Product Description
U.S. Steel Corporation operated integrated steel mills — Gary Works, Fairfield Works, Fairless Works, Edgar Thomson, South Works, and others — where slab, billet, and bloom stock passed through reheat furnaces before entering the rolling mill line. According to publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation, the reheat-furnace hearths, skid rails, walking-beam furnace supports, and roller-hearth roll insulation at USS mills incorporated asbestos-bearing refractory brick, insulating block, and refractory-fiber blanket sourced through USS specification programs and applied by mill refractory crews.
Plaintiffs alleged that the roll-refractory application — asbestos insulation packed inside roller-hearth rolls and around skid-rail cooling supports — was a high-frequency disturbance point, replaced on regular outage cycles. Hearth refractory was similarly rebuilt on scheduled campaigns.
Workers Exposed
Trades allegedly encountering asbestos through USS rolling-mill roll refractory include:
- Refractory masons and bricklayers (BAC) rebuilding reheat-furnace hearths and re-packing roller-hearth roll insulation during outages.
- Millwrights performing roll change-out — pulling worn rolls and installing rebuilt rolls carrying asbestos insulation packages.
- Steelworkers (USW) operating mill-line equipment adjacent to hot-face refractory disturbance and skid-rail work.
- Boilermakers performing reheat-furnace pressure-part repair alongside refractory demolition.
- Demolition crews tearing down obsolete reheat-furnace lines during mill modernization campaigns.
Take-home exposure via contaminated work clothing was a commonly alleged pathway in USS mill-town family populations.