Asbestos Exposure in Elevator Installers and Mechanics

If you built, repaired, or modernized elevators, or someone in your family did, and an asbestos diagnosis has now come in, this page explains where the asbestos was and what you can do about it. Elevator work put people in the parts of a building where asbestos was common: the hoistway, the machine room, and the equipment itself.

Elevator trade training programs still warn workers that asbestos may be found in hoistway fireproofing, brake shoes, control panels, and hoistway doors. A 1993 study of long-serving elevator construction workers found that more than one in five had asbestos-related changes on their chest X-rays.

You do not need to remember brand names or have old job records. We work from your union history, the buildings, and the years to find out which products you were around.

Where elevator workers met asbestos

Elevator constructors and mechanics install, repair, and modernize elevators, escalators, and related equipment. Their union is the International Union of Elevator Constructors (IUEC). The work runs from the pit at the bottom of the shaft to the machine room at the top.

The National Elevator Industry Educational Program, the trade's training program, lists these places where workers may find asbestos, along with pipe insulation, ceiling and floor tiles, and adhesives:

• Spray-on fireproofing inside hoistways. Sprayed fireproofing coated the steel beams and walls of many shafts. It is soft and friable (easily crumbled) when damaged. The program warns that disturbing it inside a shaft can create a chimney effect that carries fibers up the hoistway.
• Brake shoes. Elevator machines use a brake that holds the car in place. Older brake linings could contain asbestos.
• Control panels. The UK industry list below adds that older controllers could contain asbestos insulating panels.
• Hoistway doors. The UK list notes that some older landing doors had asbestos for fire and sound proofing, much like other fire doors of the era.

A safety sheet from the Lift and Escalator Industry Association in the United Kingdom gives a longer list for older installations. It includes brake linings, blow-out coils and arc shields, older limit switches, landing doors (for fire and sound proofing), fire breaks in wiring trunking, insulating panels in controllers, and cladding in machine rooms and lift wells. It recommends special training for lift engineers who change brake linings, because that work will knowingly disturb asbestos. Its list describes British equipment, so we check each American installation on its own records.

A court record shows how much asbestos could be in a shaft. In a 2017 New York insurance case about the original World Trade Center, the court's opinion says a fireproofing product called MARK II, used in the towers' elevator shafts, was about 80% asbestos, compared with about 30% for the main fireproofing. It was sprayed for about eight months before the Port Authority stopped all fireproofing work in April 1970 (American Home Assurance Co. v. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Supreme Court of New York County, November 2017, 2017 NY Slip Op 32500(U)). The workers whose asbestos claims the case was about included elevator mechanics, along with ironworkers, steamfitters, plumbers, insulators and other trades.

When the exposure happened

• New construction, before the mid-1970s. Sprayed asbestos fireproofing was used on steel-frame buildings until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency restricted spray-applied asbestos fireproofing under its 1973 air pollution rule for asbestos (NESHAP). Elevator constructors installing rails, brackets, and machines in fireproofed shafts worked in that dust.
• Service and repair, for decades after. Brake linings wear and get replaced. Controllers get rewired. Each time, older materials could be disturbed.
• Modernization and demolition. When an old elevator is replaced, the old machine, controller, doors, and wiring come out. In older buildings, that work can still disturb asbestos today.

Who else was nearby

• Other building trades. Shafts and machine rooms were shared spaces during construction. See bystander and proximity workers and carpenters and construction workers.
• Families at home. Dust on clothes and in vehicles could reach a spouse or children. This is called take-home exposure. See take-home asbestos exposure.

The diseases

Asbestos diseases usually appear decades after exposure. That delay is called latency.

• Mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs or abdomen. Asbestos causes most, but not all, mesothelioma. See mesothelioma.
• Lung cancer. Asbestos raises the risk, and smoking raises it further. See asbestos lung cancer.
• Asbestosis, scarring of the lung tissue. See asbestosis.
• Pleural plaques and pleural thickening, which are markers of past exposure and can affect breathing in some people. See pleural plaques and thickening.

What the evidence says

The research specific to elevator workers is limited, and we want to be honest about that.

• The 1993 elevator construction study. Researchers screened 91 elevator construction workers, all with more than 20 years in the industry, using chest X-rays read by B-readers and breathing tests. Twenty workers (22%) had pleural disease, mostly plaques on both sides of the chest. None had asbestosis, and no mesothelioma was found in the group. The authors described the workers as exposed to asbestos dust during construction and refurbishment of older buildings, and concluded that elevator construction workers have an increased risk of asbestos-related pleural disease (Bresnitz et al., 1993).
• Union screening programs. A 1993 report described national asbestos screening and education programs for building trades unions that included members of the IUEC and the Laborers' union. The programs were aimed at members with long histories of asbestos exposure.

What this does and does not show. Ninety-one workers is a small group, too small to measure cancer risk on its own. Pleural plaques show that asbestos was inhaled. They do not mean cancer will follow. The authors concluded that these workers had significant asbestos exposure on the job, shown by the high rate of pleural changes, and that history matters if a cancer is diagnosed later.

Protection today

Asbestos work in buildings is covered by the OSHA construction asbestos standard, 29 CFR 1926.1101. The elevator industry's training program tells workers to:

• Not drill, cut, grind, or disturb suspect materials until they have been tested.
• Seal the hoistway and connected shafts before work starts.
• Use barriers, warning signs, and respirators under the OSHA standard.
• Work under a competent person trained in asbestos safety.
• Not eat, drink, or smoke in the work area.

Under the same OSHA standard, building owners must identify asbestos-containing materials in older buildings and tell employers whose workers will be near them. If you are still working on older equipment, ask for that information.

How elevator worker asbestos claims work

Who may have a claim:

• An elevator constructor, mechanic, helper, or apprentice diagnosed with an asbestos disease.
• A family member exposed through the worker's clothing.
• The family of a worker who has died, through a wrongful death claim where state law allows.

Where compensation may come from:

• Asbestos trusts. Many makers of asbestos fireproofing, insulation, and building products went bankrupt and set up a bankruptcy trust to pay claims. W. R. Grace, which made Zonolite Mono-Kote fireproofing, is one example; its personal injury claims are paid by the WRG Asbestos PI Trust. See how asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against makers and sellers still in business, and in some states against building owners or contractors who controlled the site. See mesothelioma lawsuits.
• Workers' compensation through your employer, depending on your state.

We reconstruct the product exposure. Elevator workers moved from building to building. We build a list of your jobs from union records, Social Security earnings records, and your memory. Then we match those buildings and years to the fireproofing, brake, door, and building products known to have been used there. This is called product identification. You start with what you remember, and we fill in the rest.

If you have not been diagnosed but are concerned, our free screening is a chest X-ray read by a B-reader, with a CT scan if needed. It looks for asbestos changes in the lungs. It is not a test for mesothelioma. See our free asbestos health test.