Former Snyder Tank and Buffalo Tank Corporation Employees May Have Been Exposed to Asbestos
For more than eight decades, the facility known today as Snyder Tank, and originally as Buffalo Tank Corporation on Lincoln Street in Lackawanna, has been part of the industrial backbone of Western New York. Since 1939, generations of welders, fabricators, laborers, and tradesmen have walked through its gates, put in honest days of work, and gone home to their families without giving a second thought to what was in the air they breathed.
Most of them had no idea that asbestos, a material once considered indispensable in heavy manufacturing, steel fabrication, and industrial insulation, was quietly putting their health at risk.
If you’re reading this today, it may be because a diagnosis has brought you here. Mesothelioma. Lung cancer. Asbestosis. A relentless cough your father can’t shake. Shortness of breath your husband keeps blaming on getting older. A pathology report that just came back, and a question that keeps echoing: how did this happen?
You deserve real answers. And if asbestos exposure at Snyder Tank or Buffalo Tank Corporation played a role, you also deserve to know that you have rights, and a path forward.
The attorneys at Lipsitz, Ponterio & Comerford have spent decades representing Western New York workers and their families in asbestos cases. There is no fee unless we recover compensation for you. Call (716) 849-0701 or request a free case evaluation to speak with someone who understands.
Buffalo Tank Corporation opened its doors in 1939 on Lincoln Street in Lackawanna, New York, just steps from the Bethlehem Steel complex that defined the region’s industrial identity for most of the 20th century. The plant fabricated large steel storage tanks, pressure vessels, and related industrial equipment for refineries, chemical plants, water utilities, and manufacturers across the country.
It was demanding, skilled work. Tank fabrication required welders capable of laying down long, flawless seams on thick steel plate. It required fitters, burners, grinders, painters, riggers, and laborers working shoulder to shoulder in bays filled with sparks, heat, and the constant haze of industrial dust.
Over the decades, the operation evolved. The facility eventually became known as Snyder Tank, and the Better Business Bureau of Upstate New York has maintained a file on the business since July 29, 1993. But the core work, heavy steel tank fabrication, continued through the same eras when asbestos was woven into virtually every industrial process in America.
That historical overlap is at the heart of why so many former workers, and the families of workers who have since passed away, are now learning that their time at the plant may have exposed them to something far more dangerous than anyone realized at the time.
To understand why a tank manufacturer would carry asbestos risk, it helps to understand what asbestos actually did in industrial settings. For most of the 20th century, asbestos was prized for three qualities. It was cheap. It was incredibly heat resistant. And it was durable. That combination made it a default ingredient in hundreds of industrial products, many of which had no obvious connection to the word “asbestos” at all.
At a tank fabrication facility like Buffalo Tank and later Snyder Tank, asbestos could have been present in a number of forms.
Welders used asbestos-containing blankets to shield adjacent surfaces from sparks and slag. Every time one was moved, folded, or shaken out, microscopic fibers were released into the breathing zone of the welder and anyone nearby.
Certain welding rods used in heavy steel work contained asbestos in their coatings. As the rod burned, fibers could become airborne.
Tanks built for high-temperature or refinery applications were often insulated, sometimes at the plant, sometimes at the customer’s site. Pipe insulation, block insulation, cement insulation, and refractory products commonly contained amosite or chrysotile asbestos through the 1970s and into the 1980s.
Flange gaskets, valve packing, and high-temperature sealants used on industrial tanks and pressure vessels routinely contained asbestos fibers.
Ironically, the very gear meant to keep workers safe from heat and fire, including aprons, gloves, mitts, and spats, was often made with woven asbestos.
The building itself likely contained asbestos in floor tiles, roofing materials, boiler insulation, steam pipe wrap, and electrical components. Maintenance workers who cut, scraped, repaired, or demolished these materials would have disturbed fibers with every shift.
The insidious part is that none of this required dramatic exposure to cause disease. Asbestos-related illnesses don’t depend on a single catastrophic event. They develop from ordinary days. Swept floors. Welded seams. Pulled insulation. Changed gaskets. Repeated over months and years.
If you or your loved one held any of the following roles at Snyder Tank or Buffalo Tank Corporation, exposure is a real possibility worth investigating:
– Welders and welder’s helpers
– Pipe fitters and fabricators
– Burners and cutters
– Grinders
– Painters and sandblasters
– Riggers and crane operators
– Insulators working on finished tanks
– Maintenance mechanics and millwrights
– Electricians running conduit through insulated areas
– Laborers responsible for cleanup, sweeping, and material handling
– Foremen and supervisors who spent their days on the floor
Exposure wasn’t limited to the person directly handling the asbestos product, either. Fibers traveled. A welder running a bead on one side of the bay exposed the fitter twenty feet away. The laborer sweeping up at end of shift stirred fibers that had settled on the floor all day. And workers often carried fibers home on their clothes, exposing wives who shook out coveralls before washing them and children who ran to greet their fathers at the door.
This kind of take-home or secondary exposure is now well documented. Spouses and children of workers have developed mesothelioma decades later, despite never having set foot in the plant themselves.
If any of this is starting to sound familiar, please know that a conversation with our team costs nothing and commits you to nothing. You can reach Lipsitz, Ponterio & Comerford directly at (716) 849-0701.
Asbestos-related diseases share one particularly cruel characteristic. They hide. The latency period, meaning the time between first exposure and the appearance of symptoms, can range from 20 to 50 years, sometimes longer. A man who welded tanks in 1968 may not feel his first symptom until 2008 or later. By the time the illness announces itself, the exposure is a distant memory, and connecting cause to effect requires legal and medical investigation.
A rare and aggressive cancer of the lining of the lungs (pleural mesothelioma), abdomen (peritoneal mesothelioma), or heart (pericardial mesothelioma). Mesothelioma is caused almost exclusively by asbestos exposure. There is no safe level of exposure, and even brief or secondary exposures have been linked to the disease.
Asbestos exposure significantly increases lung cancer risk, particularly in combination with smoking, though non-smokers exposed to asbestos also develop lung cancer at elevated rates. Asbestos-related lung cancer is often underdiagnosed because it presents similarly to other lung cancers and the occupational history is rarely explored.
A chronic, progressive scarring of the lungs caused by inhaled asbestos fibers. Symptoms include persistent shortness of breath, a dry cough, chest tightness, and clubbing of the fingertips. Asbestosis itself can be disabling and also raises the risk of lung cancer and mesothelioma.
Less immediately life-threatening but medically significant, these conditions indicate asbestos exposure and warrant ongoing monitoring.
Research has linked asbestos exposure to cancers of the larynx, ovaries, stomach, and colon, among others.
If you or a loved one has received any of these diagnoses, and there is any history of work at an industrial facility like Snyder Tank or Buffalo Tank Corporation, it’s worth having a conversation with an attorney who focuses on this area. Not to commit to anything. Just to learn where you stand.
New York law sets time limits on asbestos-related claims. For living plaintiffs, the clock generally begins at the time of diagnosis. For wrongful death cases brought by family members, the clock begins at the time of death. These deadlines are not negotiable, and once they pass, the right to recover compensation is typically lost forever.
Beyond the legal deadlines, there’s a practical reality. Asbestos cases are built on evidence, and evidence erodes over time. Coworkers who could testify about plant conditions retire, move, and pass away. Product records get lost. Memories fade. The sooner an investigation begins, the stronger the case tends to be.
None of this means you have to decide anything today. It simply means that having an informed conversation early, even before you’re ready to make any commitment, protects your options. A free consultation costs you nothing, discloses nothing publicly, and commits you to nothing.
Many families hesitate to contact a law firm because of assumptions about what the process will involve. It’s worth clearing a few things up.
There’s a reason our firm is the one so many Buffalo and Lackawanna families call when an asbestos-related diagnosis arrives. The attorneys at Lipsitz, Ponterio & Comerford have spent decades focused specifically on mesothelioma, asbestos, and talc-related diseases. This is not a sideline practice area for us. It is the core of our work.
That focus matters. It means deep familiarity with the industrial history of Western New York, including facilities like Buffalo Tank Corporation and Snyder Tank, the Bethlehem Steel complex, Republic Steel, the region’s power plants, paper mills, chemical plants, and shipyards. It means established relationships with the medical experts, industrial hygienists, and historians who help document exposure. It means institutional knowledge of which asbestos-containing products were used at which sites during which years. That kind of knowledge cannot be replicated by a general personal injury firm taking on an occasional asbestos case.
It also means something harder to quantify. A practice built around advocacy for people who were, quite literally, kept in the dark about the dangers they faced. Our firm’s work is rooted in the belief that workers and families deserve the truth about what happened to them, and deserve meaningful compensation from the companies responsible.
If you’ve read this far, you likely have reason to wonder whether asbestos exposure at Snyder Tank or Buffalo Tank Corporation has affected your life or the life of someone you love. You don’t have to figure this out alone, and you don’t have to decide anything today.
A free case evaluation with Lipsitz, Ponterio & Comerford is exactly what it sounds like. A conversation. An experienced attorney will listen to your story, ask questions about the work history and the diagnosis, and give you an honest assessment of whether there is a viable claim and what next steps would look like. You’ll walk away with better information than you had before, and no obligation of any kind.
Whether the worker in your family is still living or has passed away, whether the diagnosis came last week or last year, whether you’re absolutely certain of the exposure or simply suspect it, reaching out is the right next step.
Call (716) 849-0701 today, or request your free, confidential consultation online. The call is free. The advice is honest. And you will be spoken to with the respect and care that you and your family deserve.
Lipsitz, Ponterio & Comerford, LLC. Representing workers and families across Western New York in mesothelioma, asbestos, and talc-related cases.
We hope that you will never be diagnosed with mesothelioma, lung cancer, or suffer a catastrophic injury, but if you are, contact us at Lipsitz, Ponterio & Comerford so we can begin the fight.
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