Iron Workers Diagnosed With Mesothelioma | New York City Personal Injury
Iron Workers Diagnosed With Mesothelioma
You worked as an iron worker, and you’ve now been diagnosed with mesothelioma and you’re asking yourself, “How did I get this disease?” Hi, I’m Joe Williams. I’m a mesothelioma trial attorney, and I want to talk to you about the types of exposures that iron workers had to asbestos. In order to do that, I want to talk to you about a former client of mine who was a union iron worker. He dealt with structural steel which he installed and worked on, which was also being sprayed with asbestos containing fire proofing spray. Now, he would be on one area of a floor while the sprayers were following his working and spraying the structural steel with fire proofing. That entailed mixing the dry fire proofing product with water, putting it into a gun, and the fire proof sprayers would spray the I-beams and the structural steel with this asbestos containing substance. While that was being sprayed onto the I-beams and into the air, my client was in the work space breathing in any asbestos dust created by that. In addition, after the fire proofing spray dried, and the ceiling had to be put in, hangers had to be attached – metal hangers had to be attached to the structural steel so that the drop ceiling could be installed. In order to do that, the fire proofing spray had to be scraped off of the structural steel. It was dry by that point, and the scraping of the fire proofing which contained asbestos caused dust in the air which the iron workers breathed – including my client. He also worked doing some ornamental iron work, and that meant that he was present at job sites when the job was more in the finishing process; when the internal walls were being put up, when the floors were being put in, because he would be putting in such things as railings and other steel fixtures, in perhaps tenant spaces or common areas. He was exposed to the work of other trades men who worked with joint compound or floor tile or ceiling tiles. Things that contained asbestos, and working with those products caused dust in the air that all the workers on the job site would breathe in. All of them being susceptible to later being diagnosed with mesothelioma. Now, decades later, years and years after his work with asbestos and work around asbestos, he was diagnosed with mesothelioma. His doctors, after taking an occupational history, told him that his exposures to asbestos back on the work sites was the cause of his mesothelioma diagnosis. Now, I am telling you all this because you have questions about mesothelioma and about the types of exposures to asbestos that cause mesothelioma. I’m Joe Williams, and at our office we deal with these issues every day. We represent victims of mesothelioma and their families as they pursue justice for exposures to asbestos. If you have questions, contact our office. We’ll answer your questions. Thanks for listening.