About Chrysler Assembly Plant Fenton Missouri

A Half-Century of Auto Production in St. Louis County

The Chrysler Assembly Plant in Fenton, Missouri opened in 1959 and operated for fifty years along the Meramec River in St. Louis County. At its height, the plant employed thousands of hourly and salaried workers in full-scale automobile assembly — most notably the Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager minivans. Chrysler announced closure in 2008. Final production ended in 2009 during the company’s bankruptcy restructuring. For thousands of workers, the exposure had already occurred — silently and invisibly — in the years preceding any regulatory action. The Fenton plant was part of a broader industrial corridor anchored by the Mississippi River running through both Missouri and Illinois. Workers, contractors, and union members regularly crossed between heavy industrial facilities on both sides — the Fenton plant, the Labadie Energy Center in Franklin County, the Portage des Sioux Power Plant in St. Charles County, Granite City Steel in Madison County, Illinois, and the Monsanto Chemical facility in Sauget, Illinois. The asbestos-containing products they encountered — pipe covering, calcium silicate pipe insulation, gaskets and packing gaskets — were the same at every site. Asbestos exposure accumulated across the entire corridor, not just at a single address.

Why Asbestos Was Everywhere in This Facility

Facilities of this scale built in mid-twentieth-century America ran on asbestos. , and other manufacturers are alleged in asbestos litigation to have had internal knowledge of asbestos health hazards dating to the 1930s — a central claim in thousands of court filings across the United States. Plaintiffs have alleged in asbestos litigation that workers at this facility were not provided adequate warnings about asbestos hazards. They are alleged in litigation to have not been provided respirators. They Plaintiffs allege they were not informed of the health risks associated with the dust they breathed daily. —

Missouri Revised Statutes § 516.120 gives asbestos disease victims exactly 5 years from the date of medical diagnosis to file a civil lawsuit. Not 5 years from exposure. Not 5 years from first symptoms. Five years from the date a physician confirmed your diagnosis. An experienced Missouri asbestos attorney can evaluate your diagnosis date, calculate your remaining window, and tell you precisely what needs to happen — and when. That conversation needs to happen now, not after you’ve done more research. —

This era represents the highest-risk period for Fenton workers. A Missouri mesothelioma lawyer with automotive plant experience can identify which manufacturers supplied the specific products used during this window. ### 1975–1986: Regulatory Transition Period

OSHA’s 1972 standards and subsequent revisions imposed some limits, but enforcement was inconsistent and permissible exposure limits remained far higher than current science supports:

  • Legacy pipe covering, calcium silicate pipe insulation, and spray-applied fireproofing already installed throughout the facility continued to be disturbed during maintenance and renovation
  • New gaskets and packing gaskets, gaskets and packing packing, and friction products were still being purchased and installed — all remained legal and commercially available through this period

1986–2009: Legacy Exposure Period

Even after major regulatory reforms, decades of installed insulation, tile, and fireproofing remained throughout the plant’s infrastructure:

  • Every time a maintenance worker cut into old pipe, removed insulation, or worked near deteriorating floor tile, they disturbed asbestos placed 20 or 30 years earlier
  • Industrial hygienists call this “legacy exposure” — ongoing contact with friable, airborne materials installed in prior decades
  • Workers in this period have valid asbestos exposure claims in Missouri even if they never directly handled a new asbestos product

General Equipment at Chrysler Assembly Plant Fenton Missouri

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

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 ›

Critical 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

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 compensation 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.

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.