Matanuska Electric Association
The Matanuska Electric Association, Inc. is a publicly owned utility dating back to the 1930s, and one of the oldest such utilities in the state. It grew out of a New Deal program in which impoverished farm families from the upper midwest were located to a wilderness region northeast of Anchorage in order to make a fresh start. Over the ensuing years, these settlers built communities and started farms in the valley with the support of the newly-established Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Corporation.
In 1935, the Rural Electrification Act was signed into law. Among other things, it made low-interest loans available to the communities, enabling them to set up their own public utility.
Today, the Matanuska Valley is a relatively heavily populated suburb of Anchorage. MEA now serves a customer base of nearly 55,000 residents.
Power plants such as have been operated by the MEA contained large amounts of asbestos insulation. Asbestos is resistant not only to heat and flame, but electrical current as well. Although it has saved lives and prevented billions of dollars in property loss over the decades, those who contracted mesothelioma disease have paid a heavy price.
Asbestos illness has been established as a work-related hazard for those employed at power generation facilities. In a Puerto Rican study published in 2007, over 130 out of 1100 chest x-rays from such workers showed signs of asbestos disease.
Generators, boilers and turbine combustion engines and thermal control devices were all insulated with asbestos-containing materials at a time when few people outside the boardrooms of W.R. Grace, Inc., Johns-Manville and Raysbestos as well as a handful of medical researchers were aware of the health hazards of asbestos.
Today, those connections are well-known. Starting in the late 1970s, both the EPA and OSHA have issued strict regulations that govern worker safety as well as asbestos issues in general. However, an 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.
The good news is that recent tools have been developed that allow pathologists to detect early signs of asbestos disease; it is therefore important to discuss asbestos exposure with your primary care physician and receive regular checkups if possible. Mesothelioma prognosis can be encouraging when the disease is in its early stages but invariably fatal in their latter ones.
Through the 1970s, it was usual for industrial sites of all types to be constructed with the mineral known as asbestos because of its resistance to heat, flame and electrical current. It is ironic that protecting human life was typically one of the primary reasons for using asbestos in worksites because the outcome was actually to place workers in danger of serious illness or death due to asbestos exposure. The disorders associated with asbestos exposure include "miner's lung" and lung cancer; the greatest chance of contracting these conditions happens when materials containing asbestos become fragile, releasing particles into the environment where they are easy to inhale. The most serious of the asbestos-linked disorders is mesothelioma, a type of cancer that involves the lining of the chest cavity; it is a disease that usually kills within two years of diagnosis.
Because medical science has shown the relationship between being exposed to asbestos and illnesses like lung cancer, modern-day laborers are protected by state and federal guidelines that prescribe how asbestos is to be handled. Even up to the late 1900s, however, laborers often were forced to operate in spaces in which airborne asbestos was unfiltered; in many cases, the dangers posed by asbestos inhalation were little understood. Spouses and children were also exposed to asbestos when employers didn't provide showers, as employees took asbestos dust home with them on their skin or in their hair.
Mesothelioma and other asbestos-related illnesses frequently take a very long time to appear, and symptoms can be difficult to distinguish from those of less serious conditions, so those who were employed at these installations in the past, as well as those who lived with them, should talk with their medical care providers about their history of contact with asbestos.
Sources
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.
MEA Website. "About Us."
http://mea.coop/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=5&Itemid=39
