Product Description

Chicago Bridge & Iron built its business on field-erected steel — spheres, storage tanks, pressure vessels, elevated water tanks, hydrocarbon spheres, cryogenic storage, and refinery process equipment fabricated in place at the client site rather than shipped as a completed unit. Every one of those vessels had bolted openings: manway covers for personnel entry, nozzle flanges for piping tie-ins, inspection-port closures for periodic internal survey, and — on agitated or mixed-service vessels — packed shaft seals where an agitator penetrated the head.

Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos litigation that CB&I field-erection crews, as part of standard vessel completion and turnover, cut compressed asbestos sheet gaskets to the ring pattern of each nozzle and manway, installed those gaskets during bolt-up, and packed the agitator shafts with asbestos-braided rope packing supplied under industry brand names. This work was allegedly performed at refinery, petrochemical, chemical-process, gas-processing, and water-utility sites across the United States from the 1940s through the late 1970s.

Workers Exposed

Two distinct exposure windows are documented in litigation records tied to CB&I field-erected vessels:

During construction and commissioning. CB&I boilermakers and ironworkers cut gasket rings from sheet stock on the deck of the vessel, dry-fitted them to the flange faces, and hammered braided packing into the stuffing box around agitator shafts. Cutting compressed asbestos sheet with knives, hole-saws, and gasket cutters released respirable fiber directly into the breathing zone of the tradesman making the cut. Nearby pipefitters connecting nozzle piping and millwrights setting agitator drives worked in the same enclosed vessel head area.

During in-service repair. Plaintiffs alleged that when CB&I-erected vessels came down for turnaround inspection, the original gaskets and packing — now cooked or chemically aged in service — had to be scraped, wire-brushed, and dry-cut from the flange faces before new material could be installed. Operating engineers and pipefitters performed this scrape-off work in confined-space vessel entries at refineries and chemical plants for decades after original construction.