Louisiana Mesothelioma by the Numbers: Avondale, Refineries, and a One Year Deadline

Louisiana does not always show up in state-by-state mesothelioma rankings built on raw case counts, because its population is smaller than California, Texas, or Pennsylvania. The picture changes when the data is age-adjusted and broken out by sex. CDC MMWR analysis of 1999 through 2020 mortality places Louisiana among the seven states with female mesothelioma death rates above 6.0 per 1,000,000 women aged 25 and older, alongside Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin.

The reason is concentrated industrial exposure. Avondale Shipyard, Port of New Orleans longshore work, and the refinery and petrochemical corridor along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans put asbestos into the air for decades. Workers carried fibers home on their clothes, which is how family members, including wives who laundered those clothes, developed mesothelioma years later.

Louisiana in National Context

For a full comparison across all 50 states, see the mesothelioma rates by state rankings.

Where Exposure Happened

Louisiana’s mesothelioma burden traces to three primary industrial corridors.

Avondale Shipyard

Avondale operated on the Mississippi River near New Orleans from 1938 to 2014. At its WWII peak the yard employed roughly 25,000 to 26,000 workers, making it Louisiana’s largest private employer. Avondale built Navy destroyer escorts including USS Patterson, USS Vreeland, USS Trippe, USS Ouellet, USS Joseph Hewes, USS Bowen, USS Paul, and USS Cook, along with LSTs, other amphibious ships, commercial tankers, and cargo vessels.

Asbestos was used in pipe insulation, boiler lagging, gaskets, fireproofing, and thermal blankets through the 1970s. Insulators, pipefitters, welders, boilermakers, electricians, and laggers inhaled fibers as part of their daily work. Secondary aggregators describe Avondale as the single largest mesothelioma exposure site in Louisiana.

Refinery and Petrochemical Corridor

Louisiana’s refinery and petrochemical corridor runs along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Refineries and chemical plants in St. James, St. John the Baptist, Ascension, and Iberville parishes used asbestos insulation, gaskets, and refractories on boilers, furnaces, and reactors through the 1970s. Maintenance crews, pipefitters, insulators, and process operators handled asbestos products on a daily basis.

Port of New Orleans Longshore Work

Longshoremen at the Port of New Orleans handled raw asbestos cargo and asbestos-containing products during the mid-20th century. Take-home exposure from longshore work clothes is the factual basis for the Henry Pete v. Boland Marine case covered in the Louisiana verdicts and settlements piece. Family members, including children who hugged a parent in dusty clothes or spouses who washed them, developed mesothelioma decades later.

Who Is Most at Risk

• Avondale shipyard workers. Insulators, pipefitters, welders, boilermakers, electricians, and laggers
• Refinery and petrochemical maintenance crews along the Mississippi River corridor
• Longshoremen at the Port of New Orleans
• Construction tradespeople working in pre-1980 commercial and industrial buildings
• Spouses and children exposed secondarily through work clothes carried home

High-risk occupations across the U.S. share the same exposure profile. A welder at Avondale and a welder at a Texas Gulf Coast shipyard faced many of the same asbestos products.

Louisiana’s Legal Framework

Louisiana’s prescriptive period is one year. For personal injury claims tied to mesothelioma, the clock runs from the date of diagnosis under the discovery rule. For wrongful death, it runs from the date of death. One year is among the shortest windows in the country.

Under Cole v. Celotex Corp., 599 So.2d 1058 (La. 1992), asbestos exposures that occurred before August 1, 1980 are governed by Louisiana’s pre-comparative-fault joint-and-several regime, with joint tortfeasors allocated in equal virile shares. Exposures after August 1, 1980 fall under comparative fault per La. Civ. Code art. 2323.

Barrosse v. Huntington Ingalls (5th Cir. 2023) held that the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act does not preempt Louisiana state-law tort claims for certain pre-1972 Avondale asbestos exposures. The decision preserved state-court remedies for a narrow window of pre-1972 Avondale workers. Robichaux v. Huntington Ingalls (E.D. La. 2023) applied that framework to deny summary judgment in a 1961 to 1979 Avondale insulator’s case.

Gulf Coast Context

Louisiana’s industrial profile overlaps with neighboring Gulf Coast states. The Texas mesothelioma statistics for the Gulf Coast cover a parallel corridor of refineries, petrochemical plants, and shipyards. Many of the same product manufacturers, boiler systems, and insulation brands appear in both Louisiana and Texas cases. Workers who moved between the two states for shipyard or refinery work often have multi-state exposure histories.

Compensation options for Louisiana workers include bankruptcy trust fund claims and state-court lawsuits. Verdicts and settlements are covered separately in the Louisiana verdicts and settlements piece.