Asbestos Product Library Tour

My name is Sam Taylor. I’m the managing attorney of the asbestos section of the Lanier Law Firm here in Houston, and I thought, we are presently in our asbestos library. This is a library that has been constructed and accumulated over many years of practicing in the field of asbestos-related disease and representing victims of mesothelioma and lung cancer as a result of asbestos exposure. So as you can see, we have a very large library of different types of products that contain asbestos and which common people throughout the course of time were exposed to asbestos. So, I thought it would be a good idea to maybe go over some of the ones that are more accustomed to using in everyday life that are maybe a little bit more interesting. And so I’ve put a few of those out, but as you can see, we have shelves and shelves of different products. Though we might start back here, you can see a silver coat, that is a fireman’s coat that was used by firemen in the process of fighting fires, and even the label inside the jacket states that it contains asbestos material. And related to that, these are firemen, excuse me, welding gloves that were used by welders, welding different applications and they were asbestos-containing. This is another product that was used very commonly in the construction industry or even at home or at home projects, and it’s plaster of Paris. I think most people are familiar with plaster of Paris used by painters, and it has asbestos warnings on it, on the outside of our box here. You might notice that every one of these containers that we have these products in are sealed tight to avoid any escape of asbestos fibers in the atmosphere here in the library. This is what’s called a patching plaster. It was commonly used in homes and in the construction business. There’s a picture on the side of it where you can see if there are cracks in the wall, very commonly used in patching sheetrock in homes as that is asbestos containing. The way that would create a danger for people is when the joint compound or the patching plaster was applied to the wall, when it would dry, people would sand it to smooth it out, and it’s that dust that is inhaled that causes the inhalation of asbestos fibers. Here are some floor tiles commonly used in the construction business and building homes and remodeling homes, asbestos-containing materials. The people doing that work would cut into the tiles to make them fit or size them and create the dust that created the inhalation of asbestos. Another product that was used frequently in homes, we’ve all used some form of this, and it’s the grouting cement for tile in bathrooms and showers, and things like that. Again, the process of mixing it and then drying and creating dust causes the inhalation of asbestos fibers into the lungs. This is a ceramic tile adhesive for walls and floors. Again, I’m just trying to show a few examples of common products used in homes all the time that people would have had basically no idea that they were subjecting themselves to serious disease. This is another example of what’s referred to as joint compound. Again, when in the construction of houses, whether it be commercial buildings or residential home construction, whatever the case may be, when you put the sheetrock up and there are seams in the sheetrock, you put joint compound in there, and it’s a paste material. And once that paste dries, it’s sanded down to make it even with the walls. In the process of sanding that and creating dust, creates the inhalation again, breathing in of the asbestos fibers. In addition to that, it’s very common that when you finish sanding the material on the wall, there would be a mess on the floor, you sweep it up, once again, the asbestos fibers are entrained in the air, subject to breathing into the lungs. This is just a little interesting product that is not one we run into every day in the business, but just again to show the types of products. This is just a decorative snowman that contained asbestos. We’ve all seen the oil burners. This is the wicking that was used in oil burners, cabinet heaters. And again, you can see the side of the material itself, that was an asbestos-containing material. Kent cigarettes. The filters in the Kent cigarettes contain asbestos. And so people were smoking and in the process of not only poisoning themselves with nicotine, were poisoning themselves with asbestos through the filter. This, another material that was used frequently on navy ships and all types of applications that involved pumps and products like that is a packing material. So these were used to seal sealants within pumps. You can see it’s sort of an oily appearance now, and that’s how it would go into the pumps. But when it came time to change those pumps, when they would pull them, yeah, change the packing in the pumps, you pull them out by that time, they would be very dry and friable, creating dust that the people, whoever was doing the work at the time on the pump, would breathe in, and this would occur daily in different types of job applications, whether it’s navy ships, construction sites, whatever, boilers, whatever the case may be. This is just another example of packing material. You can see it has an oily, so whenever a material is oily like that, there’s probably not dust coming into the air. But when they dry out and they’re removed, that creates the dust. This is snow flock, which we probably also have seen at some point back in the day. It’s what you would spray onto Christmas trees or ornaments or they create the snow on the trees or the wreaths, or whatever. And that was an asbestos-containing material. A very common product in a lot of our cases involves brake pads. So, in years past, back in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, a lot of people were what we call shade tree mechanics. They would do a lot of, change a lot of their own brakes. And if somebody knew how to do it, they would change their friends and families and neighbors’ brakes, and, or maybe they were, you know, did some, some brake work on the, as a side job on the weekends, whatever the case may have been. This is an example, and you can see here, we have various different brands. This isn’t the only brand, but this happens to be Bendix brake pads. And when you, whenever they would change the brake pads, you can see this material right here is the friction material on the brake pads. This is the steel over here that would go into the automobile wheel. This is the friction material. And so, whenever they would put those brake pads on frequently, they would sand them to rough them up, to make them work better, so to speak, that would create dust. Or when they were removing the brake pads, it would create dust and there would be dust on the floor, they sweep up and reintroduce the asbestos fibers into the air, causing the inhalation of the asbestos fibers into the lungs. So again, the type of asbestos that’s in brake pads like this, and, and 95% of most of the commercially sold asbestos was a type of asbestos called chrysotile. This is a paste that was used for wallpaper. Again, it’s just a powder substance mixed with water, and so when you pour it in there, the dust comes up, or when you sand it or whatever you’re doing with it, again, it contained asbestos and, and created a hazard. This is a multi-purpose flooring and carpet adhesive. We’ve all seen that when you’re applying, you know, flooring or carpet on floors. Again, another asbestos-containing material. An interesting application here. These are burner pads that were popular back years ago, not so much these days, probably, but they would, you put them on, on burners to put pots and pans on. They were asbestos-containing. Another product that was a source of asbestos exposure in the auto-body business was Bondo. This was a product that was used to fill holes when cars have been damaged or dented, and you put it on there, sand it again, similar to joint compound, it would create a dust that could be breathed into the lungs. Now, this isn’t, this is not an asbestos-containing material, but this is a respirator. And this one happens to be an American optical brand respirator, but there are other kinds like 3M, MSA, other types of respirators. We have quite a few claims against respirator companies because they advertise these and sold these as being a protective factor from the inhalation of asbestos-containing products into the lungs during work, whether it be, asbestos abatement or different, whatever work it was, if they were sold as being a protective factor to keep from breathing in asbestos and we’ve proven on multiple occasions, multiple cases that these were defective and actually did not serve the purpose as intended. This is another example of just, this is a child or kid’s baseball glove, which the material inside the leather was an asbestos-containing material. So again, we could go on and on and on. There’s a lot of products. These were just a few that were representative of the types of products we see in cases and exemplify how people were exposed to asbestos back in the years. In terms of what asbestos is, asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral in the earth, and it’s mined and produced into commercial forms. Once it reaches the stream of commerce, asbestos fibers are not visible with the naked eye. You cannot see them, you cannot smell it. There’s no way when you’re inhaling asbestos-containing products from any of these that we’ve talked about, you don’t realize it. It doesn’t make you sick, it doesn’t make you cough, it doesn’t, it doesn’t smell. It’s kind of like an onion. It doesn’t have the onion properties. So, that’s essentially what asbestos is. It’s a naturally occurring product in the earth that is mined and sold commercially and, was sold commercially in the United States. In addition to the artifacts that we’ve talked about, we have an extensive library of different types of products that over the course of the years contain asbestos in the products. We also, as you can see, have an extensive library of reference materials, studies, digests, all types of materials relevant to the area of asbestos litigation, mesothelioma. In fact, a few years ago, there was an organization called the American Industrial Hygiene Foundation, which was a foundation focused on all types of studies, reporting on the dangers of asbestos, asbestos litigation, all those types of things. And when that foundation went out of business, our founder, Mark Lanier and the Lanier Law Firm purchased all the books. We literally have all the filing cabinets from the foundation and all their books, all their reference materials, and this is just one example I happened to pull off the shelf. As you can see, this is a digest from 1955 going all the way back to that time frame. So literally, any type of issue that comes up in the asbestos litigation, we have source materials in our library that we can go to and reach out to and find answers to on any kind of case.