Product Description

The Foxboro Company (Foxboro, Massachusetts) was through the asbestos era the dominant American supplier of industrial process instrumentation and control-loop hardware — pneumatic (3–15 psi) and electronic (4–20 mA) pressure, differential-pressure, level, and flow transmitters; strip-chart and circular recorders and pneumatic controllers; orifice-plate flow elements and DP flowmeter assemblies; and, through the Foxboro Valve Division, the E-Series and Stabilflo lines of pneumatically actuated control valves used to modulate steam, hot oil, refinery process streams, boiler-feedwater, and chemical process flows.

Foxboro instrumentation and control valves are named in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation. Plaintiffs alleged that Foxboro process instrumentation and control valves were specified with:

  • Compressed asbestos-sheet gaskets at transmitter housings, differential-pressure manifold flanges, orifice-flange taps, and control-valve body-to-bonnet joints.
  • Asbestos-containing stem packing — braided chrysotile packing installed in Foxboro control-valve stuffing boxes against rising plug stems.
  • Asbestos-containing thermal insulation applied to hot-service instrument lines, orifice-flange assemblies, and control-valve bodies on high-temperature steam and hot-oil service.

Workers Exposed

  • Instrument mechanics and I&C technicians removing Foxboro transmitters and controllers for calibration, replacing transmitter and manifold gaskets, and disturbing orifice-flange gasketing during flowmeter rebuilds.
  • Pipefitters and steamfitters installing and tying in Foxboro control-valve bodies on process piping and repacking control-valve stuffing boxes.
  • Refinery process operators and turnaround maintenance crews pulling Foxboro control-valve bonnets during scheduled refinery turnarounds.
  • Power-plant control-room mechanics servicing Foxboro boiler-feedwater and steam-throttling control valves on utility service.
  • Chemical- and pharmaceutical-plant maintenance mechanics overhauling Foxboro E-Series and Stabilflo control valves on hot and corrosive service.