Ginna Power Plant
The Robert E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant is located about 20 miles northeast of Rochester, New York on the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Currently owned and operated by Constellation Energy Group, the facility was built during the late 1960s by Rochester Gas and Electric and first went online in 1970.
The original Westinghouse steam generators were replaced in 1996 by a pair manufactured by Babcock and Wilcox, which has since led to the approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of an extended operation license that will permit Ginna to continue operations through 2029.
Any type of power generation facility built prior to the 1980s has contained large amounts of asbestos insulation at some point. Asbestos offers excellent resistance to heat and flame as well as electrical current; generators, boilers and turbine combustion engines as well as thermal control devices were regularly insulated with asbestos. Industrial use of asbestos has saved thousands of lives while preventing massive property loss over the past century.
Before the 1980s, knowledge of the health hazards of asbestos were kept from the general public by the corporate conspiracy of silence that was exposed during litigation in 1977. The evidence that came to light proved that the entire asbestos products industry had in fact engaged in a massive cover-up that went back to the 1930s.
Industrial health and safety experts have long been concerned about the effects of asbestos in the workplace. Asbestos illness was demonstrated to be a serious hazard for power plant employees in a 2003 study by Puerto Rican researchers. The team examined chest x-rays from 1100 such workers and discovered indications of asbestos disease in over 130 of the images.
The asbestos hazard was extended to family members as well. Loose asbestos fibers became lodged in workers' hair and clothing, and was unknowingly brought into the home, exposing spouses and offspring who later developed asbestos cancer as a result.
Today, EPA and OSHA regulations protect workers and govern the general handling of asbestos. However, asbestos disease symptoms take decades to manifest; most of those who are diagnosed today suffered asbestos exposure long before such hazards were generally known.
New diagnostic methods have recently been developed and approved by the FDA. These tools now enable pathologists to detect the signs of asbestos disease at their earliest stages. Former power plant employees should discuss asbestos exposure with their primary care doctors and receive regular checkups whenever possible.
Because of its high resistance to transferring heat and electricity, the mineral asbestos was frequently used within numerous industrial sites around the country. Even though asbestos' strength as an insulator undoubtedly saved lives, the unforeseen consequences of its use were horrible, as far too many workers contracted serious illness and even died from exposure to asbestos. The reason for this is that asbestos strands, if inhaled or ingested, embed themselves into the lungs, leading to life-threatening diseases such as pleural plaques and cancer of the lungs. The most serious of the asbestos-linked disorders is mesothelioma, which is a form of cancer that involves the cells lining the abdominal cavity; it is almost always a death sentence for those who contract it.
Because science has demonstrated the relationship between asbestos exposure and conditions like lung cancer, today's employees are protected by state and federal guidelines that control how asbestos is handled. Even up to the last part of the 20th century, though, laborers frequently were told to operate in spaces in which asbestos dust was not filtered; in many cases, the dangers posed by asbestos inhalation were not explained. Furthermore, if workplaces did not provide showers, workers took asbestos fibers to their homes in their work garments, which exposed family members to the risk of asbestos-related diseases.
Since health conditions like lung cancer and pleural mesothelioma may not manifest until decades after a person first is exposed to asbestos, people who had jobs at asbestos-contaminated sites, as well as those who lived with them, are encouraged to talk about their history of contact with asbestos with their doctors regardless of how far in the past they worked there. Individuals who could have been negligently exposed are encouraged to contact a mesothelioma attorney.
Sources
Bowker, Michael. Fatal Deception: The Terrifying True Story of How Asbestos is Killing America. 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.
Constellation Energy Corporate Website. "Power Generation: R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant."
http://www.constellation.com/portal/site/constellation/menuitem.385c7a188817d1908d84ff10025166a0/
