Mesothelioma and asbestos exposure in Bath

Bath Iron Works on the Kennebec River has been one of the Navy's principal destroyer builders for much of its history, along with commercial ships in earlier decades. Through the middle of the twentieth century, warships depended on asbestos to insulate boilers, steam turbines and piping and to fireproof compartments. Workers cut block insulation, wrapped pipe with asbestos cloth and mixed insulating cement, raising dust that spread through the hull and settled on everyone nearby. Shipfitters, welders and electricians working in the same spaces breathed that dust even though they never handled the insulation themselves.

Because the yard was the dominant employer in a small city, asbestos exposure touched a large share of local households. Many workers spent decades at the yard, and some families had several generations employed there at once. Household exposure from dusty work clothes adds spouses and children to the picture. Maine's broader industrial economy, including paper mills and power plants elsewhere in the state, also brought asbestos into the working lives of Bath-area residents who moved between jobs. For many families, a single work history includes both shipyard years and mill years, and each can point to different companies.