Pennsylvania’s asbestos exposure sites follow its heavy industry: the shipyards on the Delaware River, the steel plants of the Lehigh Valley, Johnstown, and Steelton, the refineries of Delaware County, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s shops in Altoona, and the asbestos factories of Ambler. Workers from these sites, and the family members they came home to, account for a large share of the mesothelioma cases Pennsylvania courts see today.
Where you or your parent worked is half of an asbestos case. The other half, how asbestos exposure causes illness, is medical and largely the same everywhere. This index covers the where. Each site page below describes what the facility did, the trades that worked around asbestos there, and the records that still exist to prove it.
Shipyards on the Delaware River
Shipbuilding concentrated more asbestos into confined spaces than almost any other industry. Insulation covered boilers, steam lines, and turbines throughout the ships of that era, and the trades installed or tore it out below decks with little ventilation.
Pennsylvania had two giants. The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard built and overhauled Navy vessels at League Island for a long stretch before closing. A few miles downriver, Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock in Chester ranked among the largest shipyards in the world during wartime production. Smaller yards, including Baldwin-adjacent operations at Eddystone and the New York Shipbuilding yard across the river in Camden, drew from the same regional workforce.
Steel: the Lehigh Valley, Johnstown, and Steelton
Steelmaking runs on extreme heat, and for much of the industry’s history the material that contained that heat was asbestos: furnace insulation, pipe lagging, protective clothing, gaskets, and cements. The state’s dominant name was Bethlehem Steel, whose Pennsylvania operations centered on the home plant in Bethlehem, the Johnstown works in Cambria County, and the rail-making plant at Steelton near Harrisburg.
Bethlehem was far from alone. Lukens Steel in Coatesville, Phoenix Iron and Steel in Phoenixville, Alan Wood Steel in Conshohocken, Crucible Steel in Midland, and the U.S. Steel works of the Monongahela Valley all used asbestos the same way, and their workers appear in the same court dockets.
The Delaware County refinery belt
The lower Delaware County waterfront held one of the oldest refinery corridors on the East Coast. Refineries are dense with insulated piping, boilers, and heat exchangers, and their periodic maintenance shutdowns meant stripping and replacing asbestos insulation on a recurring basis. The Marcus Hook refineries page covers the Sun Oil plant and its neighbors, and the trades and contractor crews who worked them.
Railroading: the Altoona Works
The Pennsylvania Railroad built and repaired its locomotives at Altoona, in shops widely described as the largest of their kind in the world. Steam locomotive boilers were wrapped in asbestos lagging, and stripping and reapplying it was routine shop work. The Pennsylvania Railroad Altoona Works page also explains FELA, the federal law that governs railroad workers’ injury claims instead of workers’ compensation.
Ambler: asbestos manufacturing itself
Most Pennsylvania sites used asbestos. Ambler, in Montgomery County, made it. Keasbey & Mattison manufactured asbestos insulation, shingles, and textiles there, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency later designated Superfund sites in the borough tied to the waste that manufacturing left behind. The full story is at Ambler and Keasbey & Mattison.
Other documented sites across the state
The six pages above are the anchors, not the whole map. Asbestos exposure is also documented at Armstrong’s plants in Lancaster, the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Eddystone, the General Electric works in Erie, Alcoa’s operations in New Kensington, and many power plants, chemical plants, and mills across the state. Coverage of those sites is being added; if the facility you remember is not listed here, that does not mean exposure there cannot be proven.
How site records help prove your claim
A long history of asbestos litigation has produced a deep documentary record of Pennsylvania’s industrial sites: which products were installed in which buildings, which contractors did the insulation work, and what former workers have testified about the dust. That record means a family does not have to reconstruct a job site from memory alone. A work history with an employer name and a trade is usually enough to start.
Philadelphia has run a dedicated asbestos docket for a long time, and Michael Schafle is counsel in that program.
If you or a family member worked at any of these sites and has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, request a free case review and the site history can be matched to your work history.