About American Can Co

American Can Company ranked among the largest metal packaging manufacturers in the United States throughout the twentieth century. The company operated facilities across the country — including a Missouri plant — manufacturing steel and aluminum cans, containers, and related industrial packaging products at scale.

That operation required:

  • High-temperature ovens and curing equipment used to cure lacquers and coatings on food and beverage cans
  • Steam distribution systems providing process heat throughout the facility
  • Boilers and pressure vessels generating that steam
  • Electrical switchgear and wiring systems requiring fire-resistant insulation
  • Mechanical equipment including pumps, valves, compressors, and drive systems

The Missouri facility reportedly employed hundreds of workers across multiple trades over the decades of its operation. American Can Company rebranded as Primerica Corporation in 1987 before divesting its manufacturing operations. The asbestos-containing materials allegedly embedded throughout its infrastructure remain an occupational health concern for workers, retirees, and family members who may have been exposed during those operating years.

General Equipment at American Can Co

The equipment below represents the systems and infrastructure documented or typically present at this facility during the era when asbestos-containing materials were specified in industrial construction. This is general facility-equipment reference — not a legal attribution of any specific product, manufacturer, or exposure event to this facility. Material-category and manufacturer information is addressed in the AsbestosIndex Product Crosswalk linked under the records table below.

Industrial Boilers View crosswalk › Process Piping View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Block Insulation View crosswalk › Valves View crosswalk › Gaskets View crosswalk › Pumps View crosswalk › Heat Exchangers View crosswalk › Cooling Equipment View crosswalk ›

Documented Asbestos Evidence — Missouri

The records below are verified, state-documented asbestos removals at this facility. Each entry represents a regulated abatement project where the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (Missouri DNR) was notified under federal NESHAP rules, the work was logged, and the asbestos-containing material was confirmed and removed under regulated conditions. These are not allegations or estimates — they are paper records tying documented asbestos-containing material to this specific site.

No Missouri DNR NESHAP abatement notifications have been identified for this facility in current public records. Per the framing above, absence of state-agency documentation should not be read as absence of asbestos — only as absence of a formal, regulated abatement event meeting reporting thresholds. Workers who recall encountering pipe insulation, block insulation, gaskets, or other asbestos-era construction materials at this facility may still have viable claims regardless of whether a state record exists.

Material Categories in Documented Records

The materials documented above (and similar asbestos-containing materials commonly encountered in records of this type) appear in the AsbestosIndex catalog with historical manufacturer and trust-fund information. Click a category to view manufacturers historically associated with that material:

Thermal System Insulation View crosswalk › Asbestos-Cement Board View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Roofing & Flashing View crosswalk › Spray Fireproofing View crosswalk › Floor Tile & Mastic View crosswalk › Ceiling Tile View crosswalk › Gaskets & Packing View crosswalk ›

Who May Have Been Exposed at American Can Co

The following craft workers and production employees at American Can Co’s Missouri facility may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials through their regular job duties.

Insulators — Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1, St. Louis

Members of Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 — the St. Louis local representing insulation workers across Missouri and southern Illinois — worked directly with asbestos-containing pipe covering, block insulation, and insulating cement as a routine part of their trade. They:

  • Cut, shaped, and applied asbestos-containing materials to hot pipes, boilers, and processing equipment
  • Generated airborne fiber concentrations through direct handling and cutting operations
  • Faced among the highest documented exposure levels of any occupational group during the peak decades of asbestos use — the 1950s through 1970s
  • Worked not only at American Can Co but across many facilities throughout the Mississippi River industrial corridor, creating a multi-site exposure history

Pipefitters and Steamfitters — UA Local 562, St. Louis

Members of UA Local 562 routinely disturbed existing asbestos-containing insulation when cutting, welding, and repairing steam and process piping. Their exposure came from:

  • Cutting into pipe sections that fractured asbestos-containing insulation and released fibers directly into the breathing zone
  • Welding and repairing steam lines covered with asbestos-containing materials
  • Handling asbestos-containing gaskets and packing materials during routine valve maintenance
  • Multi-trade turnarounds and shutdowns where pipe work and insulation removal happened simultaneously in enclosed spaces

UA Local 562 members frequently worked at multiple industrial facilities throughout the region, creating cross-facility exposure histories that an experienced attorney can document and use to establish liability against multiple defendants.

Boilermakers — Boilermakers Local 27, St. Louis

Members of Boilermakers Local 27 maintained and repaired boilers and pressure vessels that supplied steam throughout the facility. Their asbestos exposure allegedly included:

  • Removal and replacement of refractory linings, rope gaskets, and block insulation — most containing asbestos-containing materials during the relevant era
  • Confined-space work inside boiler drums and fireboxes where fiber concentrations during refractory removal may have been especially high
  • Chipping, grinding, and breaking old refractory materials that generated substantial airborne dust
  • Outage work at Missouri power plants and at steel and chemical facilities along the river — a cross-facility exposure record that carries significant legal weight when building a mesothelioma claim

Electricians — IBEW and Independent Contractors

Electricians encountered asbestos-containing materials through:

  • Wiring insulation, electrical panel components, bus duct insulation, and terminal block materials
  • Bystander exposure when working near insulators, pipefitters, and boilermakers disturbing asbestos-containing materials in shared, enclosed spaces
  • Work in electrical rooms and switchgear areas where spray-applied fireproofing or insulating materials may have been present on overhead surfaces

Maintenance Mechanics and Millwrights

Maintenance mechanics and millwrights performed repair work across the entire facility, facing asbestos exposure through:

  • Routine valve packing replacement, custom gasket cutting, and repair of asbestos-insulated equipment
  • Repeated, cumulative exposure events clustered during equipment overhauls
  • Access to virtually every area of the plant — a work pattern that makes exposure documentation both broad and complex

Production Workers and Equipment Operators

Workers on the production floor who never directly handled asbestos-containing materials may have been exposed as bystanders when nearby maintenance or repair activities generated asbestos dust. Bystander exposure was a documented occupational pathway in facilities where trades and production workers shared space — particularly during high-activity maintenance periods when multiple crafts worked simultaneously.

Supervisors and Foremen

Supervisory personnel present in work areas where asbestos-containing materials were installed, removed, or repaired may have been exposed without directly handling the materials. Routine visits to active maintenance areas during insulation removal or gasket replacement created exposure opportunity that courts have consistently recognized as legally cognizable.

Missouri — Filing Deadline & Next Steps

Missouri law gives mesothelioma and asbestos-disease claimants 5 years from the date of medical diagnosis to file a personal-injury lawsuit (Mo. Rev. Stat. § 516.120). For wrongful-death claims after an asbestos-related death, the filing window is 3 years from the date of death (Mo. Rev. Stat. § 537.100). The two deadlines run on separate tracks — preserving one does not extend the other.

The personal-injury clock runs from diagnosis, not from exposure. Mesothelioma latency is typically 20 to 50 years, so workers exposed in the 1950s–1980s are being diagnosed today.

Practical first steps

  1. Document what you remember. Pay stubs, W-2s, union cards, photographs, coworker names, and dates of employment. The WorkChain widget on this page can save a copy you can email yourself.
  2. Preserve medical records. Pathology reports, biopsy results, imaging, and pulmonary-function tests are central to both civil claims and trust-fund filings.
  3. Identify household members. Spouses who laundered work clothing and children of plant workers are eligible for secondary-exposure claims when diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease.
  4. Speak with an asbestos attorney with Missouri experience. The first conversation is free and confidential. Asbestos trust-fund claims and civil claims run on different tracks — both can be pursued in parallel.

Asbestos-Related Diseases — Missouri

Asbestos fiber exposure can cause several specific diseases that typically appear decades after the original exposure. The latency period — the gap between exposure and diagnosis — usually runs 20 to 50 years. That's why workers exposed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s are receiving diagnoses today.

Mesothelioma

A rare, aggressive cancer that affects the lining of the lungs (pleural mesothelioma), abdomen (peritoneal), or heart (pericardial). Mesothelioma is almost exclusively caused by asbestos exposure, which is why a mesothelioma diagnosis often points directly to historical workplace exposure. Average latency from first exposure to diagnosis is 30-50 years.

Asbestosis

A chronic, non-cancerous scarring of lung tissue caused by inhaled asbestos fibers. Asbestosis causes progressive shortness of breath, persistent cough, and reduced lung function. It does not improve with treatment, and it is a recognized basis for a claim under most trust schedules and civil claims.

Lung Cancer

Asbestos exposure significantly increases the risk of lung cancer, particularly when combined with a history of smoking. Asbestos-related lung cancer is compensable under the same trust schedules and civil claim avenues as mesothelioma.

Other Recognized Diseases

Pleural plaques, pleural thickening, laryngeal cancer, ovarian cancer, and certain gastrointestinal cancers are also recognized as asbestos-related under various trust schedules and case-law authorities, though eligibility and proof requirements vary by claim type.

If you have any of these diagnoses and you worked at this facility, lived with someone who did, or were exposed in any documented capacity, you may have a claim worth pursuing. Speak with an attorney before assuming you don't qualify.

Cross-State & Regional Corridor Workers

American Can Co’s Missouri operations sat within the broader industrial corridor running along the Mississippi River from the St. Louis metropolitan area northward through the Missouri and Illinois river bottoms. This corridor encompasses facilities such as the Labadie and Portage des Sioux power plants, the Granite City Steel complex across the river in Madison County, Illinois, and the Monsanto chemical operations in St. Louis County — all facilities where asbestos-containing materials were reportedly used extensively during the same era. Workers in this corridor frequently moved between employers, carrying exposure histories that cross both state lines and industry categories.

Data Sources — Missouri

Information about facility equipment, industrial materials, and occupational records referenced on this page is drawn from publicly available sources where applicable, including:

If specific equipment or product claims in this article are sourced from a non-public database, the source is identified parenthetically within the text above.