F.B. Culley

The F.B. Culley Generating Station was built by Southern Indiana Gas & Electric during the mid-1960s. The two units that remain in operation came online in 1966 and 1973 respectively, and have a combined generative capacity of just under 370 megawatts.

Because of its flame retardant characteristics and its usefulness as an electrical insulator, asbestos was used in virtually every industry built through the 1970s. While the use of asbestos saved millions of dollars in property damage as well as spared thousands from the agony of burn injuries, for many it resulted in a range of respiratory illnesses ranging from calcification of lung tissue to full-blown malignancies.

Asbestos is more than a flame retardant; the “blue” and “brown” varieties most likely to cause asbestos cancers such as mesothelioma are also excellent electrical insulators. Asbestos-containing materials were used extensively throughout the construction of power plants prior to 1980. Some of the areas in which asbestos-containing materials were found include:

• fire doors
• electrical cloth
• pipe fittings and conduits
• insulation
• gasket materials
• turbines and other machinery

Power generation plant workers are at high risk from asbestos exposure and are substantially more likely to contract disease such as mesothelioma. In 2003, Puerto Rican researchers analyzed the chest x-rays of 1,100 workers who had worked at least fifteen years in such a facility. 13% of the images showed signs of asbestos disease.

Employees were not the only ones who were at risk from asbestos; they unwittingly brought asbestos into their homes in their clothing and hair, resulting in secondary exposure among family members.

Today, both the EPA and OSHA have issued strict regulations that govern worker safety as well as asbestos issues in general. However, a asbestos disease usually has a very long latency period; symptoms usually take decades to develop, and by the time they are diagnosed, it is usually too late.

Asbestos diseases have a lengthy latency period; symptoms may not be apparent until decades after initial exposure. Therefore, former employees as well as their families are advised to get ongoing health monitoring if possible. New tests have enabled pathologists to detect the early markers that indicate the presence of a malignancy, and treatment of mesothelioma in its earliest stages means a much better prognosis. Treatments such as mesothelioma chemotherapy are often available from doctors such as Dr. David Sugarbaker at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA.

In the first two-thirds of the 20th century, it was normal for factories, mills, power plants and worksites to be built with the naturally occurring, fibrous mineral known as asbestos because it offered high resistance to transferring heat and electricity. It is ironic that reducing the risk of injury was almost always one of the driving justifications behind using asbestos in companies because the result was actually to put employees at risk of serious illness due to contact with asbestos. The reason large numbers of employees have fallen ill from health conditions including pleural plaques and cancer of the lungs is that when humans inhale strands of asbestos, the mineral remains in the lungs; once there, the tiny, jagged bits of asbestos damage tissues. In addition, a history of contact with asbestos can lead to the extremely hard to treat form of cancer known as mesothelioma, which affects the cells that line the chest cavity (pleural mesothelioma) or the stomach (pericardial mesothelioma).

Now, regulators are aware of the risks of being exposed to asbestos, and responsible employers protect employees whose jobs put them in contact with friable asbestos. In the past, however, workers without protective equipment frequently toiled in areas where asbestos dust filled the air. And if employers did not offer showers and decontamination methods, employees took asbestos to their homes in their clothes and hair, which exposed spouses and children to this deadly toxin.

As health conditions like lung cancer and mesothelioma often don't manifest until many years after asbestos exposure first occurs, those who were employed at contaminated plants, as well as their family members, should talk about their history of exposure to asbestos with their doctors regardless of how far in the past they worked there.

Sources

Bowker, Michael. Deadly Deception (New York: Touchstone, 2003)

Cabrera-Santiago, Manuel et al. “Prevalence of Asbestos-Related Disease Among Electrical Power Generation Workers in Puerto Rico.” Presentation at American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, 2007.

"Existing Electric Generating Units in the United States, 2006" (Excel). Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy. 2006.