Reid Gardner Station
Reid Gardner Station is located in Moapa Nevada, approximately 30 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The first unit came online in June 1965; three more units were added over the next eighteen years. The coal-fired facility uses SO2 scrubbers and a baghouse to reduce emissions.
Reid Gardner is owned and operated by Nevada Energy, and is scheduled to remain in service through 2029. However, the existing ash storage facility and evaporation ponds which border lands of the Moapa Indian Nation are rapidly approaching maximum capacity. It is not known if Nevada Energy will be able to expand or add any waste storage at the current site.
Having been built in the 1960s and 1970s, asbestos is very likely to have been an issue at Reid Gardner. This was the case for virtually all such facilities constructed and operated prior to the 1980s. All types power plants from coal-fired to hydro-powered have historically made extensive use of asbestos insulation because of its insulation properties against to heat and flame as well as electrical current.
Machinery that includes generators, boilers and turbine combustion engines as well as thermal control devices have all been insulated with asbestos at a time when the truth about health hazards of asbestos were kept secret from the general public. This conspiracy on the part of the asbestos industry was revealed in 1977, when the infamous “Sumner Simpson Papers” were discovered in the corporate office of Raysbestos, Inc. The evidence proved that the cover-up had been going on since before World War II.
While asbestos-containing materials may have saved lives and prevented massive property loss over the past century, those who contracted asbestos diseases have suffered disproportionately. Asbestos illness was shown to be a serious work-related hazard for power plant employees when in 2003, a Puerto Rican medical research team examined chest x-rays from 1100 such workers. 13% of the x-rays showed indications of asbestos disease.
Today, the EPA and OSHA have strict regulations in place that protect workers and govern the handling of asbestos containing materials.
Asbestos diseases take decades to become apparent, at which time they have reached an advanced stage. Thanks to new diagnostic methods however, pathologists are now able to detect the early signs of asbestos disease. Former power plant employees and their families should discuss asbestos exposure with their primary care physicians and be checked frequently.
Given its high resistance to transferring heat and electricity, the mineral asbestos was commonly used within many factories, mills, power plants and worksites all over the US. Although the use of asbestos was intended to reduce the risk of injury, it unfortunately often had the opposite effect: exposure to asbestos at jobsites has resulted in illness and death for untold numbers employees. The reason so many employees have died from health conditions including "miner's lung" and lung cancer is that when humans inhale or ingest strands of asbestos, the mineral embeds itself into respiratory passages; once there, the tiny, jagged bits of asbestos damage cells. In addition, mesothelioma, the nearly always fatal cancer affecting the mesothelium, the tissue that lines the pleural cavity, is known to be caused by even low levels of exposure to asbestos.
Today, regulators are aware of the risks of being exposed to asbestos, and government regulations protect those who work with or near this material. However, in the past, laborers unprotected by masks or other safety equipment often toiled in places where asbestos dust filled the air. In addition, employees brought asbestos home with them on their work clothes when decontamination procedures weren't offered at the company; the consequence of this was that the carcinogen also put at risk offspring of those who worked near asbestos.
Men and women who were employed at this site during their career, as well as their family members, are encouraged to find out about these health conditions and tell their family doctors about their history of asbestos exposure, because the signs of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related illnesses can be difficult to distinguish from those of other conditions. If caught early, the cancer can be treated with mesothelioma chemotherapy by doctors like Dr. David Sugarbaker at Harvard University's Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
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.
NV Energy. “Reid Gardner.”
http://www.nvenergy.com/company/projects/reidgardner.cfm
