That sense of urgency helped supply Great Britain and win a two-ocean war. The same haste, however, also relaxed the sense of caution with which workplace asbestos exposures were approached. Like other experienced participants in industry, the Navy was under no illusion that the substance was somehow safe. "Asbestosis is an industrial disease of the lungs incident to the inhalation of asbestos dust for prolonged periods," observed the Navy's Surgeon General in a 1939 annual report on health conditions at the New York (Brooklyn) Navy Yard; the report pointed out that the yard's pipe-coverers and insulators were exposed to such dust. Two years later, with the Liberty Ship program in high gear, it was proposed to have an outside inspector visit the yard to look for health hazards. Navy brass vetoed the visit. Commander C.S. Stephenson wrote to an Admiral McIntire on March 11, 1941: "I told him [a Mr. Bard] that I had spoken to you and that you had indicated that President Roosevelt thought that this might not be the best policy, due to the fact that they might cause disturbance in the labor element....None of our foundaries [sic] would pass the necessary inspection to obtain workers' compensation insurance from any of the insurance organizations. I doubt if any of our foundaries would be tolerated if the State industrial health people were to make surveys of them."
As federal judge Jack Weinstein put it in a ruling on later litigation: "The Navy, though aware of the hazards posed by asbestos dust, in its urge to build its warships as quickly as possible, did not inform workers of the dangers and neglected to make available protective precautions." Indeed, the judge noted, "The evidence produced indicates that these risks were known to Government officials at least as high as the highest Navy personnel and probably known to the President of the United States."
Unlike servicemen, civilian defense workers have no automatic right to public compensation for losses sustained in the course of serving the nation, nor can they sue the government itself given its sovereign immunity. When former Brooklyn Navy Yard workers began growing ill in considerable numbers they discovered as much, with Judge Weinstein ruling against them on the legalities, even though he said "there's no doubt" in his mind "that the Government is primarily responsible as a factual matter."
By that time trial lawyers had come up with what may be the most lucrative idea to have occurred at that point to any attorneys in American history: They would sue the companies that supplied the asbestos. It didn't matter that it had been the shipyards and not the suppliers whose workplace practices determined the extent to which workers would be exposed to asbestos dust. The lawyers would charge that the supplying companies had not taken adequate steps to warn downstream workers of the risks-despite the fact that it is unlikely that the Navy would have welcomed such warnings, or even necessarily permitted them to reach its workers. Indeed, asbestos requisitioned by the federal government from private companies in generic form for its GSA stockpile was shipped to final workplaces in burlap sacks bearing no warning labels whatsoever. Yet over the course of the litigation, the allegation that manufacturers should have slapped warning labels on asbestos-containing products has been enough to bankrupt dozens of private companies.
Eventually, two and a half million civilians worked in the wartime shipbuilding program, and a high percentage of them were exposed to asbestos in the stiflingly close conditions of ships' interiors under conditions that fell far short of safe industrial practice by the standards of the time, let alone today. Over the years, lawyers on both sides of the asbestos wars have estimated that of claimants who've fallen seriously ill because of exposure to the mineral, half or more may have encountered it while working on ships outfitted for use in World War II.
The consequences did not end with the wartime emergency. As we well know now, sectors of private industry in the postwar 1950s were more careless in their use of asbestos than was justified by the scientific knowledge in place even by the 1930s. It is not hard to imagine one possible reason: Lax habits of industrial hygiene accepted during the war years were perpetuated in the veteran-staffed postwar civilian industry, as neither managers nor workers are likely to have treated with adequate respect a danger they had lately seen treated so lightly.
Not only did the Defense Department never shoulder any moral responsibility for asbestos illness, but it continued to prescribe the use of the substance long after the war had ended. Even decades later, when litigation had broken out and asbestos suppliers were fast fleeing the business, Pentagon procurement officials refused to consider the use of substitutes and turned down a manufacturer's offer to reformulate its product without the mineral.
By now, all the "primary" asbestos manufacturers have long since been forced into bankruptcy by product liability litigation, and the lawyers have moved on to bankrupt dozens of "secondary" defendants that did not see themselves as being in the asbestos business but used the mineral as an ingredient in flooring, wallboard, cement, or countless other building materials. They are moving on to demand billions from "tertiary" defendants whose connection with the substance was yet more remote. Meanwhile, the federal government steadfastly refuses to accept even moral responsibility for its central role in the tragedy.
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