Asbestos Legal Journal - News & Updates on Asbestos and Mesothelioma Law

Whenever a client contacts me with an asbestos case, one of the first tasks I have to perform is to determine where the client was exposed to asbestos.  I have several resources to do this, including lists compiled by the companies who made asbestos products.

I had an opportunity to look up some information regarding asbestos exposure sites in Alabama today and thought I'd share it.  If you or a loved one worked at any of the following locations and are now suffering from an asbestos-related illness, I may be able to help you.

I have some additional information for anyone who may have been exposed to asbestos in Tuscaloosa, Montgomery, Birmingham, Hunstville, or Mobile.

If you have any questions about this blog post - or anything else on this site - please e-mail me at justinian@justinian.us

One of the TV shows I like to watch is Renovation Realities.  The show is about the problems that average people have when tackling a home improvement project.  My home improvement skills are about a 1 on a 1-to-10 scale, so it's nice for me to see other people having problems, too.

The other night I was watching an episode in which a couple gutted a kitchen in a house built in the 1940's.  They were removing raw insulation from the walls, and that insulation may very well have contained asbestos.  I saw a different home improvement show in which a bathroom was gutted and a Johns Manville logo was visible on some of the original wallboards.  That house was built in the 1960's, and again, the odds are that the wallboard contained asbestos.

It's simply tragic that hundreds of thousands of homes across the country have ticking asbestos timebombs in them.  None of the homeowners on the shows I watched wore any respiratory protection or took any other protective measures to avoid releasing asbestos fibers into the air in their homes.  Now, the brief exposure they had to asbestos probably won't cause them to develop mesothelioma.... but the best I can say is "probably."  There is no known safe dose of asbestos.  Even if only by a tiny amount, many people who remodel their homes unknowingly increase their risk of getting sick because they disturbed asbestos present in their homes.

And it's not just do-it-yourselfers.  A few years ago, I bought a condo built in the mid 1970's.  The home inspector went into the attic and crawled around up there with no respiratory equipment at all.  He noted that the raw insulation on the floor probably contained asbestos.  I was shocked that a professional would show so little concern for being in a confined space while he disturbed asbestos.  I told him he needed to be more careful, but he shrugged it off.

It's unfortunate that many people either don't know or don't understand the risks of exposure to asbestos.  If you're going to do any home improvement projects on a home built before the mid 1980's, take precautions to protect yourself from disturbing any asbestos.  Respirators that can filter asbestos fibers are readily available and are fairly inexpensive.  Spraying products down with water can also keep the dust down.  And when in doubt, consider calling a professional asbestos abatement company.  Sure, it might cost more money than you budgeted, but I guarantee it's cheaper than developing mesothelioma.