Nucla

The Nucla Power Station, located near the town for which it was named, is a 100-megawatt capacity facility that employs a technology known as “atmospheric circulating fluidized-bed combustion” as well as a “baghouse” in order to reduce the emission of particulate pollutants. Owned and operated by Tri-State Generation &Transmission Inc., the plant first came online in 1959 and underwent repowering in the mid-1980s.

Fuel and water is obtained from local sources. The Nucla plant has been recognized for its efforts to reduce its environmental impact.

Amphibole asbestos is an excellent electrical insulator, and was used extensively throughout the construction of power generation facilities such as Nucla. ACMs could be found in electrical cloth, conduits and even the machinery itself, including turbines and generators. Asbestos inside machinery has especially hazardous, since it could eject millions of friable asbestos fibers into the immediate environment while in motion.

A Puerto Rican study published in 2007 examined the chest x-rays of over 1,100 workers; more than 130 of them showed signs of asbestos disease.

Diseases such as asbestos cancer (lung cancer and mesothelioma) and asbestosis are serious risks among power plant workers – and their families as well, since asbestos fibers were able to travel home in workers' hair and on their clothing. Several recent court cases have demonstrated the danger of such “secondary exposure.”

Mesothelioma is a very slow-growing malignancy; early symptoms are similar to those of other respiratory disease (it can affect the abdominal cavity and heart as well), and may not appear until two to six decades after the patient's first exposure to asbestos. It is therefore a very difficult disease to diagnose, and by the time such a diagnosis is confirmed, the disease is usually far advanced. Patients usually do not survive more than two years after such a diagnosis.

Fortunately, there is a new method that was recently approved for use in the U.S. by the FDA that allows pathologists to detect the “markers” of mesothelioma in its earliest stages. Anyone who was employed at Nucla prior to the 1980s as well as their family members should be checked out by a physician early and often, since mesothelioma prognosis is much better when the disease is treated in its initial stages.

In the first two-thirds of the 20th century, it was normal for factories, mills, power plants and worksites to utilize the mineral asbestos because it provided high resistance to heat and electricity. Although asbestos' strength as an insulator certainly protected people and property in the short term, the unintended results of its use were horrible, as untold numbers of workers contracted serious illness due to contact with asbestos. The reason is that asbestos strands, if inhaled, can infiltrate the lungs and cause serious illnesses such as pleural plaques and cancer of the lungs. Also, mesothelioma, which is a rare but deadly cancer of the cells that line the chest cavity, has been proven to be caused by even low levels of inhalation of asbestos particles.

Because research has demonstrated the relationship between inhaling asbestos and conditions like pleural plaques, today's laborers are protected by laws that control how asbestos is to be handled. Even up to the last part of the 20th century, however, workers all too often were expected to operate in areas in which air filled with asbestos particles was unfiltered; in many cases, the risks of asbestos exposure were not explained. Moreover, workers took asbestos strands to their homes in their clothes and hair when decontamination procedures weren't provided at the workplace; the consequence of this was that the potentially deadly mineral also put at risk wives and husbands of those who worked with asbestos.

Since health conditions like mesothelioma disease don't appear until a very long time after asbestos exposure first occurs, men and women who were employed at asbestos-contaminated sites, as well as those who lived with them, should discuss their history of asbestos exposure with their medical care providers regardless of how long ago they worked there.

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.

Tri-State G&T Website. “Baseload Resources: Nucla.”
http://www.tristategt.org/Aboutus/baseload-resources.cfm