Morgantown, Maryland – Work at Mirant’s Morgantown Generating Plant in Charles County was halted last week due to concerns over possible asbestos disturbance and the question of whether an exposure risk is present at the site.

The work involves the installation of a Selective Catalytic Reduction system, which is being used to control levels of pollution emitted at the plant. The SCR system captures nitrous oxide pollutants from the plant’s emissions and prevents them from being released into the environment. Mirant, which owns three coal-burning plans in Maryland, was fined a total of $175,000 this month for violating emission limits.

The asbestos disturbance occurred last Tuesday. The asbestos was located in the insulation of an industrial fan that blows emissions out of the plant’s stacks. The area where the asbestos was located had previously been marked and had been fitted with a barrier. However, a contract worker broke through the barrier and disturbed the asbestos.

Following the disturbance the contract workers were evacuated and a third-party asbestos removal contractor was brought to the plant the following day to clean up the site.

Asbestos, commonly used in construction materials between the 1940s and 1980s, was used in power generation plants because the fibrous mineral substance provides excellent thermal insulation, and is highly heat and chemical resistant.

Asbestos, however, is also a toxin that is known to cause major respiratory diseases such as asbestosis and mesothelioma, a type of cancer that is treatment-resistant and almost 100% fatal.

Mirant spokesperson Misty Allen has said that when asbestos testing and analysis was carried out at the Mirant site, “all the testing results came back favorable and well below any limits that would have triggered concern.” The Occupational Safety and Health Administration safe limit for asbestos is 0.1 fibers per cubic centimeter of air.

Despite this, some of the two hundred contract workers at the site said they wanted more information about the asbestos disturbance incident.

One Kentucky-based contract worker said that workers had told supervisors on two separate occasions that the asbestos barrier had been disturbed. Another said that workers had been told the air tested positive for asbestos, but nobody had been told how severe the situation really was, or when they would be going back to work on the site.

Spokesperson Misty Allen has said that Mirant will review the procedures followed during and after the asbestos disturbance to ensure proper protocols were followed.

Rhonda Wardlaw, a spokesperson for the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health division, says that an official complaint has been filed in relation to the incident.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 9:52 am and is filed under Asbestos Exposure, Maryland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. Responses are currently closed, but you trackback from your own site.