Product Description

Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Cochrane Corporation supplied spray-tray and tray-type deaerators to utility, industrial, and marine feedwater systems across the mid-20th century, and that the internal spray-tray packing, scrubber-section packing, tray-support gaskets, and manway/handhole cover gaskets on those deaerators contained allegedly asbestos-containing materials as originally furnished and as replaced during internal-inspection outages.

According to publicly filed asbestos litigation records, a Cochrane deaerator internal inspection required workers to open the manway, enter the shell, pull the spray-tray stack and scrubber-section internals, and scrape, cut, and replace the aged packing and support gaskets — with the confined-space work at the deaerator internals allegedly generating heavy respirable fiber concentrations in the immediate breathing zone of the worker inside the vessel.

Workers Exposed

  • Boilermakers performing internal deaerator inspections, tray-pack replacements, and scrubber-section rebuilds
  • Millwrights and mechanics at industrial powerhouses performing routine deaerator outage work
  • Pipefitters breaking and remaking extraction-steam, vent, and condensate flanges at the deaerator
  • Insulators stripping and re-applying the exterior lagging around the deaerator shell and dome