The Trade That Piped America's Industry — And Paid the Price

Gaskets: broken and remade at every flange, every job

Every time a UA fitter broke a flange to tie in, repair, or replace a section of pipe or a valve, the old asbestos gasket allegedly had to be scraped off both flange faces — wire brushing and scraping dry, brittle asbestos gasket residue on a hot flange. The new gasket was then allegedly cut to size at the jobsite from asbestos sheet stock, releasing fiber again. This was not occasional work — it was the routine mechanics of pipefitting, repeated at every tie-in across a career.

Valve packing: a maintenance task performed thousands of times

Steam-service valve stems leak. Repacking a leaking valve — pulling the gland, removing old braided asbestos packing with a packing puller, and installing new asbestos rings — was allegedly a routine maintenance activity performed thousands of times over a UA member's career, on every high-pressure steam and process system in the plant.

Pipe covering: cut, re-cut, and torn out around the trade's own work

Steam and hot-water lines were allegedly wrapped in asbestos pipe covering — calcium-silicate block and pipe insulation, molded amosite and chrysotile sections. Cutting a section to permit a tie-in, or removing degraded covering during outage work to access a joint, allegedly released fiber directly into the fitter's breathing zone. This work happened on the trade's own piping, and around the insulators' work on adjacent equipment.

Confined spaces and inadequate ventilation

The trade was dispatched to the places pressurized piping lived: boiler rooms, ship engine spaces, mechanical rooms, pipe tunnels under hospital and university campuses, the interior of refinery process units, the upper levels of power plant boiler houses. These spaces were poorly ventilated when they were ventilated at all. The fiber that went into the air stayed in the air, and stayed in the worker's lungs.

Respiratory protection came too late

OSHA's first asbestos exposure regulations were promulgated in 1971 — decades after the trade had built and maintained the pressurized piping systems of America's industrial base under an unrestricted asbestos regime. Even after 1971, enforcement was uneven; respirators were available but their use was not consistently required or even encouraged on industrial worksites. Most pipefitters and steamfitters who entered the trade between 1940 and 1975 — now in their 70s and 80s — completed their careers with very little respiratory protection at all.

The occupational-health record

Dr. Irving Selikoff's landmark Mount Sinai occupational-health research beginning in the 1960s documented elevated mesothelioma incidence among pipe-trade workers. A later 2017 analysis of U.S. occupational mortality data found that plumbers, pipelayers, pipefitters, and steamfitters recorded the highest number of malignant mesothelioma deaths of any occupation group studied between 1999 and 2015. The pathway was the daily, cumulative contact with asbestos gaskets, valve packing, and pipe covering across an entire career.

1889 — The founding

The United Association of Journeymen Plumbers, Gas Fitters, Steam Fitters, and Steam Fitters' Helpers was chartered on October 11, 1889, at a founding convention in Washington, D.C., attended by 40 delegates representing 23 local unions. Patrick J. Quinlan, leader of an independent plumbers' organization in Boston, was elected the first international president. The UA's international headquarters is today in Annapolis, Maryland.

1900s–1940s — Growth with American industry

The trade grew alongside the electric utility power station, the petroleum refinery, the integrated steel mill, the chemical plant, the Navy ship. Each generation of industrial buildout required pressurized steam and process piping, and the UA was organized to provide that workforce. Materials specifications for the era's pipe insulation, gaskets, and valve packing called for asbestos for one reason: it was cheap, fireproof, durable at high temperatures, and effective at sealing high-pressure joints. The trade did not choose this material; the architects, engineers, and equipment manufacturers did.

1940s–1970s — Peak membership and peak exposure

The buildout of American industry following World War II coincided with the peak membership era of the trade. Power plants, refineries, the U.S. Navy fleet, the suburban hospital construction boom, the urban university campus expansions — all of it required pressurized piping, and all of it specified asbestos gaskets, valve packing, and pipe insulation in materials lists. The trade's daily handling of these materials was at its highest concentration during exactly the era now showing the highest mesothelioma incidence rates among retirees.

1970s — Federal recognition

OSHA's 1971 asbestos exposure regulations were prompted in part by the Mount Sinai cohort studies documenting elevated mesothelioma rates among pipe-trade workers. By the late 1970s, asbestos-free gasket and packing materials began entering the supply chain.

1980s–today — Post-asbestos era

By the 1980s, asbestos was substantially phased out of gasket, packing, and pipe-insulation formulations, replaced by aramid and graphite gaskets, PTFE and graphite valve packing, and calcium silicate without asbestos. Members who entered apprenticeship after roughly 1985 worked under a substantially safer materials regime. But the disease pipeline from the 1940s–1970s exposure cohort continues. Pipefitters and steamfitters who started their apprenticeships in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s are the population now being diagnosed with mesothelioma and other asbestos-related cancers at extreme rates relative to the general population — and the next two decades will continue to draw heavily from that cohort.