Carpenters

Many carpenters cut asbestos cement board and panels with circular saws, which threw fine dust into the air around them. Scoring and snapping sheets, drilling fastener holes and sanding edges added more. This work often happened indoors or in partly enclosed spaces, and cleanup usually meant dry sweeping. Few job sites provided respiratory protection in earlier decades. When you describe your work, note which materials you cut most often, what tools you used and whether you worked indoors. Those details help show how much dust you were exposed to and which products may be involved.

Renovation work exposed carpenters to materials installed long before they arrived. Tearing out ceiling tiles, removing old siding, opening walls near heating systems or pulling up flooring could all release fibers. Remodeling can make exposure histories harder to trace, because the products were installed by someone else, sometimes decades earlier. It still counts toward your history. List remodeling jobs separately from new construction, and note the approximate age of the buildings and what you removed from them. That helps an investigator narrow down which products were likely present when you did the work.

Carpenters often split their careers between homes and larger commercial projects. Commercial sites might involve fireproofing, ceiling systems and other trades working nearby. Residential jobs might involve siding, roofing and interior finishing. Both can matter, and many carpenters did both over the course of a single career. Union records usually cover commercial work better, while residential jobs may need to be pieced together from memory, tax records or former employers and customers. Write down the builders or contractors you worked for, even small ones, because each name can lead to more information about the materials used.

1. 1

   List the materials you cut or sanded most often, such as cement board, siding or ceiling tile.

2. 2

   Separate your remodeling jobs from new construction when you write out your work history.

3. 3

   Request union records if you worked on commercial construction projects under a local.

4. 4

   Write down the names of builders and contractors you worked for, including small outfits.