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Cooling Towers - Mesothelioma and Asbestos Exposure Risks

If you worked in a hydroelectric, nuclear or other type of power plant, you may be at risk of developing mesothelioma, a form of cancer associated with exposure to asbestos. Asbestos has been widely used in wall coatings, fittings, laggings and insulation in power plants since the early years of the twentieth century. One of the uses for asbestos in power plants is as fill for cooling towers.

Cooling towers extract waste heat to the atmosphere by passing heated air through a water stream before releasing it to the atmosphere. Asbestos was used as fill in constructing cooling towers because of its non-conductive and heat resistant properties. Since the late 1980s, the EPA has required the removal, redesign and replacement of cooling towers that use asbestos fill. One of the concerns with cooling towers that use asbestos fill is the discharge of asbestos fibers into the air. This happens because the asbestos fill material has disintegrated over the years and the asbestos cement has dissolved into the water. When the water evaporates and is released into the air as steam, the microscopic asbestos fibers are released along with it, where they can be inhaled to settle into lungs and cause mesothelioma and related diseases.

Cooling towers are not the only danger from asbestos at power plants. Asbestos was widely used for insulation in all types of industries. The list of products that contain asbestos numbers into the thousands. Among those products are lagging used to insulate heating pipes, cement pipes used to carry water, adhesives and mastics used in construction, insulation used to wrap pipes and other heating and cooling mechanisms and many more objects and products. Anyone who worked at or lived near a power plant may be at increased risk for developing mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure.

This risk resurfaces when the cooling towers are dismantled or destroyed, as has been done with many of the cooling towers that were built during the 1950s and 1960s. The demolition of the cooling towers releases dust from the asbestos fill into the air. While most demolition work follows strict safety precautions, there is still an increased risk to demolition workers and those in the immediate vicinity.

If you work at or lived in close proximity to a power plant with asbestos filled cooling towers, you may have been exposed to asbestos fibers in the air. Inhaled asbestos has been proven as the only known cause of mesothelioma. Since the 1970s, thousands of people have successfully sued the makers of products that contain asbestos, employers who neglected to provide them with information and safety equipment when working with asbestos and sites where asbestos was mined and used in manufacturing. Because the asbestos industry hid the harmful effects of asbestos from the public and the government, these lawsuits often carried multi-million dollar verdicts.

If you believe that you were exposed to asbestos while working at a hydroelectric plant, nuclear power plant or other type of power plant, or in any other workplace or occupation, you may be entitled to compensation. If you have been diagnosed with mesothelioma or an asbestos related condition, a lawyer with experience in handling mesothelioma and asbestos lawsuits can evaluate your situation and assist you in getting compensation from those responsible for exposing you to asbestos.

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