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is asbestos still being used in stuff we buy or just a historical thing

Family · · 37 views
So I keep asking myself this because my dad was exposed decades ago at a manufacturing plant in Gary, Indiana back in the 70s and 80s, and I guess I'm wondering if the stuff that poisoned him is still out there poisoning other people right now or if we actually fixed this problem.

From what I've read in between everything else I'm dealing with, asbestos isn't totally banned in the US, which honestly shocked me when I found that out. Like there are still products that can contain it, building materials and things, but there are regulations now about how much and disclosure requirements and all that. It's not like the wild west it used to be when people just didn't know what they were handling.

But here's what gets me. Old buildings still have it. Renovation work can still expose people. And there are countries that still use it pretty freely, which means it's still being mined and manufactured somewhere. So technically yes it's still being used, just in a much more controlled way in developed countries.

I guess the reason I'm bringing this up is because it feels important to know that this isn't just a dead issue from the past. There are still exposures happening. There are still people finding out they have meso from something they encountered way back, or sometimes more recently if they're in construction or renovation work. My dad's case has been moving through the system since his diagnosis in March, and every time I talk to his legal team they mention other people coming forward with exposure histories from totally different decades and industries.

If you're newly diagnosed and trying to figure out where the exposure came from, knowing that asbestos is still technically in use might help you narrow down the timeline or the industry. It's not all ancient history.

8 Replies

Family
You're hitting on something that really matters. Joe was exposed back in the 80s too, working around old pipe insulation at a shipyard here in Tampa, and honestly when we started getting into all of this I was shocked to find out asbestos wasn't completely banned either. Like, how is that even legal in 2025? But yeah, the regulations are there now at least.

The thing that gets me is exactly what you said about old buildings. When we were looking at Joe's exposure timeline with his medical team back in November when he started treatment, they walked us through how renovation and demolition work is still one of the biggest culprits. Someone tears into a wall in a 1970s office building and boom, there it is. The exposure happened decades ago but the diagnosis comes now.

Your dad's case moving through the system since March... that makes sense. We met another couple at Joe's immunotherapy sessions whose husband worked construction in the 90s and just got his diagnosis last year. The latency period on this stuff is wild. Some people it's 20 years, some it's 40+. So when you're trying to piece together where it came from, knowing that it's still technically around in old materials helps you actually remember what you were doing back then, you know? Makes the timeline click into place.

The legal side of tracking all this down has been its own education. How's your dad doing with his case so far?
Family
The shipyard exposure is such a classic vector for this, especially from that era. Pipe insulation was basically the worst case scenario in terms of friability and how much people handled it without protection. Did Joe's medical team end up pinpointing the shipyard work as the primary exposure, or did he have other jobs in between that they had to consider? I ask because my dad had multiple potential exposure points and it took a while to figure out which one was probably the culprit, though honestly with mesothelioma the latency period is so long it almost doesn't matter in terms of his prognosis at this point. It mattered more for the legal side of things.
Family
Yeah, the thing that got me when we were dealing with Joe's diagnosis back in September was realizing how much of this stuff is just sitting in older buildings nobody thinks about anymore. Like, we have a rental property here in Tampa that was built in the 60s and we actually had it inspected because of everything happening with Joe, and sure enough there's asbestos in the floor tiles and around some of the HVAC ducts. It's not actively hurling fibers at people but it's there, dormant but present, kind of like how I explain it to my former students when we talked about latent problems in history - the damage was already done even if nobody noticed it yet.

What really struck me though was talking to some of the folks in Joe's treatment group at his immunotherapy sessions, and there's this guy who worked in building maintenance through the 90s and 2000s doing renovations, so it wasn't even that long ago. People think this problem got solved in like 1980 and we all moved on, but nope. The exposures kept happening, just quieter and less visible.

Has your dad's legal team given you a sense of how many cases they're seeing from more recent exposures versus the older manufacturing ones?
Family
yeah my mom's diagnosis made me research all this too and it's wild how it's not just some dusty thing from the 70s, like people are still getting exposed from renovating old houses and stuff. honestly it's infuriating that it's not completely banned yet.
Medical ✓ Expert Response
You're right that it's not ancient history, and I think a lot of people are genuinely surprised by that. The EPA's 2024 rule under TSCA finally banned chrysotile asbestos, which was the last type still being actively imported into the US, mostly for chlorine manufacturing. So that's a real shift that just happened. But the older exposures, the ones from the 70s and 80s when your dad was working in Gary, those are still showing up in diagnoses today because mesothelioma can take 20 to 50 years to develop after the original exposure. That latency period is one of the more heartbreaking facts I've had to explain in this work.

And you touched on something I see come up a lot in our support groups, this kind of grief that mixes with anger when someone realizes the thing that harmed a parent wasn't even illegal at the time, and in some forms is still being dealt with now. That's a really hard thing to sit with.

Renovation and construction workers are still the population I worry most about. Older buildings, disturbed materials, not always great protective equipment on the job. The exposure risk didn't disappear, it just shifted.

For what it's worth, I've sat with families who spent months trying to piece together a 40-year-old exposure history and the process itself brought up a lot. If you're finding that this research is weighing on you, talking to someone who specializes in this kind of anticipatory grief can really help. You're carrying a lot right now.
3 found this helpful
Family
Oh wow, I didn't know about the chrysotile ban being that recent. That actually makes me feel a little better knowing there's been some real movement on this, even if it feels late. And yeah, the latency period is exactly what I'm grappling with right now with my dad. He's been on palliative care since October and his oncologist keeps saying the timeline matches up perfectly with those Gary exposures from decades back, but it's still surreal that something from 50 years ago is just now... I mean, it's just hitting different when it's your parent. Did you see a lot of that lag in your practice, where people would finally get diagnosed and the exposure was from way back in their work history?
Family
Yeah this hits different when it's your parent. My mom was diagnosed in August and I've been down that same rabbit hole trying to figure out where she got exposed. Turns out she worked in a school building in the 70s that had asbestos in the ceiling tiles and insulation, and nobody told anyone about it back then. So like, your dad's situation makes total sense to me.

What's wild is that even though there ARE regulations now, the stuff that's already in buildings is just... sitting there. My mom's old school is still standing. Kids are probably still in that building. And if renovation happens without proper containment procedures, boom, someone else gets exposed. It's infuriating honestly.

The legal team thing you mentioned, yeah. My mom's lawyer mentioned that they're still getting new cases from people who worked construction or did HVAC work in the 80s and 90s, or demolition jobs where nobody was thinking about asbestos safety. It's not just the old factory workers from the 50s and 60s anymore. There are definitely still exposure pathways happening.

I think what's helped me a little bit is knowing that at least NOW when someone gets diagnosed, we know what to look for. When my mom was getting exposed, nobody was connecting the dots. Now there's actual documentation and awareness, which I guess means fewer people will slip through without answers. Small comfort when you're staring at your parent's diagnosis but it's something.

Does your dad have a good legal team? I know that's probably the last thing you want to be thinking about but it's made such a difference for us in understanding the timeline and honestly just having someone else carry some of the weight.
Attorney ✓ Expert Response
Amy mentioned the 2024 TSCA rule and that's the right reference point legally. What that rule also opened up, and what I've seen affect cases filed in 2024 and into this year, is the question of "continuing exposure" as a factor in determining which defendants remain liable and under what theory.

Your dad's Gary plant exposure from the 70s and 80s is what it is, and that timeline is actually well-documented territory for asbestos litigation. But the broader point you're making, that this isn't sealed off history, matters for how courts sometimes think about causation. We had a case out of Cook County where the plaintiff had overlapping exposure decades apart, and untangling that was genuinely complicated.

The countries-still-mining piece is also something that comes up more than people expect when we're tracing supply chains in product liability claims. Russia was mining over 700,000 metric tons annually as recently as 2021. That's not ancient history, that's a supply chain that touched imported goods within the last few years.

If his legal team is already active since the March diagnosis, they're probably on this. But it's worth asking specifically about the exposure timeline documentation and whether any post-1980 contacts are in the record.
2 found this helpful

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