Case Study - Pipe and fittings warehouse worker

Brianna spent 16 years, from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s, working in the warehouse of a cast-iron pipe and fittings manufacturer in Tyler, Texas. Her job involved stocking pipe fittings and checking and shipping pipe and gaskets — materials that, for much of that period, commonly contained asbestos insulation and gasket material. She also worked briefly for an energy company in Colorado and, earlier in her career, at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Tyler, retrieving bottles on the production floor.

Brianna never smoked. Diagnosed with lung cancer in March 2023, she and her husband continue to live in Lubbock, and her case highlights the often-overlooked exposure risks faced by warehouse and shipping workers who handled industrial pipe products for decades.

Brianna’s job kept her constantly around the products moving through the warehouse floor — pallets of pipe fittings, boxes of gaskets, and packing material that, unbeknownst to her at the time, often contained asbestos fiber to withstand heat and pressure. Coworkers she worked alongside for those sixteen years have become important sources of information as her family works to document exactly which products she handled and how often.