History & Asbestos Use
Todd Shipyards Corporation was founded in 1916 and grew into one of the largest ship-repair and shipbuilding companies in the United States. Its Seattle yard, on Harbor Island at the mouth of the Duwamish, became a major West Coast naval and commercial repair facility. During World War II the yard repaired, converted, and overhauled large numbers of Navy and merchant vessels, and the work continued for the Navy and commercial fleets through the postwar decades. Like every American shipyard of the era, Todd Seattle used asbestos as the standard insulating and fireproofing material throughout machinery spaces, boiler rooms, and piping systems — and it remained in routine use until federal workplace-exposure limits tightened in the late 1970s.
