A power plant is a heat machine, and for most of the twentieth century, heat meant asbestos. Boilers several stories tall, turbines, steam lines, breeching, and ductwork were wrapped in asbestos block, lagging, and insulating cement. The people who ran and maintained these stations often spent entire careers surrounded by that insulation. The National Cancer Institute identifies asbestos exposure as the primary cause of mesothelioma, a disease that usually develops decades after the exposure that caused it (NCI asbestos fact sheet).
Which Power Plant Workers Were Exposed to Asbestos?
Asbestos exposure in generating stations reached far beyond the insulators who installed the lagging. Workers at risk included:
- Maintenance mechanics and millwrights, who stripped insulation to reach pumps, valves, and turbine casings
- Boiler operators and helpers, who worked near insulated equipment every day and entered fireboxes during inspections
- Laborers, who cleaned up insulation debris after maintenance jobs
- Electricians, welders, and pipefitters, who worked as bystanders near dusty repair work
Supervisors and inspectors walked the same floors. In a generating station, asbestos dust did not respect job titles.
Asbestos Exposure During Power Plant Outages and Overhauls
Routine operations disturbed asbestos from time to time. Scheduled outages disturbed it on a much larger scale. During an overhaul, crews tore into the same unit at once, and old lagging came off turbines and steam lines in crumbling sections. Refractory work inside boilers raised dust in enclosed spaces, and insulation debris could drift down through open steel grating to the levels below.
Many former workers recall dusty, hazy air during major outages, with debris carted through the plant and dust spreading along the way. Against that history, one point from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is worth stating plainly: no safe level of asbestos exposure has been established (ATSDR).
Pennsylvania Power Plants With an Asbestos History
Pennsylvania’s electric system was large and heavily coal-fired for much of the twentieth century. In the southeast, the PECO power plants served Philadelphia and its suburbs. In the west, the stations covered on our Pittsburgh-area power plants page supplied the steel region, and many mills also ran powerhouses of their own.
Utility workers often moved between stations over the course of a career, which is why a complete work history matters so much in these cases. Power plant work appears in our occupations with asbestos exposure index alongside its closest companion trades, boilermakers and insulators.
Secondhand Asbestos Exposure: When Dust Came Home
Insulation dust on work clothes often traveled home. The National Cancer Institute notes that family members of exposed workers may have faced risk from fibers carried home on clothing (NCI). A spouse shaking out uniforms before washing them, children riding in the family car: take-home exposure is part of many power plant families’ stories. Utility work tended to be steady, which often meant the same routine for many years.
Filing a Mesothelioma Claim After Power Plant Work in Pennsylvania
Utilities often kept employment and outage records, and years of asbestos litigation have helped identify the insulation products used at many Pennsylvania stations. Many of the companies that made those products later established asbestos bankruptcy trusts, which together have held billions of dollars for injured workers and their families (GAO-11-819). In many cases, trust claims can move forward alongside a lawsuit.
Deadlines to file are strict and can begin running soon after a diagnosis or a loved one’s death, so it is wise to speak with an attorney early.
If a generating station is part of your work history and mesothelioma is now part of your medical story, request a free case review. We will start with the stations you worked at and the years you were there.