Plymouth Steel

In 1941 the Plymouth Steel Corporation was established in Detroit, Michigan. They are a steel producing company that creates products for the military, automotive and other key industries. Plymouth Steel serves the United States, Canada and Mexico, and has had to hire a large number of employees in order to keep up with the demand for their products.

Accepting employment at any steel mill also means accepting certain well known risks. Every industrial job site utilizes large equipment that can be dangerous, and the very nature of the work is often hazardous. To combat these risks, workers are well trained and given protective gear to help keep them safe. The large machinery is protected with heavy duty insulation to maintain it and keep it operating safely and efficiently. Sadly, for many years the very things that were designed to safeguard employees actually created an unexpected threat for them.

For years products such as insulation and fire retardant protective gear was made out of asbestos, a mineral that is found in large natural deposits all over the United States. This mineral is durable, very strong and able to not only hold up in a small fire, but also to help stop the spread of the flames. Manufacturers realized those traits early on, and since the mineral was easy to find and inexpensive to mine, asbestos was used as the key ingredient for industrial goods and a host of other items. What no one realized at the time was that they material that was intended to make the work place safer was actually poisonous, and it would eventually be responsible for making many people ill and claiming an untold number of lives.

Although the goods that were made with this poisonous mineral were built to last, microscopic asbestos fibers could easily break apart and float in the air. People regularly breathed these fibers in while working and the asbestos would then cling to the lining of their respiratory system. Over time the poison would seep into their bodies, and the end result was often damaged tissues, respiratory disorders that made it difficult to breathe and lung cancer.

Among the more well known and feared asbestos-related cancers is mesothelioma. It is an incurable malignancy that can be difficult to manage. Many of the workers at Plymouth Steel have developed this disease after being exposed to the asbestos laden products that were supposed to keep them safe. Since the symptoms of this and other related diseases often take more than a decade to become noticeable, even people who haven’t actively worked at this Detroit based plant in the past several years could still be at risk today. Even though the mesothelioma survival rate is discouraging, yet early diagnosis and treatments such as mesothelioma radiation may help improve the prognosis for this cancer.