Secondary & Household Asbestos Exposure Claims

Quick answer

Covers spouses, children, and other household members exposed to asbestos carried home on work clothes, tools, or in a car
The claim is built around the worker's job history even when the worker themselves never got sick
The working family member does not need to be living for the claim to proceed
Laundry is the classic exposure route — shaking out coveralls released fiber directly into a person's breathing space
No upfront cost, and we come to you. Call (814) 298-4635

Erie’s household exposure has a particular shape because so much of the city’s work was done in company neighbourhoods. Lawrence Park was built around the GE plant and the men who worked there walked home; the lakefront mills drew from the streets behind them. Work clothes came into those houses every day, and were washed at home, by someone who never set foot in a plant.

Secondary exposure — take-home exposure — is what happened when asbestos left the plant on somebody's clothes. A worker at the GE locomotive works at Lawrence Park, the Hammermill paper mills, and the city’s forge, foundry and boiler shops finished a shift covered in dust, drove home through Lawrence Park, Wesleyville, Harborcreek, Millcreek, Fairview, Girard, the Bayfront, and the East and West sides of the city, and the dust came with him: into the car, onto the porch, into the hamper. Whoever handled that laundry got a concentrated dose, often daily, for years. Frequently that was a wife. Sometimes it was a child who hugged a father in his work clothes.

These claims are legally the same in one respect and different in another. The same, in that the responsibility rests on the companies that made and sold asbestos products they knew to be dangerous. Different, in that the person who got sick has no employment record of their own. Nothing in a personnel file will show it. So the case has to be assembled around the worker's history — his employer, his job title, his years, the products he handled — and then connected to the household routine that carried fiber home.

That means the questions we ask are domestic rather than industrial, and people are sometimes surprised by them. Who did the laundry. Whether the work clothes were washed with everything else. Whether he shook them out on the back step first. Whether he changed at the plant or drove home in them. Whether the same car carried the family on weekends. These ordinary details are, quite literally, the evidence.

The working family member does not need to be alive, and often is not — sometimes he never developed an asbestos disease at all, which throws families off entirely. Neither fact ends the claim. What matters is that his job put asbestos in the house. Erie has its own county court in the far northwest corner of the state, a long way from the rest of Pennsylvania’s asbestos docket. Venue follows the defendants rather than the plaintiff, and the manufacturers behind an Erie work history sold nationally — so Philadelphia’s dedicated asbestos program is frequently available despite the distance, and which forum fits affects the pace more than anything else.

Time limits apply and generally run from the diagnosis rather than from the exposure, which was often decades earlier. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

That matters because the person who is sick here is frequently a wife or a daughter, a generation removed from the job and with no employment record of her own to point at. The claim does not depend on her having worked anywhere. It depends on reconstructing his — which employer, which years, which materials — and the household detail is the bridge back to it.

Call (814) 298-4635

Secondary & Household Exposure Claims — fees and costs in Erie

Consultation and initial case review, at home or at the hospital	$0
Mesothelioma or asbestos claim, handled on contingency	No fee unless there is a recovery — the percentage is agreed in writing before representation begins
Requesting employment, union, and military records on your behalf	Included in the case review

No fee unless there is a recovery. Any fee is a percentage agreed in writing before representation begins.

Secondary & Household Exposure Claims — questions, answered

My mother washed my father’s work clothes from the paper mill for twenty years. Is that a claim?

It can be. Household exposure claims rest on the worker’s job, years and employer putting asbestos into the house, not on the person who became ill ever having worked there. The laundry is often the single most important detail in the account.

He worked at three different Erie plants over his career. Does that confuse a household claim?

It usually strengthens it, though it takes more untangling. Each employer points at a different group of product manufacturers, so a household that took in dust from a locomotive shop, a paper mill and a forge floor may have more routes open than one tied to a single plant.

My father worked at GE and we lived in Lawrence Park, a few streets from the plant. Does that matter?

It can. A short walk home meant work clothes were in the house most of the day rather than only at the end of a shift, and in a company town like Lawrence Park that pattern repeated across a whole neighbourhood.

I never worked around asbestos. My husband did. Can I still have a claim?

Yes. Take-home or secondary exposure claims exist precisely for household members who breathed asbestos carried home on a worker's clothing, tools, or vehicle.

My father worked in the mills but never got sick. Does that matter?

No. The claim depends on his exposure to asbestos products at work and on the dust reaching the household, not on whether he developed a disease himself.