Chicago Steel Mills: The Southeast Side Asbestos Legacy

For more than a century, the neighborhoods along Chicago’s Southeast Side, South Chicago, South Deering, East Side, Hegewisch, formed one of the largest steelmaking corridors in the world. The mills that defined these communities also exposed generations of workers to asbestos, a material woven into every layer of steel production.

The workers are gone. Many of the mills are demolished. But the diagnoses continue, arriving 30 to 50 years after the last shift, in workers now in their 70s and 80s, and sometimes in their children and spouses.

U.S. Steel South Works

South Works opened in 1882 on the Calumet River at the southern edge of Lake Michigan. Over the next century it grew from 30 hectares to more than 200, expanded by dumping slag into the lake at a rate of five to 10 acres per year.

At its peak, the mill produced structural steel for railroads, bridges, and skyscrapers, including some of the beams that built downtown Chicago. It employed thousands of workers at a time, drawing from the surrounding neighborhoods of South Chicago, South Deering, and East Side.

Asbestos was everywhere inside South Works. It insulated the blast furnaces that ran at temperatures above 2,000 degrees. It wrapped the pipes that carried steam and chemicals between buildings. It lined the ladles that poured molten metal. It protected the electrical systems and the walls of the soaking pits.

For workers who installed, maintained, or worked near this insulation, exposure was continuous. Insulators, pipefitters, millwrights, electricians, and bricklayers handled asbestos materials directly. But steelworkers on the production floor breathed the same air, and exposure accumulated over years and decades.

South Works closed in 1992. The Chicago Park District acquired the site in 2004, but contamination concerns have complicated redevelopment plans.

Wisconsin Steel

Wisconsin Steel opened in 1875 as the John H. Brown Iron and Steel Company in what would become the South Deering neighborhood. International Harvester acquired the mill in 1902 to secure a steel supply for farm equipment manufacturing.

The mill occupied most of the South Deering neighborhood’s industrial footprint. Like South Works, it used asbestos throughout its operations: in furnace insulation, pipe covering, gaskets, and fireproofing materials. Workers in the same trades, insulators, pipefitters, boilermakers, and maintenance crews, faced the heaviest exposure.

Wisconsin Steel’s closure was sudden. International Harvester sold the mill to Envirodyne Industries in 1977. Three years later, amid a strike, falling demand, and financial problems, the mill shut down without warning on March 28, 1980. Approximately 3,500 workers lost their jobs in a single day, many without severance or benefits.

The workers who spent years breathing asbestos dust inside Wisconsin Steel would not learn the cost for decades.

Republic Steel and the East Side

Republic Steel operated a major mill in the East Side neighborhood, later acquired by LTV Steel. It was the last of the three major Southeast Side mills to close, shutting down in 2002 amid the broader collapse of American steelmaking.

Republic’s workers faced the same asbestos exposure as their counterparts at South Works and Wisconsin Steel. The mill’s maintenance shops, power plant, blast furnaces, and rolling mills all contained asbestos materials. Railroad workers who moved materials in and out of the facility were also exposed. The same pattern played out at steel mills across the industrial Midwest, from Cleveland’s Republic and LTV operations to Gary’s U.S. Steel Works just across the state line in Indiana.

Railroads and Beyond

Chicago’s status as the nation’s railroad hub added another layer of exposure. The B&O Railroad, Chicago and Northwestern Railway, and dozens of other lines operated maintenance and repair facilities across the region. Locomotives, railcars, and station buildings all contained asbestos components.

Beyond steel and rail, factories producing boilers, gaskets, brakes, electrical components, and automotive parts used asbestos in their products and facilities. The Calumet Shipyard, Armour Manufacturing, and chemical plants along the Chicago Sanitary Canal created additional exposure for industrial workers in the area.

Take-Home Exposure

The danger extended beyond the mill gates. Workers carried asbestos fibers home on their clothing, hair, and skin. Spouses who laundered work clothes, children who hugged their parents at the door, all breathed the same fibers that were killing the workers themselves.

Recent Cook County verdicts have recognized this exposure pathway. In December 2023, a jury awarded $30 million to the family of a man who developed peritoneal mesothelioma from take-home exposure via his father’s clothing. His father had worked at a Bridgestone Firestone facility in Decatur, but the legal principle applies equally to steel mill families across the Southeast Side. The Virginia Supreme Court’s 2026 ruling in Quisenberry v. Huntington Ingalls further strengthened the legal foundation for these claims nationwide.

What Remains

The steel mills are gone, but their footprint remains. South Works is a contested redevelopment site. Wisconsin Steel’s land has been partially remediated. Republic Steel’s East Side property has been cleared.

What also remains are the asbestos fibers deposited in the lungs of workers and their families decades ago. With latency periods of 20 to 60 years, mesothelioma diagnoses continue to emerge from exposures that occurred at these mills in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

Illinois has 670 documented asbestos exposure sites, the most of any state in the country. The Southeast Side mills account for a significant share. For the families of workers who built Chicago’s steel industry, the legacy is still being written.