The International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers (IW / IABSORIW) is one of the foundational North American construction unions. The parent organization was founded on February 4, 1896, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — the industrial capital of American structural steel — and today maintains its international headquarters in Washington, D.C. From the first riveted skyscrapers of the late 19th century through the modern high-strength bolted, welded, and rebar-reinforced construction era, IW members have erected the structural skeleton of virtually every commercial high-rise, industrial process plant, power station, refinery, steel mill, bridge, stadium, hospital, and government building in the United States.

The craft is organized around several overlapping classifications — structural iron workers (erecting the structural steel frame — columns, beams, girders, trusses, and joists), reinforcing iron workers (“rod-busters” — placing and tying rebar in cast-in-place concrete decks, walls, footings, columns, and slabs), ornamental iron workers (curtain wall, storefront, stair and rail, decorative metals), precast erectors (setting precast concrete and asbestos-cement panels and tees), and riggers + machinery movers (heavy rigging, hoisting, and machinery placement inside operating industrial plants). IW members bolt, weld, plumb-up, torque, tie, burn, cut, and place every category of structural steel and reinforcing element in commercial and industrial construction.

The asbestos era

From roughly the mid-1950s through the 1973 U.S. EPA ban on spray-applied asbestos fireproofing, virtually every commercial high-rise, industrial plant, and government building constructed in the United States had its structural steel skeleton coated in sprayed asbestos fireproofing. Building codes in every major American city — New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cleveland — required a rated fire-resistive covering on structural steel columns, beams, and floor decking. Through this entire ~20-year window, the code-compliant, low-cost, spray-applied solution was asbestos.

Iron workers did not choose this — but iron workers were the trade connected to the structural steel while the spray was being applied. The steel-erection sequence and the fireproofing-application sequence overlapped physically and temporally in a way no other trade experienced:

  • The connecting crew allegedly bolted and welded moment connections at the beam-to-column joint while the spray crew was coating the same column two floors below and the same floor’s decking overhead.
  • The plumbing-up crew allegedly ran turnbuckle cables and hydraulic jacks to plumb columns into vertical alignment while sprayed asbestos was being applied to the columns they were working from.
  • The decking crew allegedly laid, tack-welded, and puddle-welded corrugated metal floor deck to the beam top flanges directly beneath the spray gun as the underside of the deck above them received its coating.
  • The rebar crew allegedly tied reinforcing steel in slab pours where sprayed fireproofing overspray settled onto the rebar mat during placement.

The daily reality on nearly every commercial high-rise and industrial plant constructed between the mid-1950s and 1973 was that IW members were inside the spray cloud — plumbing-up columns, bolting up braces, welding moment connections, tacking decking, and placing rebar — while the fireproofing crews above, below, and beside them were coating the same structural steel with W.R. Grace Monokote, U.S. Mineral Products Cafco Blaze-Shield, Asbestospray Limpet, and competing sprayed asbestos formulations.

Sprayed asbestos fireproofing — the defining exposure

The characteristic exposure profile of the structural iron worker is not one activity — it is continuous, daily, career-long proximity to sprayed asbestos fireproofing during the physical act of connecting structural steel. The spray was applied wet from a plaster-style pump to columns, beams, and the underside of the floor deck above. It dried in minutes, cracked and shed as the building shifted and settled, and rained overspray, overspray-fallout, and dislodged fibers onto every iron worker working on the steel below the active spray zone.

  • Overspray fallout. Sprayed fireproofing allegedly overspray-fell onto iron workers plumbing-up columns and welding moment connections on floors below the active spray application. There was no containment, no ventilation, no respiratory protection.
  • Impact-shed fiber. As iron workers bolted-up, torqued, and welded on freshly-coated steel, hammer impact and vibration allegedly shed sprayed asbestos fibers directly onto the workers.
  • Torch-work through coated steel. When a torch was needed to burn a bolt hole, chase a missed connection, or cut a mis-fabricated member, the flame allegedly aerosolized the sprayed asbestos coating on the adjacent steel.
  • Rebar tie-off through overspray. Reinforcing iron workers allegedly tied rebar in slabs where sprayed fireproofing overspray had settled onto the rebar mat before the pour.

The Selikoff mesothelioma record

Dr. Irving Selikoff’s Mount Sinai occupational-health research group documented, across a series of foundational studies beginning in the 1960s and continuing into follow-up cohort work in later decades, that iron workers were allegedly among the construction trades with documented elevated mesothelioma incidence rates. The pathway was the daily, cumulative in-cloud contact with sprayed asbestos fireproofing on structural steel across the ~20-year commercial and industrial build-out that preceded the 1973 EPA ban.

Allied trades

IW members worked alongside several allied crafts that share parts of the asbestos exposure history:

  • Sprayed fireproofing applicators — the trade that applied the sprayed asbestos coating directly onto the structural steel the IW crew had just erected
  • Heat & Frost Insulators (HFIAW) — the trade that installed asbestos pipe covering on the process piping the IW crew had just supported on its piperack
  • Boilermakers (IBB) — building and rebuilding the pressure vessels the IW crew set into place
  • UA Pipefitters, Steamfitters & Plumbers — running the process piping across the piperack the IW crew erected
  • Sheet Metal Workers (SMART) — hanging ductwork with asbestos-fabric expansion joints beneath the IW-erected floor deck
  • Bricklayers / Refractory Masons (BAC) — laying asbestos-refractory brick inside the steel mill and refinery furnace shells the IW crew erected

The IW trade allegedly has a documented mesothelioma incidence well above the general-population baseline, driven by uniquely proximate contact with sprayed asbestos fireproofing during structural steel erection across the mid-1950s to 1973 commercial and industrial build-out.

Today

Sprayed asbestos fireproofing was banned by the U.S. EPA in 1973 and was replaced across the 1970s and 1980s by asbestos-free spray formulations (mineral wool, cementitious, and intumescent coatings). Iron workers who entered the trade in the mid-1970s or later worked through a substantially safer materials regime. But the disease tail of the asbestos era continues. Iron workers who entered the trade in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s — now in their 70s, 80s, and 90s — are the population now being diagnosed with mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases at the highest rates.

This site exists to document that history and, where applicable, to help affected IW members and families navigate the claims process under the asbestos bankruptcy trusts and state-specific litigation frameworks that compensate workers and survivors of asbestos exposure.

Free, confidential case evaluation: Speak with O’Brien Law Firm — (314) 936-2956

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