Asbestos secrecy, ethics and my anger

Sophia Angelique's "Class Action and the Ethics of Asbestos Litigation" hub aroused some old anger in me.

No, not anger toward Sophia. Her post simply reawakened some things I do think about every now and then. When I do think about these things, I get a little angry. My anger is directed toward ..

I don't know. Someone, surely. Maybe I had better give you some background first.

A summer job

In the early 1960's, being thirteen years of age and now capable of obtaining a work permit, I was offered a job at my father's company during the summer school breaks. I'd be working with my brother-in-law, my sister's husband, who was really only a few years older than I, but who was employed full time as a boiler service technician.

It was dirty work. We serviced large industrial boilers and also offered cleaning services. That particular work paid very well, but it also exposed me to the material that is the main subject of Sophia's article: asbestos.

I have written the details of that work and my exposure to asbestos elsewhere, so won't repeat all that here. It is sufficient to know that both of us were regularly exposed to asbestos fibers from a number of sources and that my brother-in-law died during lung cancer surgery a few years back.

Sophia's article and the Wikipedia article on asbestos dangers explain that the manufacturers of asbestos products were well aware of the potential dangers from both breathing asbestos fibers and simple skin contact. It is nasty stuff: when asbestos removal companies approach this today, they dress in hazmat suits. When we worked with it, we treated it very casually - I can well remember watching dust from the asbestos rope we used dancing in a sun beam as I wrapped it around my bare arm to coil it up for transport. Exposed? Yes, I'd call that exposed and then some.

But we knew nothing of the dangers. We wore masks when we were exposed to direct boiler soot, but we never thought to do that while just handling that asbestos rope and other asbestos based insulating materials that are a part of sealing up an industrial boiler. We treated all that as though it were perfectly safe. What reason did we have to think otherwise?

Certainly my father was unaware of any danger. Would he have knowingly exposed a teenage son and the husband of his daughter to lung cancer dangers? For that matter, as we worked out of a fairly small office, every employee had some exposure to asbestos in the air: we prepared our needed materials right there in the parts room area. My father would have been exposed also, so we can't blame him for putting profits ahead of safety. We just did not know.

Who to blame?

As far as I know, I have not developed mesothelioma. I don't even know if that was the type of cancer my brother-in-law suffered from. We were both smokers, too: almost everyone was in those times.

I quit smoking over fifteen years ago and I only worked with asbestos for a very few years, and most of that was only during summers. My brother-in-law worked in that industry his entire life and never quit smoking.

None of that quells my anger. I'm angry that my brother-in-law died, angry that I might someday die from the same cause. However, Sophia's article has brought a new dimension to that anger. She points out that companies have been bankrupted by these mesothelioma lawsuits. Were some of them small companies like my father's? Were people just as innocent and unknowing as I and my brother-in-law were torn to shreds by these lawsuits? I can't help but think that some were.

What is fair?

Some of settlements have run into millions of dollars. Is that fair?

I sure don't know. If I died as a result of this, I'd certainly want my family to be compensated, but is millions of dollars necessary? Certainly not in terms of raw economic value: as I am into my sixties now, my top earning years are behind me. Something would be appropriate for emotional loss, but how do you account for that? People lose spouses and parents daily, and most of them get no special compensation at all. Do we need that? Again, I don't know what to think.

I do think there is value in punitive damages: companies tempted to sweep dangers under the carpet today might be given pause by seeing the results of current asbestos and tobacco lawsuits. There may well be preventative value here.

However, like Sophia, I am bothered by the role of lawyers in this and particularly by the "class action" suits. These may have some preventative value as noted, but the major beneficiaries are lawyers, and not necessarily the people who actually suffered from asbestos exposure.

So, I'm angry, but there is no focus to it. I'm obviously both troubled and ambivalent. I don't know who to blame and I'm not completely sure that there should be blame. It's all a muddle in my mind and I really do not like thinking about it!

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