- Week of July 8, 2006; Vol. 170, No. 2 , p. 26
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060708/bob9.asp
Asbestos laces many residential soils
Janet Raloff
It was the mid-1980s, and Terry Trent and his wife, Carol Adams, had broken ground for their dream home. Atop a hill east of Sacramento, Calif., the remote, 10-acre site in the Sierra foothills offered plenty of privacy. As the couple eventually learned, it offered plenty of something else as well: a nasty type of asbestos known as tremolite. Respiratory exposure to this mineral has been linked with mesothelioma, a lung cancer that quickly turns fatal.
Trent vividly recalls his first encounter with the asbestos. He was working on what would become his front yard. "Operating a backhoe, I popped a roughly 12-inch diameter vein of tremolite out of the ground that was maybe 35 feet long. I thought it was some old, ancient tree root," he told Science News.
Closer inspection revealed a fibrous mat resembling the asbestos that Trent had seen on insulation pads in his college chemistry class. Gently, he reburied the rope. His worries mounted after he turned up smaller ropes of the material throughout the rest of his property. Eventually, Trent found it poking through the surface in so many places that he decided to haul in 1,000 tons of clean-fill dirt to resurface his homestead.
This solution seemed adequate for 9 years—until construction began on the plot next to his. Thick dust regularly covered surfaces inside Trent and Adams' home. The local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, sent out samples of that dust for chemical analysis. It confirmed heavy contamination with asbestos. Pleas to the owner of the neighboring property and to local officials went for naught, and Trent and Adams' insurance company refused to compensate them for the contamination.
Finally, the couple did the unthinkable. In 1998, they abandoned the house, then valued at $650,000.
Meanwhile, as other families moved into the area—the growing suburban county of El Dorado, where home values can now exceed $1 million—government officials tended to downplay any suggestion that the soil was toxic. That is, until last year, when the Environmental Protection Agency told local residents that its data showed worrisome concentrations of the carcinogenic fibers could be kicked up by normal activities.
What's more, federal scientists now observe, El Dorado is hardly unique. Shallow, natural deposits of asbestos occur in 50 of 58 California counties and in 19 other states.
Although some building-industry groups dispute EPA's El Dorado findings, federal scientists have launched a campaign to evaluate threats that such deposits pose to the people living above them.
Personal storms
One problem in documenting any effects of natural asbestos deposits is that those needlelike fibers tend to be bulkier than the asbestos fibers used by industry and so tend not to remain airborne long enough to be captured by outdoor air-pollution monitors.
EPA sent scientists, wearing moon suits and personal monitors at face height, to collect personal-exposure data from the town of El Dorado Hills. Values were compared with the asbestos measurements simultaneously recorded by several stationary devices installed nearby, the day before, to sample air about 1.5 meters above the ground.
Asbestos readings were low as long as the researchers were inactive. However, playing basketball in a park in El Dorado Hills kicked up 3 to 16 times as much asbestos as was in the air recorded by the stationary monitoring devices, according to Arnold Den and his colleagues in EPA's Region 9 office in San Francisco. The asbestos probably came from dirt on the asphalt surface. Playing baseball, hiking, or biking on unpaved dirt released even more asbestos, the researchers found.
During a baseball game, "we put monitors on the bases and pitcher's mound, and they recorded much lower [asbestos] values than monitors on the runners," he says. The most asbestos—60 times what stationary monitors picked up in the area—appeared during digging in a garden, Den notes.
Similar data emerged during motor biking at the Clear Creek Management Area, a recreational site southwest of Sacramento.
Results show that everyday outdoor work and play in these areas create a "personal storm" of asbestos-tainted dust, says Den.
Industry challenges
Last winter, the National Stone, Sand, and Gravel Association of Alexandria, Va., voiced strong objections to EPA's findings. Although the association doesn't represent home owners or builders, its members' products sometimes contain minerals that come in both asbestos and nonasbestos forms. Association spokesman Gus Edwards says, "Our concern is that any federal regulatory agency ... use sound science to differentiate between [them]."
The industry association hired a consulting firm to evaluate how EPA measured and identified asbestos in El Dorado County. Last November, the R.J. Lee Group, headquartered in Monroeville, Pa., reported that 63 percent of the dust fibers that EPA had termed asbestos in El Dorado Hills didn't meet physical and chemical criteria set by academic mineralogists and that the remaining 37 percent were largely inoffensive rock dust.
In some cases, the fibers' chemical makeup didn't qualify as asbestos, the Lee Group said. In other cases, it charged, EPA inappropriately counted needlelike fragments that had broken off a crystal that was too big to qualify as asbestos. Those fragments aren't asbestos even if they have the same chemistry and dimensions as those that crystallized as asbestos needles, the group said.
Arthur M. Langer, a consulting mineralogist formerly of Brooklyn College, agrees. "There are data by the bucketful" indicating that such cleavage fragments, as they're called, "are, for the most part, inactive," he says.
On April 20, EPA issued a point-by-point rebuttal to the Lee Group's report. "What we did—and Lee attacks us on—is use the public health definition [of asbestos]" rather than the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) criteria (see "What's in a Name?" below), says Daniel Meer of EPA's Region 9. In other words, he explains, EPA counted as asbestos both the mineral fibers regulated by OSHA and additional fibers that EPA toxicologists expect to behave similarly in the body. "In the absence of evidence to the contrary," he says, "we will assume the human body can't tell the difference."
Lungs full
Skeptics in the rock-and-gravel industry have pointed out that no formal study has established that people living over diffuse U.S. deposits of asbestos or related fibers are acquiring potentially toxic doses. However, at least three preliminary pieces of evidence suggest risks to people living near asbestos deposits in El Dorado County and elsewhere.
In one informal study, an El Dorado County veterinarian collected lung tissue from two dogs and a cat that had lived in the region for 2 to 9 years and died from causes unrelated to lung disease. The vet also took lung samples from a cat that had lived elsewhere. The specimens were independently analyzed by pathologists Jerrold L. Abraham of the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse and Bruce W. Case of McGill University in Montreal.
At the American Thoracic Society meeting last year, Abraham and Case, specialists in asbestos analyses, reported finding up to 9 million asbestos fibers per gram of tissue in the El Dorado County animals' lungs. Those concentrations were higher than those seen in livestock from an area in Europe where tremolite-tainted soil has been linked to human mesotheliomas, according to Abraham. In contrast, tissue from the cat outside the area didn't show any asbestos.
A second indicator of lung effects comes from Mark Germine, a psychiatrist in Mount Shasta, Calif., who before entering medical school was a mineralogist specializing in asbestos. In 1998, he collected soil samples at six sites in El Dorado County. "I found some very loose, hairy stuff—tremolite asbestos," Germine recalls. "Although I was really careful, I didn't wear a respirator," he notes.
The following morning, he coughed up green mucus, indicative of lung inflammation. On a whim, he sent some of the mucus to Abraham, who found it loaded with tremolite. Three months later, Germine washed out his larynx with distilled water. Under a transmission-electron microscope, the rinse water "was loaded with tremolite fibers—more than I could count," he told Science News. He wishes that he'd used a respirator. "I'd never go back there without one," he says.
Finally, a team led by pulmonary physician Marc B. Schenker of the University of California, Davis collected data on 3,000 mesothelioma patients in their state and 890 men with prostate cancer, a malignancy not known to be related to asbestos. In the Oct. 15, 2005 American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the team reported that although most mesotheliomas occurred in people who had worked with asbestos, people who simply lived near known deposits of rock likely to include asbestos also had an elevated incidence of the lung cancer but not prostate cancer. Indeed, risk of mesothelioma steadily declined by 6 percent for every 10 kilometers that an individual had lived from a likely asbestos source.
Living with asbestos
Many government officials say that it's possible to coexist safely with asbestos-tainted soils. Some physicians and mineralogists doubt it.
Since EPA officials reported on asbestos-laden dust in El Dorado Hills last year, the county government has enacted new controls on dust from construction sites. Home sellers must now disclose the presence of asbestos in their soil, where known.
Two decades ago, scientists discovered that large portions of Fairfax County, Va., also were underlain with tremolite. With housing under development throughout much of the affected 28-square-kilometer area, the county quickly developed laws to monitor for asbestos in construction dust and to control soil taken from the area, notes John Yetman, an official with the program. As new buildings are erected at affected sites, the surface must be capped with 6 inches of clean, stable material, such as dirt, sod, or asphalt. Fairfax's rules have gained national renown.
But the county doesn't publicize its asbestos problem, and home sellers don't have to alert buyers about near-surface tremolite, says Yetman. The county does host a Web site ( http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/hd/asbintro.htm ) that maps affected areas.
Communities are reluctant to acknowledge the presence of asbestos, says John Puffer, an asbestos researcher at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. Several years ago, he identified a deposit of blue fibrous crocidolite—a highly toxic form of asbestos—adjacent to a nature trail in Mendham, N.J. "When I pointed it out to the mayor, I expected he would be grateful," says Puffer. Instead, the mayor "went ballistic and basically chased me out of town."
The federal government, however, has begun taking seriously community asbestos problems. Bradley S. Van Gosen of the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver spent a year compiling the accounts up to 100 years old of asbestos deposits in the eastern United States. Last year, he produced a map of 331 asbestos deposits—some so rich they were once mined—running in a band from Alabama to Vermont ( http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1189/pdf/Plate.pdf ). He's now at work on similar maps for the Midwest and West.
At EPA's behest, Van Gosen is also looking into El Dorado County. He and his colleague Greg Meeker plan to describe the chemistry, shape, and size of fibers from samples they collected there.
Three years ago, El Dorado Hills asked the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in Atlanta for guidance on evaluating risks posed by the asbestos unearthed during construction of a high school soccer field. The agency determined that some student athletes, coaches, and school workers had received substantial exposures and that the inside of the school needed to be cleaned of asbestos dust, says John Wheeler, an environmental health scientist with the agency.
His office still hasn't yet decided how to address the bigger question of long-term risks from low-level exposures to community asbestos deposits, says Wheeler. The agency is considering setting up a registry to follow the health of residents in El Dorado Hills and perhaps do autopsy studies in the area. Other periodic tests for asbestos are also being considered.
"I think, in general, we've found that [naturally occurring asbestos] is something that you can live with," says Wheeler. People need to be cautious where it occurs—keeping their homes clean, for example, and limiting dusty activities such as tilling the garden.
Abraham is less sanguine about the safety of residential areas overlying natural asbestos deposits. Indeed, he predicts of places such as El Dorado Hills, "It's only a matter of time until we find mesotheliomas there."
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What's in a Name?
Asbestos definitions can depend upon whom you consult
Asbestos is a term used to describe any of more than a dozen fibrous minerals. Despite a long history of commercial use and regulation, controversy still simmers over which fibers constitute true asbestos.
There's agreement that two distinct families of the mineral exist. Most deposits underlying U.S. communities contain chrysotile, the type generally regarded as the least toxic. All others, including tremolite, fall into a family known as amphibole asbestos. Differences between families trace to their chemical recipes.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the first agency to regulate asbestos, rigidly defines the mineral by the fibers' length, width, and length-to-width ratio. OSHA's rules, however, cover only chrysotile and five amphiboles, including tremolite.
It's not that those six fibers are the only toxic asbestos types, says Jerelean Johnson, who assesses potential asbestos hazards for EPA's Region 9, out of San Francisco. It's that when OSHA established its rules, "they were the only ones widely mined and used commercially," she says.
Fibers of a different size or makeup may be as toxic as the ones that OSHA regulates, says Daniel Meer of EPA's Region 9. Therefore, a public-health definition of asbestos has developed to include fibers not covered by OSHA.
Consider the asbestos contamination at the vermiculite mine near Libby, Mont. An epidemic of lung cancer and other disease (SN: 7/12/03, p. 21: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030712/fob4.asp; 6/17/06, p. 372: Available to subscribers at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060617/fob4.asp) developed among miners and townspeople. At least 200 of the area's 8,000 inhabitants died from, and another 1,500 were made ill by, lung diseases initially attributed to tremolite asbestos.
However, when mineralogist Greg Meeker of the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver and his colleagues examined asbestos in Libby ore, they found that only 6 percent was tremolite. Some 80 percent was a chemically similar winchite, and most of the remainder a related richterite.
Although neither winchite nor richterite constitutes asbestos by OSHA's definition, Meer notes that the public health community classifies them as such, because of the evidence from Libby and elsewhere that they trigger asbestos diseases.
Baron & Budd, P.C. has won many significant legal victories and settlements for mesothelioma and asbestos lung cancer victims. Here are some examples of monetary recoveries we have been able to achieve for our clients.
The cases described here reflect the net amounts of the judgments or settlements our clients received after the deduction of attorneys fees and expenses-in other words, what our clients actually received. The actual settlement or verdict would be higher. These cases were all handled by Baron & Budd attorneys serving as lead counsel.
Specific Results Depend on the Facts of Each Case.
$10,603,661.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses for a gentleman who developed malignant mesothelioma as a result of his exposure to joint compound as a construction worker. This case went to trial and resulted in a significant verdict in favor of the gentleman, his wife and children that was listed by a national legal publication as one of the top verdicts in the U.S. that year. The case subsequently settled.
$6,356,942.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the widow of a man who died at the age of 50 after developing asbestos-related mesothelioma. He was exposed to asbestos while serving in the Navy aboard nuclear submarines during the 1960s. This case went to trial against the manufacturer of an asbestos-containing pipe covering product. The jury awarded a significant verdict, which was affirmed on appeal.
$4,380,755.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for an ironworker who worked at a number of industrial sites throughout his career and who was diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 79.
$3,749,270.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the widow of a gentleman who developed mesothelioma as a result of his exposure to asbestos while working as an engineer at a power plant. This case went to trial and resulted in a significant jury verdict, which was affirmed on appeal.
$3,665,248.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman who developed mesothelioma at the age of 70. Our client began his working career in the construction industry in the 1940s as a latherer/plasterer, and eventually formed his own construction company. He was exposed to asbestos-containing products throughout his career. The case went to trial, with the jury awarding a significant verdict against the manufacturer of an asbestos-containing joint compound product to which our client was exposed.
$3,625,231.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for an aircraft mechanic with mesothelioma who worked around construction projects at two airports during his career, resulting in his exposure in asbestos. The case went to trial against the manufacturer of an asbestos-containing pipe covering product, with the jury awarding a significant verdict. The case subsequently settled.
$3,122,080.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the family of a gentleman with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos while working as a mechanical contractor at a variety of industrial sites during his career.
$2,828,514.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the family of a man diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 49 who was exposed to asbestos while working as a machinist and a welder.
$2,754,598.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 62. He was exposed to asbestos while working in construction as a young man.
$2,421,607.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the widow of a gentleman diagnosed with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos during his career laying water and sewer lines.
$2,367,594.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 46-year-old man with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos as a roofer and tradesman at an oil company.
$2,378,142.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the widow of a man who died of mesothelioma at the age of 58. He was exposed to asbestos as a child through his father’s work clothing in the family home.
$2,298,832.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the family of a man who worked as a millwright at numerous industrial sites throughout his career and who was diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 40.
$2,263,366.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 62-year-old man with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos while working in carpentry and construction.
$2,265,656.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 63. He was exposed to asbestos while working as a machinist and operator at an oil refinery.
$2,261,427.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos while serving in the engine rooms of Navy ships in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
$2,158,840.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a career insulator at an oil refinery who was diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 75.
$2,117,719.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the family of a 57-year-old man with mesothelioma. He was exposed to asbestos as a young man while working as a laborer at a chemical plant during the summer months while a student.
$2,070,662.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 39-year-old woman diagnosed with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos through her construction worker-father’s work clothes.
$2,004,682.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the family of a former custodian who developed mesothelioma as a result of his exposure to asbestos-containing products during the construction and remodeling of three school buildings. At times, he would personally use asbestos-containing joint compound products to make repairs at the schools. He died of mesothelioma at the age of 60.
$1,975,087.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman who had once worked as a custodian at an oil refinery where he was exposed to asbestos. He was diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 70.
$1,960,941.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 59 who was exposed to asbestos while working as a tradesman at an aluminum plant.
$1,905,005.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a career electrician/journeyman who was diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 58.
$1,889,416.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman who developed mesothelioma as a result of his exposure to asbestos while working as a carpenter at a munitions plant.
$1,876,786.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a lady diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 67. She came into contact with asbestos by handling her construction contractor husband’s work clothing.
$1,857,890.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a career construction worker who developed mesothelioma at the age of 70. He was exposed to asbestos while working on various industrial and commercial construction projects.
$1,811,800.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 61. He served as a boiler tender aboard Navy ships and later worked as an auto mechanic.
$1,746,727.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 61, who was exposed to asbestos while working as a roofer, carpenter and drywaller at residential and construction sites.
$1,730,599.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the family of a woman who died at the age of 44 from mesothelioma. She was exposed to asbestos as a child through her father’s work clothes in the family home.
$1,700,365.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, who developed mesothelioma at the age of 74 as result of his exposure to asbestos while working at a petrochemical plant in the 1960s and 1970s.
$1,689,084.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, who developed mesothelioma as a result of his exposure to asbestos during his career as a pipefitter and plumber.
$1,683,959.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for an 85-year-old gentleman with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos during his career as a construction worker.
$1,655,269.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the family of a steelworker who died of asbestos-related mesothelioma at the age of 49. At trial, the jury awarded a significant sum after finding the manufacturer of an asbestos-containing refractories product responsible for the gentleman’s exposure to asbestos.
$1,639,861.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 72-year-old woman diagnosed with mesothelioma. She was exposed to asbestos in the family home both as a child and an adult through her father’s and husband’s work clothing.
$1,637,308.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos while working as a tradesman a number of industrial facilities throughout his career.
$1,616,379.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a retired insulator who worked at a shipyard and who was diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 72.
$1,581,167.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 62-year-old former engineer diagnosed with mesothelioma.
$1,573,492.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a lady who developed mesothelioma at the age of 65. She was exposed to asbestos through her father, a shipyard worker, and through her husband, an oil refinery worker.
$1,564,497.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman with mesothelioma who worked as a machinist in the 1950s - 1970s.
$1,552,840.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 58-year-old man exposed to asbestos while working at a paper mill.
$1,547,950.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 60-year-old gentleman with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos while working as a boiler repairman and carpenter.
$1,520,594.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a lady diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 77 who was exposed to asbestos in the home while laundering her husband’s work clothes.
$1,451,520.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, who was exposed to asbestos as a construction worker and was diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 61.
$1,442,225.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman with mesothelioma who had worked as a career machinist.
$1,394,921.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a housewife who developed mesothelioma resulting from her exposure to asbestos while laundering the work clothes of her husband, a construction worker.
$1,380,449.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a man who was exposed to asbestos as a power plant operator and who developed mesothelioma at the age of 65.
$1,352,736.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for an 80-year-old gentleman exposed to asbestos as a career plumber.
$1,346,991.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 74-year-old gentleman with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos as a boiler operator in the Navy and later, while working in schools and hospitals.
$1,343,380.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 74 year old gentleman with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos as an oil refinery worker.
$1,281,181.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 77-year-old man with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos during his career as an electrician.
$1,279,514.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman exposed to asbestos as a foreman at a lead smelter who developed mesothelioma at the age of 72.
$1,274,437.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman diagnosed with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos while working as a laborer and brick mason at an aluminum plant.
$1,268,771.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 75-year-old man exposed to asbestos during his career as a power plant operator.
$1,258,052.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a career ironworker who was exposed to asbestos during the course of his career and who was diagnosed with mesothelioma at the age of 68.
$1,246,006.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a woman who developed asbestos-related mesothelioma as a result of her exposure as a child to her father’s work clothing.
$1,245,191.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 55-year-old man with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos while serving in the Navy.
$1,237,986.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 74-year-old gentleman diagnosed with mesothelioma who worked as a furnace installer and repairman.
$1,226,641.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos while working as an equipment mechanic at a steel mill.
$1,205,854.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a career brick mason who was exposed to asbestos at several industrial and commercial job sites and who developed mesothelioma as a result.
$1,205,399.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for an 82-year-old gentleman with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos as a ship engineer for an oil company and while serving in the Navy.
$1,196,570.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 78-year-old gentleman with mesothelioma who was exposed to asbestos while working in the construction and maintenance of several power plants.
$1,193,802.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a gentleman with mesothelioma exposed to asbestos while working as a journeyman electrician.
$1,188.425.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, who was exposed to asbestos-containing refractory products while working as a construction engineer for a steel plant and who developed mesothelioma as a result.
$1,171,365.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 75-year-old man with mesothelioma who had worked as a rigger at an oil refinery.
$1,157,491.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the widow of a career insulator who worked at a chemical plant and who died of mesothelioma at the age of 77.
$1,147,533.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a 67-year-old gentleman who was exposed to asbestos as a journeyman electrician.
$1,072,639.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for a career pipefitter who was exposed to asbestos at several industrial facilities and who developed mesothelioma as a result.
$1,046,541.00 Received by Client after Attorney’s Fees and Expenses, for the family of an ironworker who developed mesothelioma as a result of his exposure to asbestos while working at an oil refinery as well and industrial sites. The jury awarded a significant verdict against the oil company where he once worked.
source: mesothelioma
