Look no further if you're looking for the best painters and mesothelioma compensation lawyers. Class Action 101 will work hard to get the maximum compensation for you and your family. File a claim today.
Structures painters work on include:
The nearly 400,000 people are currently drawing a paycheck as construction or maintenance painters work with many types of materials. However, some of the materials made between the 1940s and the 1970s posed a health risk to painters. The materials giving rise to this risk had one thing in common. They all contain the carcinogenic mineral asbestos, which can cause diseases like:
The list of mid-20th Century materials containing asbestos is long.
The significant problem with asbestos is that it can become disturbed very quickly. When that happens, tiny pieces break off and get into the air. These small pieces (too small to be seen with the naked eye) can then be breathed in or inhaled accidentally by the painter. Once asbestos enters the body, mesothelioma and other diseases can appear. The good news is that materials makers stopped putting asbestos into their products in the 1970s after a public outcry about the dangers of the mineral.
The bad news is that it was in the 1980s that most inventories of materials containing asbestos were fully depleted and no longer available on the market. Even so, asbestos materials can, to this very day, be encountered by painters if they work in structures built pre-1980s. When remodeling old homes, painters can experience exposure to asbestos in many ways. One way is removing old paint. Fortunately, if an asbestos disease develops after exposure, medical help is available. However, you must know there is also legal help. If you're one of the many painters and mesothelioma has impacted your life, we can help.
A painter prepares surfaces and applies one or more sealer, primer, paint, stain, or varnish coats. Painters don't need to be certified or licensed, and painting can either be a hobby or a fully paying job. Tasks typically undertaken by painters include:
Painters and Asbestos Exposure
Asbestos was in many products a painter might use or come into contact with on the job. Among these products were:
Adding asbestos to paint, stain and other liquid coatings helped thicken the product. Asbestos gave the product better texture, brighter color, durability, and greater resistance to fading or peeling with age. Asbestos also helps coats dry faster. Further, these coatings allowed the walls and ceilings to which they were applied to stay calm when the weather turned hot and warm when the outside temperatures dropped.
Asbestos exposure became a health risk to painters, not so much while the paint was wet but when it was dry and being worked on or painted over. Wet asbestos paint posed a scant risk to health because asbestos molecules were so tightly bonded to the paint's chemical composition that they could not break free. However, the problems started after the paint drying was complete. The asbestos particles were tightly bound to the paint whenever the paint was wet and wouldn't flake off or cause any issues. However, dry paint could break free from the canvas, freeing the asbestos.
Asbestos was quickly freed by sanding it when painting another layer or when older paint was scraped off. Additionally, dried asbestos paint could be carried from the job site to the studio whenever the dried paint fell on a tarp or cloth. However, folding and moving this tarp around could crack the paint blobs, releasing the asbestos fibers. Additionally, leaving the asbestos-laced pain on brushed and pans posed a risk of exposure to the painter.
Asbestos entering a painter's body during inhalation usually becomes permanently embedded within the lungs (or intestines). In some cases, these trapped asbestos particles caused radical changes in the composition and functioning of healthy cells. Radical changes such as:
Look no further if you're looking for the best painters and mesothelioma compensation lawyers. Class Action 101 will work hard to get the maximum compensation for you and your family. File a claim today.
Many types of building materials contained asbestos before it fell into wide disuse beginning in the 1970s. As a result, painters sometimes worked with these materials and were in proximity to them.
These non-painter building materials include:
Between the 1940s and 1970s, manufacturers of these products added asbestos to make them lighter and more robust. Asbestos also made them better absorb noise, insulate against extreme heat and cold, and prevent or inhibit fire spread. However, these building materials were disturbed by cutting, hammering, drilling, sanding, and even by simply bumping them too hard during construction. The disturbance was enough to send asbestos everywhere. Then they could penetrate and lock into the painter's lungs or abdomen.
Then changes would begin in the cells as the strands start to overcome the healthy cells.
Power tools loom large in the painter's craft today, just as it was a half-century ago. Then as now, painters used electrically operated drills, screwdrivers, sanders, and compressors. Power tools made between 1940 and 1970 contained asbestos inside their motor housings to keep heat from causing burns or damaging the instrument. As painters used these asbestos-laced tools were operated, some of the asbestos inside was able to break free. A portion of that freed asbestos immediately found its way into the air. The remainder stayed inside the tool until it needed repairs.
Power tools could also release asbestos by contacting materials or structural elements carrying one or more coats of dried asbestos paint. For example, if an overhead fan needed removal to permit repainting of the ceiling, the removal process would cause asbestos to release into the air. A power screwdriver could do this.
Of course, painters need something to paint, and that's where other teams come in. Electricians, plumbers, bricklayers, and others will create things that the painters will come in and paint on, but that does pose a small problem. Each of these trades has to deal with asbestos-related materials, and those particles are still in the air.
Suppose the painters are already using asbestos-lined paint and potentially inhaling particles. In that case, they could also be inhaling the fumes from the other jobs done within the job site. Take drywall, for example. A painter could begin work two days after the drywall crew finished cutting and installing sheetrock. By the end of the drywalling process, the volume of asbestos particles in the air could be considerable. And those particles would still be there when the painter showed up to begin work 48 hours later.
Unfortunately, the painter in this scenario might not have realized asbestos was being inhaled (or ingested). Asbestos particles are difficult to see because they are so tiny.
There would be a chance that this airborne exposure to asbestos particles might produce a disease such as:
Look no further if you're looking for the best painters and mesothelioma compensation lawyers. Class Action 101 will work hard to get the maximum compensation for you and your family. File a claim today.
When asbestos is broken free, it can stay in the air for quite a long time before it goes down to the ground. Even then, the simplest of drafts can kick everything up again. Once the asbestos is in the air, painters can inhale or ingest these fibers, then travel down into the rest of the body. Then, after several years, the asbestos fiber corrupts the healthy cells.
Asbestos can cause:
Suppose you are a painter or have a loved one experiencing asbestos exposure symptoms. In that case, you may be able to get compensation for the harm done to you.
The money you receive could help you:
You can obtain compensation for asbestos-related diseases by suing the companies responsible for exposing painters to asbestos. Such companies could include the makers, distributors, and retailers of asbestos paints and related products. Unfortunately, since most companies don't want to face their asbestos-related crimes in a court of law, they settle out of court. Contact our office today to learn about your claim.
