What Happened at Nuturn Corporation?
In 1984, a working union member at a Nuturn Corporation brake manufacturing plant in New Castle, Indiana, contacted OSHA regarding possible toxins at the workplace. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) received a request for a Health Hazard Evaluation. The employee allegedly had concerns about the presence of asbestos in the workshop, placing staff at risk of exposure.
OSHA did in fact get the message and a subsequent survey detected asbestos levels that exceeded the allowable amount at the time. NIOSH conducted worker pulmonary function tests and chest X-rays, and many workers had abnormal pulmonary function test results. Five workers also showed X-ray abnormalities and one showed signs of asbestosis.
At Nuturn, asbestos was detected in 51 personal and 1 of 3 area air samples. Twenty of the 170 workers who performed pulmonary function tests had some type of abnormal test result. Twelve workers had evidence of obstructive impairment. There were 135 production workers and 35 salaried workers on staff at the time.
NIOSH investigators concluded that a health hazard did exist, due to asbestos on the premises. To give you an idea, of the timeline of events, Nuturn began manufacturing brake shoe linings at the New Castle, Indiana facility six years earlier in 1978. The plant was originally operated by the Firestone Company then purchased by Lear-Siegler Corporation in 1976, before Nuturn took over.
In 1984, Nuturn produced 50,000 sets of brake shoes per month. To increase the friction properties of the brakes, asbestos was used in production, which was very common in the 1970s and ‘80s
Asbestos was also widely used in industrial building materials for fireproofing and thermal insulation. The chronic inhalation of asbestos dust, however, resulted in thousands of American workers falling ill and developing aggressive forms of lung cancer, mesothelioma, and cancer of the colon, esophagus and stomach. Inhalation also causes asbestosis, an irreversible lung disease caused by asbestos dust.
Was I Exposed to Asbestos at Nuturn?
It is possible for any former Nuturn employee to get a confirmed diagnosis even now, forty years after exposure. There can be a long latency period between the initial toxic exposure and the development of mesothelioma.
OSHA, along with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now consider asbestos a known cancer-causing agent. The CDC has noted there is absolutely no safe level of exposure. Those who have been exposed at their workplace have developed related illnesses that include:
