Why Fort Worth Workers and Families Are at Risk for Asbestos-Related Disease

Fort Worth's industrial identity was shaped by three overlapping sectors that each generated significant asbestos exposure in the mid-20th century: defense aerospace manufacturing, the historic Fort Worth Stockyards and meat-packing industry, and the rail operations that made Fort Worth a transportation hub for the American Southwest. The aerospace and defense plants that grew around Carswell Air Force Base employed thousands of workers in aircraft manufacturing and assembly (environments where asbestos was used extensively in brake systems, gaskets, insulation around jet engines, heat shields, and the fireproofing materials that lined production facilities). Workers who assembled military and commercial aircraft over multi-decade careers in Fort Worth's defense plants faced sustained exposure to asbestos-containing materials across multiple product categories.

Fort Worth's historic Stockyards and its associated meat-packing plants were among the largest in the southern United States, employing thousands of workers in processing facilities where asbestos insulation in steam lines, boilers, refrigeration systems, and building structures was standard through the 1970s. Boilermakers, pipefitters, insulators, electricians, and maintenance workers in Fort Worth's meat-packing industry faced asbestos exposure across facilities that processed continuously, seven days a week during peak seasons. Fort Worth's role as a major rail hub with multiple rail yards and the infrastructure to support a continent-scale freight network, brought railroad workers into sustained contact with asbestos-insulated locomotive components, rail car brake systems, and the maintenance facilities that serviced them.

Helicopter manufacturing, another major component of Fort Worth's defense industrial economy, added an additional exposure pathway for workers who installed asbestos-containing insulation, brake components, and fire-resistant materials in helicopter production and maintenance. Second-hand asbestos exposure affected Fort Worth families across all of these sectors, as fibers carried home from defense plants, stockyards, rail yards, and maintenance facilities exposed spouses and children who never worked in industry themselves. Danziger & De Llano has represented Fort Worth workers and Tarrant County families in both occupational and household secondary-exposure asbestos claims.