In Michigan, asbestos could be found in factories, mines, shipyards and steel mills

Michigan is known for its automotive industry: with Ford in Dearborn, General Motors in Detroit, and Chrysler in Auburn Hills, Michigan became synonymous with the manufacture of American cars. As of 2010, Ford was still the number one employer in the Detroit metro area. (http://michigantoday.umich.edu
/2010/01/story.php?id=7598)

Today, these companies comply with current asbestos exposure regulations, but if you worked in an automotive plant before the government created asbestos exposure regulations in the 1970s, you may have been exposed to asbestos. Weitz & Luxenberg would like to provide you with information about factories, shipyards, mines, and other workplaces in Michigan where asbestos would have been.

At auto plants and shipyards in Michigan, asbestos in the insulation

Asbestos was an important part of the manufacture of cars and other modes of transportation such as planes and ships. Because asbestos is fire-proof and does not become hot even when it is next to extremely hot materials, there used to be asbestos in brake pads, gaskets, lining, exhaust systems, other car parts.

Shipyards have been a source of asbestos exposure for many former employees, such as the men who were exposed in New York's Brooklyn Navy Yard. If you worked in the shipyards along the Great Lakes, you may have inhaled asbestos as you helped build and repair ships.

Steel mills and metallic mines in Michigan: asbestos exposure in the mill and underground

In addition to the manufacture of cars and car parts, Michigan's larger industries include the making of machinery and fabricated metal parts (http://www.50states.com/michigan.htm), and metallic mines.

The fabrication of metal parts in steel mills used to involve a large amount of asbestos: from the fire-proof gloves and aprons, overcoats and face masks to the insulation around boilers, pipes, and blast furnaces, asbestos was on the machinery and the people who operated them. (Inspectapedia)

For years, residents of the Copper Country Mining District of Keweenaw, Houghton, and Ontonagon counties, the Marquette Iron Range of Marquette and Baraga counties, the Menominee Iron Range of Dickinson and Iron counties, and the Gogebic Iron Range of Gogebic county have worked in the mines. In the past 150 years, the miners of Michigan's Copper and Iron Mining Ranges have produced over a billion tons of iron ore and several billion pounds of refined copper. (http://www.mg.mtu.edu/shaft0.htm)

But it was only in the later part of the last century that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) came into existence and began enforcing safe workplace standards in mines across America. In 2005, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) outlined the asbestos exposure risk in metallic and nonmetallic mines:

Miners are exposed to asbestos at mining operations where the ore body or surrounding rock contains asbestos;
Miners are potentially exposed to airborne asbestos at mine facilities with installed asbestos-containing material when it is disturbed during maintenance, construction, renovation, or demolition activities; and
Family and community are potentially exposed if miners take asbestos home on their person, clothes, or equipment, or in their vehicle.

(http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2005/07/29/05-14510/asbestos-exposure-limit#p-116)

The MSHA report adds that “asbestos also is contained in building materials and other manufactured products found at mines.”

From Libby, Montana to Michigan: asbestos-tainted vermiculite by the ton

The Environmental Working Group, using invoices from the Zonolite mine in Libby, Montana, found that “at least 1,672 shipments of vermiculite went from Libby, MT to eight locations in Michigan,” (http://www.ewg.org/sites/asbestos/maps/shipment_data.php?stab=MI), the majority of which (1636 out of 1672) went to Dearborn.

In a government study tracking asbestos-related deaths from 1979 to 2001, Wayne County (home of Detroit and Dearborn) ranked number one. The county with the second highest number of asbestos fatalities was Oakland County, home of Chrysler in Auburn Hills. Dearborn and Detroit are also home to Ford and GM, as well as many other industries that would have used asbestos when the people who died were exposed (anywhere from twenty to fifty years before their deaths). (http://www.ewg.org/sites/asbestos/tables/deathdetails_county.php?fips=26000)

Michigan was number eleven in a list ranking the tons of asbestos shipments: 163, 524 tons that researchers were able to verify. (http://www.ewg.org/sites/asbestos/maps/shipment_data.php?tableview=1&stab=MI)

We can answers your questions about Michigan asbestos law

For more than twenty years, Weitz & Luxenberg has helped people sickened by asbestos-exposure seek the compensation they deserve. We have helped our clients secure over $3 billion in verdicts and settlements to compensate for their losses.

If you suffer from an asbestos-related disease and would like to know more about your legal options, call Weitz & Luxenberg today or fill out a form to receive your free legal consultation.

Acknowledgments:

http://michigantoday.umich.edu/2010/01/story.php?id=7598

http://www.50states.com/michigan.htm

http://www.mg.mtu.edu/shaft0.htm

http://www.ewg.org/sites/asbestos/maps/shipment_data.php?stab=MI

http://www.ewg.org/sites/asbestos/tables/deathdetails_county.php?fips=26000

http://www.ewg.org/sites/asbestos/maps/shipment_data.php?tableview=1&stab=MI