Product Description
Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Riley Stoker Corporation supplied closed feedwater heaters and heater tube bundles to utility, industrial, and marine powerhouses across the mid-20th century, and that the manway covers, tube-bundle access flanges, shell/head joints, and small-bore drain, vent, and instrument flanges on those heaters were sealed with allegedly asbestos-containing compressed sheet gasket material as originally supplied and as replaced during outages.
According to publicly filed asbestos litigation records, the feedwater heater sat between the deaerator and the economizer inlet on a typical Rankine-cycle station, and any tube-bundle inspection, retube, or shell repair required workers to break the bolted joints, scrape the mating faces clean of aged asbestos gasket, cut fresh CAF sheet to pattern, and re-bolt — with the aged material allegedly releasing respirable asbestos fibers into the immediate breathing zone of the worker at the flange.
Workers Exposed
- Boilermakers performing feedwater heater retubes, tube-plugging campaigns, and shell repairs
- Insulators stripping and re-applying lagging around the heater shell and flange faces after gasket work
- Pipefitters breaking and remaking the extraction-steam, drain, vent, and condensate flanges tied into the heater
- Millwrights and mechanics at industrial powerhouses performing routine heater outage work