Indianapolis built its industrial economy on power generation, pharmaceutical manufacturing, electronics, and automotive components. For most of the 20th century, that economy ran on asbestos-containing materials—pipe covering, block insulation, refractory, gaskets—installed throughout the city’s factories, power stations, and institutional buildings. Thousands of skilled tradespeople in Indianapolis may have been exposed to these materials daily, often without protective equipment or any warning about the health consequences.

The result is a documented wave of diagnoses: mesothelioma, asbestosis, and asbestos-related lung cancer. If you or a family member worked in Indianapolis’s industrial economy and has received one of these diagnoses, this page explains the facilities, the trades, the diseases, and the legal deadlines that govern your claim. Contact an Indiana mesothelioma lawyer promptly—the clock is already running.

URGENT FILING DEADLINE: Indiana’s personal injury statute of limitations under Ind. Code § 34-11-2-4 gives you two years from diagnosis to file an asbestos claim—not two years from the date you were exposed. Wrongful death claims carry a separate two-year deadline under Ind. Code § 34-23-1-1, running from the date of death. These deadlines run independently. Missing either one permanently closes the courthouse door.

Asbestos in Indianapolis Industries

Power Generation Facilities

Indianapolis’s electrical supply depended on high-pressure steam-generating stations operating at several hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Facilities including the Georgetown Power Station, Harding Street Station (operated by what is now AES Indiana), and the Indianapolis Power & Light C.C. Perry K Plant were central to the regional energy grid. The Harding Street Station reportedly operated with a Riley Stoker boiler online in 1976 and a General Electric TC4F26 steam turbine commissioned that same year.

Industrial insulation standards from the 1930s through the 1970s called for asbestos-containing formulations across these plants:

  • Pipe covering on steam distribution lines
  • Block insulation on drums and heat exchangers
  • Insulating cement on fittings and flanges
  • Refractory materials lining fireboxes and furnaces

Boilermakers, insulators, pipefitters, and laborers who built, maintained, and overhauled these systems may have been exposed to asbestos-containing materials during routine operations and scheduled outages. Each facility named here has its own detailed exposure report on this site.

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing: Eli Lilly and Company

Eli Lilly’s Indianapolis campus is one of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturing complexes in the United States. A facility of that scale required steam-generating systems, extensive steam distribution networks, and continuous construction and renovation across its buildings for decades.

Insulators, pipefitters, and millwrights maintaining those systems—and construction tradespeople working building campaigns and overhauls—may have encountered asbestos-containing materials including:

  • Pipe covering
  • Block insulation
  • Floor tile

Demolition and renovation work that disturbed previously installed asbestos-containing materials carries recognized potential for high fiber release. Workers on those projects at Eli Lilly’s Indianapolis facilities may have been exposed.

Electronics and Capacitor Manufacturing

Asbestos use in electronics manufacturing is documented in litigation records but less widely known. Two significant Indianapolis employers appear in that record:

  • P. R. Mallory & Co.’s Indianapolis Capacitor and Battery Plant
  • Western Electric Indianapolis Works

These facilities allegedly used asbestos-containing materials in electrical insulation components, molded product components, and general building infrastructure—boiler rooms, steam distribution systems, and floor tile. Electricians, machine operators, and maintenance personnel at these plants may have been exposed through direct contact with asbestos-bearing components and through ambient conditions in older plant buildings.

Automotive and Transmission Manufacturing: Allison Transmission

Allison Transmission’s Indianapolis facility traces its roots to World War II-era aircraft engine production. The plant involved heavy machining, heat treatment, and large-scale industrial equipment maintenance across many decades of operation.

Asbestos-containing materials were reportedly present in:

  • Friction materials used in mechanical assemblies
  • Gaskets
  • Refractory linings
  • Pipe covering throughout utility systems

Machinists, millwrights, and maintenance mechanics who cut, handled, or worked near these materials may have encountered elevated airborne fiber concentrations.

Institutional Demolition and Renovation: Indianapolis Public Schools

School buildings constructed before the mid-1970s routinely incorporated asbestos-containing materials in:

  • Floor tile and mastic
  • Ceiling tile
  • Pipe insulation
  • Spray-applied fireproofing on structural steel
  • Roofing materials

Demolition and renovation work on these buildings—cutting, breaking, and disturbing previously stable materials—generated substantial fiber release. Construction laborers, demolition crews, and tradespeople on those projects may have been exposed.

Trades at Elevated Risk for Asbestos Exposure in Indianapolis

Certain occupations placed workers in direct, repeated contact with asbestos-containing materials across Indianapolis’s industrial facilities. These trades appear with regularity in mesothelioma and asbestosis litigation:

  • Insulators and pipe coverers: Applied and removed asbestos-containing pipe covering, block insulation, and insulating cement by hand, day after day.
  • Boilermakers: Worked inside and around steam-generating systems where refractory and insulating materials were regularly disturbed during outages and repairs.
  • Pipefitters and steamfitters: Cut, threaded, and flanged pipe systems, often alongside active insulation operations that put fiber into the shared air.
  • Millwrights and industrial mechanics: Maintained turbines, pumps, and rotating equipment fitted with asbestos-containing gaskets and packing.
  • Electricians: Worked in older industrial buildings where asbestos-containing materials were incorporated into electrical panels, switchgear, and conduit insulation.
  • Construction laborers and demolition workers: Performed physically disruptive work that aerosolized settled asbestos-containing material throughout work areas.
  • Sheet metal workers and HVAC mechanics: Cut duct lining and worked alongside insulation crews in mechanical systems where fiber was routinely airborne.
  • Operating engineers: Oversaw and maintained large boiler systems and heavy machinery in environments where asbestos-containing components were common.

Bystander exposure is equally documented in the medical and legal literature. A machinist working near an insulator’s work area, or a painter on scaffolding alongside a boilermaker, may have inhaled fiber concentrations comparable to the tradesperson handling the material directly. You did not have to touch asbestos-containing materials to be exposed.

Asbestos-Containing Materials Reportedly Present in Indianapolis Facilities

Based on facility types and construction eras, the following material categories were reportedly present across Indianapolis industrial and institutional sites:

  • Pipe covering: Pre-formed insulation applied to steam and hot-water distribution lines throughout plant systems.
  • Block insulation: Flat slabs applied to steam drums, heat exchangers, and large vessel surfaces.
  • Insulating cement: Trowel-applied material for fittings, flanges, and irregular surfaces—notorious for generating heavy dust during both application and removal.
  • Refractory materials: High-temperature brick and castable products lining furnaces, boiler fireboxes, and incinerators.
  • Gaskets and packing: Flat sheet gasket material and rope packing used throughout mechanical systems and valve assemblies.
  • Floor tile and mastic: Vinyl-asbestos floor tiles and their adhesive compounds, standard in older industrial and institutional buildings.
  • Spray-applied fireproofing: Applied to structural steel before the mid-1970s; highly friable and capable of releasing fibers at dangerous concentrations once disturbed.

Removing or disturbing any of these materials—during maintenance shutdowns, renovations, or demolition—generates airborne fiber concentrations that exceed modern safety standards by orders of magnitude.

Asbestos exposure causes severe, often fatal diseases. The medical record on this point is unequivocal.

  • Mesothelioma: An aggressive cancer of the pleural lining of the lung, the peritoneal lining of the abdomen, or, rarely, the pericardium. Asbestos exposure is the only known cause. Latency runs 20 to 50 years—which is exactly why workers exposed in the 1950s through 1970s are receiving diagnoses today.
  • Asbestosis: Chronic, progressive scarring of lung tissue caused by inhaled fibers. Lung function declines over time, and the disease continues to worsen even after exposure ends.
  • Asbestos-related lung cancer: Asbestos exposure raises lung cancer risk substantially. Smoking multiplies that risk further.
  • Pleural plaques and pleural thickening: Changes to the pleural lining that impair breathing and confirm significant past exposure.

A latency period of 20 to 50 years means the statute of limitations has nothing to do with when you worked at a facility—it starts when you receive a diagnosis. That distinction is critical, and it is the reason claims remain viable for workers exposed generations ago.

Indiana workers and their families typically have two parallel legal avenues, which an experienced Indiana asbestos attorney can pursue at the same time.

Trust Fund Claims

Dozens of companies that manufactured or distributed asbestos-containing materials filed for bankruptcy protection as asbestos litigation mounted. Federal courts required those companies to establish trust funds. Those trusts collectively hold tens of billions of dollars and continue paying claims today. Trust fund claims and civil lawsuits pursued simultaneously—filing one does not foreclose the other, and a skilled attorney will pursue both.

Civil Lawsuits

Civil claims are filed in state or federal court against solvent manufacturers, distributors, and other responsible parties. These cases may proceed to trial or resolve in settlement. Indiana’s statutes of limitations govern when these claims must be filed, and those deadlines are hard stops.

Indiana Asbestos Filing Deadlines

Indiana sets separate statutes of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death. Both clocks run independently, and both are unforgiving.

Personal injury — under Indiana Code § 34-11-2-4, you have two years from the date of diagnosis to file. In asbestos cases, the clock starts when a physician diagnoses the asbestos-related condition, not when you were exposed.

Wrongful death — under Indiana Code § 34-23-1-1, surviving family members have two years from the date of death to file. This deadline runs entirely separately from the personal injury deadline. A family may hold a wrongful death claim even if the diagnosed worker never filed during his or her lifetime—but only if they act within two years of the death.

Do not assume you have the full two years before taking any action. Employment records age, witnesses become harder to locate, and asbestos bankruptcy trusts have their own internal procedures that take time to complete. Every week of delay narrows your options.

Why Time Matters in Asbestos Cases

Asbestos cases depend on evidence assembled decades after the exposure occurred. Unfortunately, many of the coworkers who shared shifts with you in the earlier years of your career may no longer be reachable. Time is precious.

An experienced Indiana mesothelioma attorney will:

  1. Review your complete work history and identify every facility and trade where asbestos exposure may have occurred.
  2. Match your employment history against documented asbestos use at Indianapolis-area facilities, including those detailed on this site.
  3. Identify all potentially responsible parties—manufacturers of asbestos-containing materials and contractors who allegedly specified or installed them.
  4. File trust fund claims against applicable asbestos bankruptcy trusts simultaneously with any civil litigation.
  5. Gather medical records, employment records, union records, and witness statements before they become unavailable.
  6. Handle the case on a contingency fee basis—no upfront legal costs to you or your family.

Secondary (Take-Home) Asbestos Exposure

Asbestos disease is not confined to workers who handled materials directly. Family members who laundered the work clothes of an Indianapolis industrial worker—clothes coated in asbestos dust from insulation removal, steam system maintenance, or demolition work—may themselves have been exposed to significant fiber concentrations. This secondary, or take-home, exposure has reportedly led to mesothelioma diagnoses in spouses and children who never set foot inside an industrial facility.

If you believe you were exposed through a family member’s work history, you may hold your own independent legal claim. Consult an Indiana asbestos attorney to evaluate your situation.

What Indianapolis Workers and Families Need to Know

  • Indianapolis’s industrial economy—power generation, pharmaceutical manufacturing, electronics, automotive components, institutional construction—created decades of potential occupational asbestos exposure across multiple trades and worksites.
  • Trades including insulators, boilermakers, pipefitters, millwrights, electricians, and laborers may have been exposed to asbestos-containing pipe covering, block insulation, refractory, gaskets, and floor tile at documented Indianapolis facilities.
  • Mesothelioma and asbestosis typically appear 20 to 50 years after exposure. A diagnosis today likely traces to work performed in the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s.
  • Indiana law sets a two-year personal injury deadline under § 34-11-2-4 from diagnosis, and a two-year wrongful death deadline under § 34-23-1-1 from date of death. These deadlines run independently and are absolute.
  • Trust fund claims and civil lawsuits pursued simultaneously. Indiana asbestos attorneys handle these cases on contingency—no fees unless they pursue a legal claim.
  • Each Indianapolis facility named on this site has a detailed exposure report. Use the directory below to find documentation specific to your worksite.

If you or a family member has been diagnosed with mesothelioma or asbestosis, the time to act is now—not after the next appointment, not after the next conversation. Call an experienced Indiana mesothelioma attorney today before the deadline closes your claim permanently.

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Data Sources

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.