Ship Building & Repairing
Some hazards found on older ships | AP Worldstream; Jun 21, 2006; The Associated Press;
ASBESTOS: Tons of asbestos was used in ships built before 1980 and can be found in the insulation of doors, walls and engine. Prolonged exposure to asbestos fibers can lead to asbestosis, which can be fatal, or mesothelioma, a rare, fast-moving cancer that attacks the lining of the lungs.
POLYCHLORINATED BIPHENYLS: This industrial compound is in gaskets, insulation materials and electrical components. Long-term exposure to PCBs can cause cancer and liver damage.
TRIBUTYLTIN: Tributyltin acts as a nerve toxin accumulating in the blood, liver, kidneys and brain. It is found in anti-fouling agents on the hulls of ships and workers most often inhale it when cutting apart a boat's exterior.
TOXIC METALS: A ship's structure and wiring is full of lead, mercury and cadmium. Long-term exposure can lead to acute poisoning, cancer and death.
Ground zero: Hampton Roads | The Virginian Pilot; May 9, 2001;
Because little research has been conducted locally, the scope of the asbestos epidemic in Hampton Roads can only be estimated. Available data provide snapshots.
Between 1983 and 1992, 203 residents of the region died of asbestosis, according to federal researchers. Numbers for other years aren't available, but health officials estimate that there may be hundreds more victims locally, many of them still alive.
An estimated 850 people exposed to asbestos in Hampton Roads have died of mesothelioma, based on reviews of court documents and interviews with medical experts and lawyers who handle asbestos cases. And even though asbestos products have been banned from area shipyards for more than 20 years, mesothelioma is likely to claim hundreds of additional victims during the next 25 to 30 years.
Even larger is the ongoing death toll from all types of asbestos-related cancer.
At least 300,000 people worked in the region's shipyards during the peak years for asbestos exposure, from 1940 to 1978. About 4,200 of those workers could be expected to die of asbestos cancer, based on a formula developed by Selikoff and fellow researchers. They projected a shipyard-worker death rate of 1.4 percent.
That toll does not include many thousands of family members who were exposed when workers carried the dust home on their clothes. The number of stricken family members could equal or surpass the number of ill workers themselves, though their exposures would have been less intensive, and their death rates lower, than the workers'.