McCook, Illinois

McCook is a village near the Des Plaines River in Cook County, Illinois. A suburb of Chicago, McCook has a population of only 254 in a 2.6 square-mile area. McCook was incorporated in 1926, and named for John J. McCook, a Santa Fe Railroad director. Despite its small size, McCook has a high concentration of manufacturing and industry. The McCook Quarry, currently operated by Vulcan Materials Company, has been active for more than a hundred years. Other McCook employers include K&K Iron Works, Inc., Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD), UOP, Inc. and Wertheimer Box Corporation.

McCook developed slowly, in part due to the local landscape, which was marshy and prone to flooding. The arrival of the railroad and the establishment of several quarries in the late 19th century brought an influx of immigrant labor and the growth of other industries. In the 1930s, General Motors Electro-Motive Company division began manufacturing diesel-electric locomotives. Although locomotive manufacturing has been moved to EMD's Canadian plant, the company is still headquartered at the McCook facility. Sheet metal was another prominent industry in McCook. Alcoa opened up a new plant in the mid-1940s. Reynolds Metals Company also had a plant in McCook, which was sold to McCook Metals in 1998, before closing for good in 2002. In the 1920s, Armour Packing Company was developing new uses for waste products from its meat packing business. In 1949, Armour began building a plant in McCook to manufacture fatty acids and amines for use in plastics manufacturing. The plant was later operated by AkzoNobel until its closure in 2007. In 1921, Universal Oil Products Company established the Riverside Laboratory. UOP, which is currently owned by Honeywell, continues to operate a manufacturing facility in McCook.

McCook has a history of heavy industrial activity, much of it concentrated in a time period when asbestos-containing materials were widely used. Exposure to asbestos creates an ongoing risk to workers of asbestos-related disease, such as mesothelioma. If you were exposed to asbestos in McCook and have been diagnosed with mesothelioma, you should also consider contacting a mesothelioma law firm.

Jobsites in McCook where Asbestos Exposure Occurred

A number of jobsites in McCook, IL have been identified as harboring asbestos containing materials. These sites, at one point in their history, were known to have exposed a variety of tradesmen to asbestos. We will be documenting in more detail how asbestos exposure occurred at these sites in the future on this web site.