Product Description
Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Combustion Engineering, Inc. supplied utility and industrial steam generators — including the superheater sections and their outlet headers — and that the header handhole plates, element-to-header flanges, and desuperheater spray-nozzle flanges on those boilers were sealed with allegedly asbestos-containing gasket material as originally furnished and as replaced during outages.
According to publicly filed asbestos litigation records, superheater work required workers to remove header handhole covers to inspect and rod out interior surfaces, replace failed superheater elements at the header connection, and periodically renew the desuperheater spray-nozzle flange seals — with every handhole and flange operation involving scraping aged CAF gasket from the mating faces and installing fresh asbestos sheet or pre-formed asbestos-bearing handhole gaskets, allegedly releasing respirable fibers into the boilermaker’s breathing zone at the header deck.
Workers Exposed
- Boilermakers pulling superheater elements, replacing header handhole gaskets, and renewing desuperheater flange seals
- Insulators stripping and re-lagging the superheater header, penthouse, and desuperheater piping around gasket work
- Pipefitters breaking and remaking the superheater outlet piping, main-steam flanges, and desuperheater spray-water piping tied into the header