Steamboat Power Plants
The Steamboat Power Plants consist of four separate geothermal facilities. These plants use a combination of proprietary Ormat Energy Converters and turbo expanders that use pressurized hot water from deep underground in order to drive the machinery.
Geothermal energy is heat that is left over from the formation of the planet over six billion years ago. It is this same energy that causes geologic events such as volcano eruptions and earthquakes, albeit on a much smaller scale. The advantage is that there are no toxic emissions, and the water pumped from underground can be returned to its source and reused. Unfortunately, with current technology, the generative capacity of geothermal plants are limited.
Virtually all power generation facilities built prior to 1980 were full of asbestos-containing materials (ACMs). Asbestos offers excellent resistance to both heat and electrical current. Asbestos insulation was used in fire doors, around conduits and inside the machinery itself. While the asbestos-containing materials used in the construction and machinery of power plants were unlikely to pose a major health hazard to the general public, they have been proven to be a serious health risk to power plant maintenance workers and engineers.
A Puerto Rican study published in 2007 signs of asbestos disease in over 130 out of 1100 chest x-rays that had been taken of power plant workers in that country. The findings were further validated by the removal of factors such as tobacco from the data.
Although harmless in its solid state, asbestos materials become brittle with age and begin to crumble into dust. In this condition, it is called friable; asbestos dust is released into the environment. It can be inhaled by workers and often settles in the hair and on the clothing. Family members then receive secondary exposure when such asbestos materials are carried into the home.
Those who were employed at a power plant built before the 1980s as well as their family members should tell their primary care physicians of any history of asbestos exposure. Not everyone who us exposed to asbestos will develop cancer; however, early and frequent monitoring will increase the chance that if cancer does develop, it can be caught in its early stages and successfully treated.
With its high resistance to transferring heat and electricity, asbestos could frequently be found in numerous job sites throughout the US. While the use of asbestos was generally considered a way to reduce the risk of injury, it unfortunately all too often had the opposite effect. Exposure to asbestos at jobsites has resulted in serious illness for far too many people. The health conditions associated with asbestos include pleural plaques and lung cancer; the largest chance of contracting these conditions occurs when products containing asbestos become friable, releasing microfibers into the environment where they are easy to inhale or ingest. The most deadly of the asbestos-caused disorders is mesothelioma, which is a type of cancer that involves the lining of the pleural cavity; it is very difficult to treat, and patients seldom live more than two years after being diagnosed.
Because science has demonstrated the relationship between inhaling asbestos and illnesses like pleural plaques, today's employees are protected by government regulations that control how asbestos is to be handled. People who labored around job sites constructed with asbestos prior to the implementation of such laws, on the other hand, generally spent their days in spaces where asbestos microfibers were prevalent, and they as a rule were offered very little training concerning how to work safely with the substance. And if the employer did not offer showers, workers inadvertently transported strands of asbestos home in their clothes and hair, thereby exposing spouses to this dangerous substance.
People who worked here at any time in the past, as well as their partners and children, are encouraged to find out about these health conditions and inform their family doctors about their history of asbestos exposure, because the symptoms of asbestos-related diseases like pleural mesothelioma are often difficult to distinguish from those of other, less serious conditions. Workers who believe they have been negligently exposed should seek the legal counsel of 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.
Nevada Bell. “Steamboat Geothermal Power Plants.”
http://home.nvbell.net/sbgeo/steamboat.html
