McKeesport made pipe. US Steel’s National Tube Works turned the city into one of the world’s great tube producers and employed generations of Allegheny County families, at the cost of decades of industrial asbestos exposure. Mesothelioma claims from that workforce remain viable today, through manufacturer lawsuits and bankruptcy trust filings, and Michael C. Schafle, Esq., counsel on the Philadelphia asbestos docket, handles them across Pennsylvania.
Tube making and the fiber that came with it
Producing pipe and tube meant furnaces, mills, and welding operations fed by steam, and each layer of that operation carried asbestos in its era: lagging on boilers and lines, insulating cements around hot equipment, gaskets and packing at every joint and valve, and heat-protective gear on the workers closest to the fire. Maintenance men stripped and rebuilt these systems for a living; production crews worked in the same air. The plant’s story is told on our National Tube Works exposure page, within the Pennsylvania exposure sites index.
McKeesport careers crossed the valley
National Tube did not stand alone; it stood in the middle of the Mon Valley chain. Workers moved between it and the Duquesne Works directly across the river, or took contractor and outage work throughout the region. Because every additional plant means additional identified products and potential trusts, a McKeesport claim is investigated as a full career, not a single job. Outage seasons also brought waves of outside insulators and contractors through the works, and those tradesmen hold claims of the same standing as badge employees.
The three questions that decide a case
- Can the exposure be documented? Employment records, union files, Social Security earnings histories, and coworker testimony almost always answer yes for National Tube veterans.
- Who are the defendants? The manufacturers of the asbestos products used in the works, some still solvent and suable, others succeeded by bankruptcy trusts holding roughly $30 billion for victims nationwide, per the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO-11-819).
- Is it timely? Generally yes if filed within two years of discovering the illness (42 Pa. C.S. § 5524), or within two years of death for wrongful death and survival actions (42 Pa. C.S. §§ 8301-8302); the statute of limitations page has the detail.
Why diagnoses are still emerging
The National Cancer Institute reports mesothelioma’s latency at 20 to 50 years after asbestos exposure (NCI asbestos fact sheet). A man who finished his last turn at National Tube in the 1980s is inside that window right now, and so is the spouse who washed his work clothes through those years. Household exposure claims, most often for the wives and daughters who handled the laundry, stand on their own legal footing in Pennsylvania.
Statewide practice, Mon Valley cases
Michael Schafle is a founding partner of Green & Schafle, LLC in Philadelphia and counsel in that city’s dedicated asbestos litigation, running since 1986 (In re: Asbestos Litigation, No. 1986-00001). McKeesport families work with the firm without leaving home: records are gathered by the office, meetings happen by phone or video, and depositions are brought to the client. Where a suit is ultimately filed turns on the case’s own exposure facts and defendants, and that call is explained, not assumed. The Pennsylvania city index lists every community the practice serves.
Bringing it home
If National Tube, or any Mon Valley plant, appears in your family’s history and mesothelioma has now appeared in its present, those two facts belong in front of a lawyer this month, while the filing window is open and witnesses remain reachable.
Michael Schafle also keeps a site just for McKeesport families, mesotheliomalawyermckeesportpa.com, with the local exposure history, the deadlines that apply, and the same free case review.
Put them there with the free case review; the answer comes back fast and costs nothing.