Bollinger Shipyards is a group of 13 shipyards located in Louisiana and Texas, with access to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. The shipyards provide new construction, conversion, and repair services for a variety of small- to medium-sized inland and offshore vessels for the government and commercial and energy industries.
Sixty Years of Service
Family owned and operated since its founding in 1946, Bollinger Shipyards is among the many American shipyards that may have inadvertently exposed some of its workers to toxic levels of the mineral asbestos. Until restrictions on the use of asbestos were initiated in the 1980s, most ships (both merchant and military) had many components made partly or entirely of asbestos.
The Danger of Airborne Asbestos
When an asbestos product is manipulated or disturbed—for instance when it is installed, moved or replaced—the microscopic asbestos fibers are released into the air, where they can be inhaled by humans in the immediate vicinity. Thus, shipyard workers who handled asbestos (or even worked nearby) were at a grave risk of inhaling the invisible asbestos fibers.
The asbestos fibers are the cause of several fatal diseases: lung cancer (both small-cell and non-small-cell) and mesothelioma (cancer of the mesothelium, the tissue lining the chest cavity and lungs). Because these diseases often appear 10 to 50 years after the initial asbestos exposure, many former shipyard workers are just now being diagnosed.
Resources for Shipyard Workers
Former Bollinger Shipyard workers with asbestos-caused diseases have a number of resources they can turn to for help. Contact us today to learn more.
