Mesothelioma and asbestos exposure in Quincy

The Fore River Shipyard on the Weymouth Fore River was one of the country's major shipbuilders for most of the twentieth century, operating under Bethlehem Steel and later General Dynamics. During the Second World War and the decades after, thousands of workers built destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers and large merchant ships there. Each vessel needed extensive steam and exhaust piping, boilers and bulkhead insulation, and asbestos was the standard material for heat and fire protection. Insulators cut block and pipe covering to size, wrapped joints in asbestos cloth and mixed insulating cement by hand, and the dust drifted through the compartments where everyone else was working.

Because ships were built in confined, busy spaces, trades overlapped constantly. Welders, shipfitters and electricians worked beside insulators who were sawing and mixing asbestos products, so dust spread well beyond the people handling it. Riggers and laborers who swept up at the end of a shift breathed it too. The shipyard closed in the 1980s, but the latency of mesothelioma means diagnoses among former workers continue to appear. So do diagnoses among spouses and children who were exposed to dust on work clothes, which is why household exposure is a familiar part of Quincy's asbestos story and a common basis for claims.