Levittown exists because of steel. The community rose in the early 1950s in step with US Steel’s new Fairless Works down the road in Falls Township, and its streets filled with the mill’s workers, along with the tradespeople, refinery hands, and factory workers of industrial lower Bucks County. Mesothelioma diagnoses in those households trace to that era’s asbestos, and Pennsylvania law still compensates them. Michael C. Schafle, Esq., counsel on the Philadelphia asbestos docket, represents Levittown families.
A town built alongside a steel mill
The timing was no accident: new mill, new town, one workforce. Steelmaking at the Fairless plant involved the industry’s standard asbestos-bearing materials of the period, insulation on furnaces and steam systems, gaskets, packing, and protective equipment, with the heaviest exposure falling on maintenance trades and the laborers who worked beside them. Levittown men spent whole careers there, and the mill’s retirees are now deep in the disease’s latency years; our guide to steel mill workers and asbestos describes what those careers involved, and the Pennsylvania exposure sites index maps the region’s other industrial employers.
The rest of lower Bucks industry
Steel was the anchor, not the whole story. Lower Bucks County and the adjacent riverfront supported chemical plants, manufacturing, and construction at scale through the asbestos decades, and Levittown’s location put its residents within commuting range of Philadelphia’s industry as well. A work history that hops among plants, sites, and trades is normal here, and each stop can add defendants and bankruptcy trust claims to a case.
The houses themselves are part of the history
Postwar construction used asbestos products freely: roofing, siding, floor tile, pipe insulation, and joint compounds among them. The residents most affected were not homeowners mowing lawns but the tradespeople who built, renovated, and repaired these houses by the thousands, cutting and sanding asbestos-containing materials daily. If your family’s exposure story is a construction story, it is no less a case for it. The same goes for remodelers who spent the later decades opening up walls the first generation had closed.
What Pennsylvania law provides
Compensation flows through two channels: lawsuits against the manufacturers of the asbestos products a worker can be connected to, and claims on the asbestos bankruptcy trusts, which hold roughly $30 billion set aside for victims according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO-11-819). The deadlines are unforgiving: generally two years from discovery of the illness (42 Pa. C.S. § 5524), or from death for wrongful death and survival actions (42 Pa. C.S. §§ 8301-8302), as the statute of limitations page explains. Mesothelioma’s 20-to-50-year latency, documented by the National Cancer Institute (NCI asbestos fact sheet), is why the mill generation’s diagnoses are arriving now.
Philadelphia counsel, Bucks County clients
Michael Schafle’s office sits about 45 minutes away in South Philadelphia, where he is counsel in the courts’ asbestos program (In re: Asbestos Litigation, No. 1986-00001). Levittown families can meet him in person or handle the entire case remotely; either way the firm shoulders the records work, the defendant research, and the scheduling. Venue for filing is chosen on each case’s merits after the exposure record is complete, never settled beforehand. His Pennsylvania city index covers the practice statewide.
What your family should hold onto
Union books, pay stubs, pension statements, and the family’s own memory of where Dad worked and what he did are the raw material of these claims. Preserve them now, even if you are undecided about pursuing anything; they only become harder to replace.
When you want answers, the free case review turns those materials into a clear yes or no.