Mesothelioma and asbestos exposure in Mobile

The Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company, known locally as ADDSCO, was one of Mobile's largest employers for much of the twentieth century. During the Second World War it built tankers and cargo ships at a furious pace, and afterward it focused largely on ship repair. Gulf Shipbuilding in nearby Chickasaw added thousands more wartime jobs. Ship construction and repair relied on asbestos insulation for boilers, engines and piping, and the trades worked close together in machinery spaces. Workers who never touched insulation still breathed the dust that insulators and pipefitters raised around them, sometimes for years.

Brookley Air Force Base was a major aircraft maintenance and supply depot until it closed in the 1960s, employing many civilians in aircraft repair and support work. Mobile's paper mills operated huge steam systems and boilers insulated with asbestos-era materials that required constant maintenance. Workers in the region often moved between shipyards, the base and the mills, building exposure histories that span several employers and decades. Dust brought home on work clothes exposed family members as well, and many Mobile patients today trace their illness to a parent's or spouse's job rather than their own.