades where they had significant exposures to asbestos over a long period of time.
John: So it might not be immediately apparent to people how electricians would be exposed to asbestos. Tell me about some of the daily work that electricians did that might most often lead to asbestos exposure.
Paul: So, one that may surprise people is, a lot of your really heavy duty electrical wires and cables were coated with asbestos in the ’50s through ’70s, maybe early ’80s in some instances. So I mean, imagine a very significant cable that might be three, four, five inches in diameter, and it’s 150 feet long, and it’s coated in an insulation. Usually, there’s like a rubber or something over top of it, and then underneath it was a cloth, fibrous material. And the electricians don’t go out to these job sites and just hang it. They have to slice off and cut the insulation in order to make their connections to whatever it is that they’re connecting it to. That cable could be used for so many different things. It could be something that’s put into a piece of machinery, so it might be smaller than what I described, or it could be something that’s very significant in size and being used to connect to machines. It could be power cable, and so there would be a lot of insulation associated with that. They just take a knife out, and they’re just cutting it.
Studies have indicated or demonstrated that you can get a significant exposure that way. Lots of times there were electrical panels and circuit breakers that contain asbestos. Probably, an electrician wouldn’t be exposed to asbestos unless he or she got into the inner components of those things. But frequently, they did, and sometimes drilled and sawed into panels, and were exposed to asbestos. Frequently, conduit, electrical conduit that housed all of the cables, those cables can be very hot, and then the collection of cables can be very hot. So the conduit would frequently be an asbestos material.
I’ll give you a great example. There was a conduit that frequently was installed underground that was made of something called transite pipe. There were several years in the ’50s and ’60s and early ’70s where transite pipe contained not only asbestos, but contained a form of asbestos called crocidolite. The electricians and other crafts that worked with that pipe, they’d have to saw it, cut it. They have to do maintenance work 30 years later, and this stuff’s buried underground. So you’ve got to dig underneath, underground, to get to it, and then you got to crack into it somehow. It’s not like cracking an egg. You’ve got to cut it and saw it and drill it. The studies have shown that they got significant exposure to materials like that.
We’ve seen electricians exposed to transite in all kinds of different ways. We had a client who worked for a phone company. He may not have been an electrician per se, but he worked in environment that involved electrical components every day, installing wire and cable. They had to make sure that the area between the floors were airtight, because with fire on one floor we don’t want it to devastate the entire building. So they would usually cut the holes in the floor, and they put all the wire and cable through the hole on the floor, and they would put a piece of transite over the hole, and then they would put the cables actually through the hole in the transite. Somebody had to cut that transite in order to do it. Every time they put a new cable in, they had to cut the transite a little bit more. So that was a frequent occurrence.
Electricians, they frequently worked around drywall that was finished off with joint compounds. They had to crack the end of the drywall frequently in order to install cable into the walls, install cable through the walls and drywall, or the joint compound that went over the drywall historically contained asbestos for many years. So as you’re cutting through that material, there’s exposure that’s occurring there.
Ceiling tiles and floor tiles, lots of times they had to get into drop ceilings. Those ceiling tiles and a lot of different places were made from asbestos, and sometimes they have to cut the tiles in order to access where they need or in order to make enough room to put their cables in. They use a saw, they use a knife, maybe electric saw, maybe a hand saw, but there would be exposure to the things like that. Floor tiles, we talked about that. Floor tiles, I mean, for many years, floor tiles, in a wide variety of places, whether it was schools, hospitals, office buildings, even manufacturing plants, were made from asbestos. While you’re walking around on them, it’s no big deal, but as soon as somebody cracks into those tiles…and electricians frequently had to do that in order to access things underneath the tiles.
But electricians also worked in a lot of environments where they’re working around people who are working with asbestos products. We talked about the drop ceiling a moment ago. Usually, in a lot of places, whether it’s an office building or a manufacturing plant, there’s a drop ceiling. And then there’s an area above that ceiling that contains all the stuff, the stuff that we don’t see, but the stuff that helps the building operate, and what’s in there? You’ve got all the duct work, and the duct work frequently was insulated with asbestos. You have all the piping that’s up there that frequently was insulated with asbestos. Well, one big one that we haven’t talked about is the big high-rise buildings. Lots of times, the high-rise buildings, kind of the beams, the innards of the building, was sprayed with asbestos. It was a form of fireproofing. And I’ve represented electricians that were there when that was happening.
I mean, I’m trying to think of something, but people have probably seen some insulation sprayed into their walls. I mean, there’s no containment whatsoever. It’s sprayed, and then it falls down, and if you’re working underneath it, it’s going to hit you. And if you’re working above it, some of it’s going to float up. So that was a very heavy exposure. At all these manufacturing plants, there’s just miles of insulated pipe. While the electricians may not be directly working on that insulated pipe, they certainly are working around others who are, and were frequently exposed that way.
Electricians very frequently participated in overhauls of big, large, significant equipment. So turbines and power houses were a big deal, and millwrights would come in and work on the components of the turbine, but electricians would work on all the electrical work. Some of that wiring cable contained asbestos, but even if it didn’t, the insulation that others are working on around them did. So they’re exposed in that way.
And then boilers, boilers contain a lot of asbestos, both inside and outside the boilers. These boilers and power houses, John, were stories tall, I mean seven, eight stories. These weren’t any tiny piece of equipment. The buildings or the room that housed the boilers that frequently electricians had to make electrical connections, both inside the boiler to connect the boiler and some other piece of equipment, and they’re involved in pipe insulation and other insulation. That’s all just around them. So even if they’re not dealing with it directly themselves, they are bystanders to someone else who did.
Large kilns and furnaces that heat steel and metal, those things were frequently lined with fire brick and refractory material that contain asbestos, and electricians work on those pieces of equipment. What I hear a lot is, when companies decided that they needed to do an overhaul of a piece of equipment, or they decided that they needed… “We’re going to shut down for a couple of weeks, and we’re going to do a bunch of work at the same time,” they’re not just bringing the electricians in, they’re bringing all the crafts in. Electricians are being exposed to the plasters, pipe fitters, insulators, boiler makers, millwrights, and all the different things that those types of crafts worked on the disturbed asbestos. The electrician is working there, shoulder to shoulder, and certainly can’t avoid the exposure.
Long‑Term Health Effects from Asbestos Exposure
John: So how has asbestos exposure affected electricians over the years, and what are some of the long-term health effects that they now face?
Paul: Well, for a variety of reasons, electricians were exposed to heavy levels of asbestos, certainly persistent levels of asbestos for many years, particularly those in the industrial and commercial electrical business. But even those in the residential trades and even people who were electricians that were more on the manufacturing side of it, they received decades of exposure in some instances. The medical and scientific studies have shown that electricians are one of our groups that’s at risk for asbestos disease. Unfortunately, the data shows that electricians have certainly been one of the occupations that’s most heavily impacted by asbestos exposure and, in fact, has contracted all of those diseases that they’re at risk of.
You’ve got mesothelioma, which is uniquely caused by asbestos exposure. It’s a cancer of the lining of the lungs, and there’s a form of it that’s a cancer of the lining of the abdomen. And then there’s another form [that affects the ] lining of the heart. There’s lung cancer, which is more involving the lung itself. There’s non-cancer but still a significant disease called asbestosis, and that’s a disease of the “meat” of the lung that can be a very significant, debilitating and frequently deadly disease. So electricians have unfortunately suffered from all of these diseases, and many have died over the years. It’s just been a devastating impact for people that dedicated their lives to helping make all of our lives easier.
Long‑Term Health Effects from Asbestos Exposure
John: So looking back, what did companies generally know about asbestos risks for electricians, and did they let the workers know about that?
Paul: So a lot of companies absolutely knew for many, many years. Knowledge, of course, developed a lot over the years. But the medical and scientific studies, and a lot of these companies were very in tune with what was being published out there, but some of those studies go back to the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s that indicated that asbestos exposure was harmful. And then as we get into the ’50s, when it was absolutely determined that it caused lung cancer, and then in 1960, it was determined to cause mesothelioma. And in 1960, it was also determined to cause not just mesothelioma to people exposed in the workplace, but environmental exposures, what we call household exposures. This industry, or all of these industries, knew this, or certainly should have known this during that period of time.
In Kentucky, where I’m at, we had a statute regulation that regulated asbestos in 1956. So if somebody owned a facility in Kentucky, they needed to know about the law. In 1971 the federal government enacted OSHA regulations, which are still on the books today, and it regulated asbestos exposure in the workplace. If you had a place, a workplace, anywhere in the United States, you were obligated to know. A lot of these companies belong to trade organizations or organizations like the Industrial Hygiene Foundation, National Safety Council. Their whole purpose was to study occupational hazards and to understand the risk to employees and workers and people that worked on their property.
I mean, I would say that better than half of the defendants that we routinely pursue claims against for electricians and other crafts belong to organizations like that, or they belong to other trade organizations that had, or provided, or disseminated information concerning not just the general risk of asbestos exposure, but risk to specific things, risk to electrical wiring cable, risk to turbine insulation, pipe insulation, gaskets, refractory material, turbines, boilers. So that information was not just available; it was information that a lot of these companies had had in their hands. So many of these places, these companies, they didn’t just say, “Oh, we need a building, and please design it for us, and we’ll move in when it’s ready.” They were intimately involved in the design and construction of their manufacturing plant.
I’m here in Louisville, Kentucky, and General Electric has a massive facility here. It’s called Appliance Park. It’s got six manufacturing buildings and some other buildings here. General Electric was intimately involved in the design and the construction. It may not have written the plans, and it may not have put up the brick and mortar, but it knew what was going in. A lot of companies, many companies, were exactly like that.
As you get deeper into the ’80s and ’90s and you see that there was some effort by companies to perform asbestos surveys, inspections, try to identify where the asbestos is, and that’s all fine and good, but the next step wasn’t taken. And that next step was notifying their own employees, and contractor employees. My typical electrician was a contractor employee that worked at a manufacturing plant or a steel mill or a power plant. I mean, I can’t think of one person who ever said anybody from the premises’ owner came to me and said, “There’s asbestos here, and here’s where it is, and this is what you’ve got to do to protect yourself.”
Quite frankly, that would’ve been inadequate, because you shouldn’t have to protect yourself. They should take measures to take care of it. But I mean, generally, there are always exceptions to the rule, as you know. But generally speaking, most of the defendants that we deal with do not have any evidence that they notified people coming onto their property, whether it was their own employees or contractors, about the health risks of asbestos, the presence of asbestos of their facility, where it specifically was. They didn’t take any effort to prevent the exposure. They didn’t have any policies in place, or if they did have policies in place, they weren’t really followed. And I feel strongly that it would’ve worked had they done those things, because every client that I have has always said, “Look, if I had known, I would’ve either taken those precautions or I would’ve chosen to do something else with my life.”
There was a way for all of this to work where our clients and sheet metal workers and all the various crafts that built these facilities, that maintain these facilities, that they could have done their work and they could have done it safely, and the property owners could have had what they needed to have in order to operate their facility. Every now and again, we come across some evidence of companies that did do the right things and did prevent the exposures. And it’s a breath of fresh air certainly when you see it. But I mean, that’s few and far between.
John: Right.
Paul: It just wasn’t well communicated. And as a result, electricians all throughout the United States have developed terrible diseases.
Medical and Legal Steps After a Diagnosis
John: So if someone was an electrician and now has later been diagnosed with mesothelioma, what steps should they take medically and legally?
Paul: So medically, they just need to determine with their doctors and their family what’s the best course of treatment for them. Mesothelioma, which is what I commonly deal with, clients with mesothelioma, it’s a devastating disease, and most people will pass away within 6 to 18 months of that disease. During that period of time, they will receive all kinds of different treatments, whether it’s chemotherapy — there’s some surgeries that can be performed. There’s radiation therapy. There’s immunotherapy. There’s clinical trials. And it’s a lot. Some people, of course, have different views on what they’re willing to do, but that’s something that every person needs to make a decision with their families and their healthcare team to decide what the best course of plan is for them.
While they’re doing that, they also should consider pursuing their legal rights. You don’t have a lot of time to do it. Sometimes, there’s a… Well, there’s always a statute of limitations applicable. Sometimes it’s longer or shorter depending on what state you’re in. In Kentucky, we basically have a year. So it’s important to get on it right away just from that standpoint. But even more so, it’s really important for you to get on it, because if you come to me, I want you to be able to participate in your case. The best evidence I’m ever going to have of your exposure and your pain and suffering, and just about your life in general, is from you.
We can get a lot of information from coworkers and family and friends and that sort of thing, but the best evidence we’ll ever get is from the victim themselves. We want to be able to do that, take the deposition early, develop the evidence that we need, and give our client the opportunity to get off their minds everything that’s happened to them. Tell the defendants, tell the judge, tell the jury, me, anybody, “This is what’s happened to me. This is why it happened to me.” The quicker that you’re able to get your case filed, the better opportunity you have to be able to do those things.
Memories don’t get better. People’s health, unfortunately, deteriorates. If it takes six months to find your lawyer, and then you hire a lawyer that’s not necessarily familiar with asbestos litigation or the job sites at issue, then it may take another two or three months. To be candid, John, I mean, there’s frequently situations where somebody will come to me, and I’ll have a pretty good idea of what I think the exposure is, but it’s a new site, it’s something that’s a little different for whatever reason, and I need to spend a little bit of time investigating to make sure that we get the right parties, and it really puts us under the gun if somebody comes to us eight months after they’re diagnosed, as opposed to two months. We’re going to get the job done no matter what, but I like to be as thorough as possible, and I want to turn over every stone and pursue every potential source of exposure, and giving us more time to be able to do that is certainly ideal.
I get it. There’s a lot of different reasons as to why people don’t get on it right away. Gosh knows that this issue is so personal to people, and everybody kind of behaves differently. But if you’re asking for advice, my advice is, do your research, hire the attorneys that you’re comfortable with, that you feel will give you the best chance of success, and let’s get on with it. And then hopefully, your attorney will hit the road, hit the ground running, and be prepared to seek justice for you and your family.
John: All right. Well, that’s really great information, Paul. Thanks again for speaking with me today.
Paul: Thank you, John.
John: For more information about mesothelioma and asbestos exposure, visit the law firm of Satterley & Kelley at satterleylaw.com or call 855-385-9532.