Is asbestos banned in the United States?
Every one of these cancer deaths was preventable. Then a court overturned the asbestos ban.
Not only the men who did the work: diagnoses among women rose in 20 states, a pattern consistent with asbestos carried home on work clothes.
Mostly, but only since 2024 — and not completely. The United States banned about 94% of asbestos uses in 1989, but a federal appeals court overturned most of that ban in 1991, and asbestos remained legal for most existing uses for another 33 years. The EPA banned chrysotile asbestos in March 2024, with phase-outs that run as late as 2037, and that rule is now being challenged before the same court that struck down the first one. Meanwhile the per-person risk of mesothelioma has fallen by about a third since 1990, while the number of Americans diagnosed each year has risen by nearly 30%.
Most people believe asbestos was banned decades ago. That belief is the reason many patients never connect their diagnosis to their own work history — they assume the exposure stopped long before they were near it. The history below is why that assumption is wrong.
It was not only a factory material
Katherine Keys never worked in a shipyard, a boiler room or a refinery. She worked in an office in Dallas, and someone renovated the building. In February 2007, two weeks after sitting at her niece’s funeral, she developed a pain she assumed was flu. An urgent care clinic gave her something for a cold. “It did nothing,” she says. A friend eventually drove her to the emergency room, where an X-ray found fluid on her right lung.
A few days later it had a name: mesothelioma. She was told the longest survivors lived about a year. That was eighteen years ago, and she is alive — as far as the International Mesothelioma Interest Group is aware, the longest living survivor of metastatic pleural mesothelioma. Median survival for that disease is eighteen to thirty-one months.
Her case is unusual in its outcome. It is entirely ordinary in its cause. Asbestos is easy to picture as something confined to industrial sites, and that is still where most exposure happened — but it was also in the buildings people worked in, and in ordinary household objects, which is the part most people have never been told.
Hair dryers
In 1979 the Consumer Product Safety Commission found that hand-held hair dryers were blowing asbestos fibres directly into the user's face. Eleven manufacturers, accounting for roughly 90% of US sales, agreed to corrective action. About 18 million hair dryers had been made with asbestos. Only around 3 million were ever accounted for in the recall, according to reporting in The New York Times in October 1980.
Talcum powder
Talc and asbestos occur together geologically, and contaminated cosmetic talc is a documented exposure route. Johnson & Johnson stopped selling talc-based baby powder in North America in 2019 and worldwide in 2023. In October 2019 the FDA found asbestos in samples of the product and 33,000 bottles were recalled.
Neither of these is the main way people were exposed — occupational exposure accounts for the overwhelming majority. They matter because they explain how someone with no industrial history at all can end up with a disease everyone told them belongs to shipyard workers.
The ban that was overturned
1989 — the EPA bans almost all of it
On July 12, 1989, after roughly ten years of work, the Environmental Protection Agency issued the Asbestos Ban and Phase-Out Rule under the Toxic Substances Control Act. It would have prohibited the manufacture, import, processing and sale of most asbestos-containing products — an estimated 94% of asbestos use in the country.
1991 — a federal court throws most of it out
Industry sued. In Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA, 947 F.2d 1201 (5th Cir. 1991), the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated most of the rule. The court did not find asbestos safe. It held that TSCA required the EPA to prove a ban was the least burdensome alternative available, and that the agency had not adequately considered less restrictive options or completed a sufficient cost-benefit analysis.
What survived the decision was narrow: a prohibition on genuinely new uses of asbestos introduced after 1989, plus four specific products — flooring felt, rollboard, and corrugated, commercial and specialty paper. Everything else went back on the market.
Those four names are misleading out of context. They are not packaging or stationery. Each was an industrial insulation material made of asbestos fibre pressed into a paper or felt form — “corrugated paper” meant ridged asbestos sheeting whose corrugations trapped air, wrapped around steam pipes; rollboard and the commercial and specialty papers were asbestos sheeting used for heat and electrical insulation; flooring felt was an asbestos underlayment laid beneath floors.
Ordinary cardboard has never contained asbestos. Corrugated shipping boxes are made from wood pulp, and opening or cutting one carries no asbestos risk of any kind.
1991 to 2024 — thirty-three years
For the next three decades asbestos remained legal in the United States for most existing uses. It continued to be imported and used in gaskets, brake and friction products, roofing, and the diaphragms used in chlorine manufacturing. Workers who assumed the material had been outlawed in the 1980s were, in many cases, still working around it.
Katherine Keys was diagnosed in 2007, roughly in the middle of that gap — sixteen years after the ban was struck down, and seventeen before the next one arrived.
Why one diagnosis is almost never one company
Because the material stayed in circulation for three decades after it was supposed to have been banned, and because it had already been built into millions of buildings before that, exposure was rarely traceable to a single source.
Asbestos moved through a chain. One company mined the fibre. Another milled it. A third pressed it into board or wove it into cloth or packed it into insulation. A fourth installed the result. Someone working in a plant, a shipyard or a building being renovated was usually breathing the products of several manufacturers at once, and had no way of knowing whose was whose.
That is the reason asbestos compensation is fragmented rather than singular. 42 asbestos bankruptcy trusts were active as of August 3, 2026, each set up by a company that went bankrupt under the weight of its own liability, and each with its own filing procedures, its own evidence requirements and its own deadlines. Separate legal claims may exist against companies that never went bankrupt at all.
The practical consequence for someone recently diagnosed is that meeting one deadline does not protect them from the others, and the clocks do not run together. A trust may set its own bar date years in advance. A lawsuit is governed by a state statute of limitations that is usually much shorter, and which in most states runs from the date of diagnosis rather than the date of exposure — in some states, as little as one year.
None of that is knowable from a diagnosis alone. It depends on where someone worked, when, and what was in the building — which is why the work history matters so much, and why it is worth reconstructing early rather than late.
Filing deadlines by state · How asbestos trust funds work · One trust deadline currently open: September 10, 2026
2024 — the second ban
On March 18, 2024, the EPA finalised a rule prohibiting ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos, the only form still being imported into or used in the United States. The ban is real, but it is staggered rather than immediate: certain gaskets and automotive uses ended in late 2024, most chloralkali plants have until 2029, and the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site has until 2037. Other forms of asbestos were never covered by a federal ban, and Congress has never passed one.
Now — the same court, again
The 2024 rule is under challenge in Texas Chemistry Council v. EPA, brought by industry groups arguing the EPA exceeded its authority under TSCA. The case is before the Fifth Circuit — the same court that struck down the 1989 ban. Oral arguments were heard June 1, 2026. A ruling is pending. The 2024 phase-out timelines remain in effect until the court rules.
What the current data shows
A 2026 study in JCO Global Oncology from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine examined mesothelioma across the United States from 1990 to 2023 (Geographic, Temporal, and Sex-Specific Trends in Mesothelioma Burden in the United States, 1990–2023; DOI 10.1200/GO-26-00056). Its central finding is easy to misread in either direction, so it is worth stating plainly.
- Risk per person fell. Age-standardised incidence and mortality declined by roughly one third across the 33 years.
- The number of people fell ill did not. Absolute diagnoses rose by nearly 30%, and disability-adjusted life years rose 14% — the result of a larger, older population, in which a lower individual risk still produces more cases.
- Survival did not improve meaningfully. The ratio of deaths to diagnoses stayed near 1 for three decades. Most people diagnosed with mesothelioma still die of it.
- It is still an occupational disease. The study attributes roughly 96% of 2023 mesothelioma deaths to workplace asbestos exposure.
Where the burden is heaviest
The states carrying the highest burden in 2023 were Maine, Alaska, Washington and Minnesota — a pattern the researchers link to shipbuilding, construction and mining. Mesothelioma follows industrial history, which is why its map looks nothing like a map of population.
The finding almost nobody has covered
The decline has not been shared evenly between men and women. Men showed sharply falling incidence and mortality. Women did not: female incidence rose in 20 states and female mortality rose in 18, concentrated in the Midwest and Appalachia.
The study documents the pattern rather than its cause, but the divergence is consistent with two exposure routes that were never occupational in the conventional sense. The first is take-home exposure — fibres carried into the house on work clothes, and breathed by whoever shook them out and washed them. The second is exposure through asbestos-contaminated talc in consumer products. Neither involves the person ever setting foot in a plant or a shipyard.
This matters practically, not just statistically. Many women diagnosed with mesothelioma are told, in effect, that their diagnosis does not fit — because the entire public picture of this disease is a man in an industrial setting. It fits. It has simply been the least discussed version of it.
“A patient who never worked in a plant or a shipyard can still have this disease, and the risk from asbestos carried home on a family member’s work clothes has been documented in the medical literature since 1965. The practical danger is that when there is no occupational history, mesothelioma is not considered, and that costs months. When someone presents with unexplained fluid around the lung, the question is not only where they worked — it is where the people they lived with worked.”
Medical Director of Thoracic Surgery, AdventHealth Cancer Institute
Senior Medical Reviewer, Mesothelioma-Lung-Cancer.org
What to do if this describes you or your family
Two things are worth knowing straight away, because they are the two most common reasons people rule themselves out incorrectly.
You do not need to have worked with asbestos yourself
Take-home exposure is a real and recognised route, not an edge case. If someone in your household worked in a trade where asbestos was present — and did so long after most people assume it was banned — that history is relevant even if you never went near a job site. Washing work clothes is the specific detail that turns out to matter.
Katherine Keys had never been near an industrial site. Her exposure came from a building being renovated while she worked in it — which is why, when the pain started, nobody was looking for this.
Where you are treated changes the odds
After her diagnosis, Katherine was referred to a doctor who spent ten minutes with her family and told her he would operate the next morning. That night her oldest daughter looked up his credentials. “He had no experience at all,” Katherine says. She cancelled, got a second opinion and a third, and went to MD Anderson instead, where a thoracic surgeon removed her right lung. Eighteen years later she is still here.
Her own advice is not about the law or the EPA. It is about that appointment:
“If you don’t have someone that knows what they’re doing, you don’t know what the outcome would have been if you would have stayed with them. So even if it costs you extra — your life is worth it.”
— Katherine Keys, diagnosed 2007. Twenty-five states have no specialty treatment centre at all.
The trades most often involved
Exposure that causes a diagnosis today typically happened decades ago, which is why the work history that matters is often a first job rather than a last one. The occupations that recur most: Navy service and shipyard work, boilermakers, insulators and pipefitters, welders, auto mechanics doing brake and clutch work, drywall and construction trades, power plant and refinery workers, and railroad workers.
There are deadlines, and they are shorter than people expect
Every state sets its own time limit for bringing a claim, and for mesothelioma these are typically measured from the date of diagnosis rather than the date of exposure. In some states the window is as short as one year. Trust fund claims run on separate procedures with their own requirements. This is worth checking early rather than late — not because anything needs to be decided quickly, but because the option can quietly expire while a family is focused on treatment.
Check the filing deadline for your state · Find the nearest specialist center · How asbestos trust funds work
Common questions
Is asbestos banned in the United States?
Partly, and only since 2024. The EPA banned about 94% of asbestos uses in 1989, but a federal appeals court vacated most of that rule in 1991. Asbestos remained legal for most existing uses until March 2024, when the EPA banned chrysotile asbestos — the only form still imported or used. Some phase-outs under that rule run to 2037, other forms of asbestos were never covered by a federal ban, and the 2024 rule is currently under challenge in the Fifth Circuit.
Why was the 1989 asbestos ban overturned?
In Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA, 947 F.2d 1201 (5th Cir. 1991), the court did not find asbestos safe. It held that the Toxic Substances Control Act required the EPA to show a ban was the least burdensome alternative available, and that the agency had not adequately considered less restrictive options or completed a sufficient cost-benefit analysis.
Is mesothelioma increasing?
Both answers are true and they are not in conflict. Age-standardised incidence and mortality fell by roughly one third between 1990 and 2023, meaning an individual's risk went down. Over the same period the absolute number of Americans diagnosed each year rose by nearly 30%, because the population is larger and older. Fewer people are at risk; more people are being diagnosed.
Can you get mesothelioma without working around asbestos?
Yes. Household or take-home exposure — fibres carried into the home on a worker's clothing and breathed by whoever handled and washed them — has been documented in the medical literature since Newhouse and Thompson's 1965 study in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine. Contaminated cosmetic talc is a second non-occupational route. Diagnoses among women rose in 20 states between 1990 and 2023, a pattern consistent with both.
Were asbestos products found in ordinary household items?
Yes. In 1979 the Consumer Product Safety Commission found hand-held hair dryers were emitting asbestos fibres; about 18 million had been manufactured with asbestos and roughly 3 million were accounted for in the recall. Talc-based baby powder was sold in North America until 2019 and worldwide until 2023, and the FDA found asbestos in samples in October 2019. Ordinary corrugated cardboard has never contained asbestos.
Sources
- Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Geographic, Temporal, and Sex-Specific Trends in Mesothelioma Burden in the United States, 1990–2023. JCO Global Oncology, 2026. DOI 10.1200/GO-26-00056.
- Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA, 947 F.2d 1201 (5th Cir. 1991).
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Asbestos Ban and Phase-Out Rule, July 12, 1989; final rule prohibiting ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos, March 18, 2024. EPA asbestos laws and regulations.
- Texas Chemistry Council v. EPA, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit — argued June 1, 2026, decision pending.
Cite as: Mesothelioma-Lung-Cancer.org. (2026). Is Asbestos Banned in the United States? Retrieved from https://mesothelioma-lung-cancer.org/data/asbestos-ban-history/
This page will be updated when the Fifth Circuit rules in Texas Chemistry Council v. EPA. Last reviewed August 24, 2026.
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