Hazardous
Careers - Carpenters @ Risk of Asbestos Exposure - Carpentry as
Profession, Rough vs Finishing Carpenters, Consumer Product Safety
Commission (CPSC), Case Study of Long Beach Naval Shipyard (World
War II)
(November 3rd, 2010)
 Carpentry is
one of the oldest professions mankind has ever done. Carpentry comes
from the Latin term carpentrius which stands for 'carriage maker.'
Carpenters are highly skilled craftsmen that build furniture, homes
& buildings, sets for theatres & television studios, docks
& wharves, windows & cabinets, among other things. Carpenters
are classified as either rough carpenters or finishing carpenters.
Rough carpenters perform, as the name implies, rough construction
jobs such as framing residential & commercial buildings, roofing,
shipbuilding, etc. Finishing carpenters on the other hand build
& design furnitures of all sorts. How are carpenters at risk
of asbestos exposure? Through the 20th century, carpenters worked
with various different construction products that contained asbestos.
Because of the properties of asbestos as an insulation agent against
heat, fire and its durability, it was used in construction products
to prevent the breakout of fires.
 Any rough
carpenters or those working around ships as well as framers &
roofers were at even increased risks of asbestos exposure. Finishing
carpenters on the other hand, those who primarily built & designed
furniture were not as highly risked as their counterparts; rough
carpenters due to the nature of the jobs. Examples of asbestos containing
products used in the carpentry & construction industry include:
- Felt, adhesives, shingles & other roofing materials
- Patching plasters or fibers
- Agricultural fillers & asbestos cords
- Cement Siding
- Cement Wallboard
- Millboards
- Rollboards
- Flatboards
- Finishing cement
- Acoustic plasters & finishers
- Furnace Cement
- Machine Room Ducts
- Machine Room Ceillings
- Machine Room Floors
- Machine Room Walles
 In
1977, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) was introduced.
The objective of the CPSC is to 'protect the public against unreasonable
risks of injuries and deaths associated with consumer products.'
It has control over 15000 different consumer products and monitors
the safety of using such products. This commission banned the use
of asbestos in any new consumer products manufactured, however existing
products on the market that contained asbestos were floating around
freely. This is why carpenters may have been exposed to asbestos
on their jobs through the early 1980s. Until the late 1970s, very
few companies provided their workers with safety gear to protect
themselves from asbestos exposure. This resulted in 1000s of American
construction workers being exposed to Asbestos fibers on a daily
basis. It is only know that carpenters realize they have developed
deadly diseases such as Asbestosis or Mesothelioma lung cancer.
Case Study - Long Beach Naval Shipyard (World War II)
 The
image on the left is of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard located at
south side of Terminal Island, on the Roosevelt Naval Base, between
San Pedro and Long Beach, California. Between 1930s to 1945s, the
shipbuilding industry in America saw a tremendous growth due to
the need for sophisticated ships in World War II. Long Beach Naval
Shipyard was a very important site for the American government due
to its closeness to the ocean and its surroundings by other shipyards.
Through World War II, this facility housed over 400 ships that needed
repair, overhauls & conversions; employing over 15000 shipyard
workers. Some of the job duties included:
- Pipefitting
- Sandblasting
- Woodworking
- Welding
- Rigging & insulation
Asbestos was widely used @ the Long Beach Naval Shipyard to provide
insulation against fire breakouts as well as other products boiler
coats, boiler insulators, pumps, machine room ducts, marine panels,
Vermiculite Compounds, etc.
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