Past Paraoccupational Exposures to Asbestos

Workers’ families and other household contacts

In the past, because of a lack of proper industrial hygiene, asbestos workers went home covered in asbestos dust. The workers’ families and other household contacts were then exposed via inhalation of asbestos dust from workers’ skin, hair, and clothing, and during laundering of contaminated work clothes.

A mortality study of 878 household contacts of asbestos workers revealed that 4 out of 115 total deaths were from pleural mesothelioma and that the rate of deaths from all types of cancer was doubled (Joubert et al. 1991).

In addition, asbestos was released into the air and soil around facilities such as refineries, power plants, factories handling asbestos, shipyards, steel mills, vermiculite mines, and building demolitions. People living around these facilities were also exposed to asbestos.