work place related diseases

[steve from staten island]

Had a recent conversation with a old co-worker. Is anyone suffering from work place related diseases such as asbestos. Discussed who is alive, who is sick after working years in Power generating plants built decades ago OSHA was not around and no safety items like hearing protection, respirators and the such. Many guys we started with are gone. Many more have various degrees of Asbestosis, a few developed Mesothelioma and are dead. When i started in 1970 we worked in fly ash so deep the dust created you could not see more than a few feet in front of you. Later on in coal handling the coal dust was brutal. At times we'd wrap rags over our mouths. The coal is pulverized into a power which is blown into the furnace. The coal dust was everywhere. We were filthy dirty and coal dust was so bad at the end of a shift you'd even have to scrub your penis as it was black with this stuff. None of that was as bad as asbestos. It literately was everywhere and when we needed to remove it we just ripped it off and the dust was all over. No respirators or any protection. The shipyard work was also just as bad. In the later eighties it started slowly to change and by the nineties things had vastly improved. Myself I've been rolling the dice and coming up clear. Many other guys haven't been as lucky. In addition decades of welding hasn't helped and to this day i only use a respirator in a confined area. Old habits are hard to break. Not smoking was a huge plus and honestly many guys who smoked it seemed to be worse on them. So if you've done or been exposed to this type of thing and are getting up there in age, how have you faired so far. I hope well but would be interested in your experiences

 

[69roadr]

Had a recent conversation with a old co-worker. Is anyone suffering from work place related diseases such as asbestos. Discussed who is alive, who is sick after working years in Power generating plants built decades ago OSHA was not around and no safety items like hearing protection, respirators and the such. Many guys we started with are gone. Many more have various degrees of Asbestosis, a few developed Mesothelioma and are dead. When i started in 1970 we worked in fly ash so deep the dust created you could not see more than a few feet in front of you. Later on in coal handling the coal dust was brutal. At times we'd wrap rags over our mouths. The coal is pulverized into a power which is blown into the furnace. The coal dust was everywhere. We were filthy dirty and coal dust was so bad at the end of a shift you'd even have to scrub your penis as it was black with this stuff. None of that was as bad as asbestos. It literately was everywhere and when we needed to remove it we just ripped it off and the dust was all over. No respirators or any protection. The shipyard work was also just as bad. In the later eighties it started slowly to change and by the nineties things had vastly improved. Myself I've been rolling the dice and coming up clear. Many other guys haven't been as lucky. In addition decades of welding hasn't helped and to this day i only use a respirator in a confined area. Old habits are hard to break. Not smoking was a huge plus and honestly many guys who smoked it seemed to be worse on them. So if you've done or been exposed to this type of thing and are getting up there in age, how have you faired so far. I hope well but would be interested in your experiences

I worked in a printing plant for 13 years around a lot of chemicals and I think it affected me

 

[multimopes]

Howdy Steve, I am of similar age and background. Been exposed to stuff over much of my work life. One thing you didn't mention that is a killer is shift work. You might be just that if you worked in power plants. I never worked in power generating plants but did a few years in chemical plants. Inhaled a lot of various acid fumes as well as lots of exposure to asbestos which was everywhere. Worked in large research facilities also and have been exposed to some degree to all kinds of nasty stuff. Pardon my spelling but things like diborine, sylene, zyleen, and stuff that is odorless and colorless. The mixtures of chemicals that combined and discharged through the exhaust fans occasionally got sucked into the air intakes and went through the buildings. Was on the emergency response teams at several jobs. Had to respond to one memorable situation. Had a gallium arsenide explosion and we had to isolate and contain it. When your exposed skin around your Scott air pack mask and wrists turns bright red, you wonder what is on your clothes and what might have been absorbed via any exposed area. We also had to respond to a worker who tried to commit suicide by ingesting arsenide. Good thing we didn't try to give mouth to mouth. I used to also work on the side helping install household boilers. We'd reach into that bucket of powdered asbestos and mix it with water and paste it around the stack. I never knew it at the time, but there was asbestos in linoleum floor tiles as well which I helped scape off a floor to be re-surfaced. By the way, it sounds like you must have worked in fluidized bed boiler plant, where the coal dust floats into the furnace on hot air. I am a stationary engineer by trade and have worked with boilers most of my life. Also, don't forget blowing the brake dust off your car way back when we all inhaled to some degree. I have known several folks who bit the dust over the years but were usually from a combination of things like smoking and such added to exposure. Some just got stupid and forgot to breathe!
By the way, I don't smoke and I had a measured lung capacity that was approx. 120% of what it should have been for many years. It isn't anymore but is still very good! I attribute that to being on the swim team as a kid and playing underwater tag holding your breath as long as possible which of course led to becoming a scuba diver. I am at retirement age now and I figure the rotating shift work is what will cut my time short. I always envisioned winning the publishers clearing house jackpot and dying from shock on TV as the check was given to me! Have a good one!

 

[Dennis H]

Working at a full service gas station in the early 70's we routinely blew out the brakes with air and filled the garage with asbestos so you could barely see. Many others here did too. Then at High-Quality Plating poured chemicals on myself during the dipping process. Not sure what, but it burned. Had a good Supervisor who got a water hose to rinse my nuts good. So far so good. I work shift work too. All of this done by choice. There's more, don't want to bore you about Caloric Oven production.

Think of those who built the railroads, and mined coal in years past. Plus many untold brutal jobs. I think I had it pretty easy by comparison.

 

[6t4polara]

Firefighter for 26 years.

 

[steve from staten island]

Firefighter for 26 years.

Thanks for your service

 

[steve from staten island]

The chemicals you guys wrote about is some nasty stuff. We had some exposure to that stuff in the Chemical room were there was some stuff in large vats they used in the boilers
About shift work. Had my share of that also early on. We worked a 6 day shift. Nights,days, midnights. Days off always rotated. The sixth day was never OT as it fell in the following week. The kids were young and it was hard to sleep, plus i started to work a second job. Later on the union and company worked out a 12 hour shift. It was a huge success and they still work it to this day. My wife always says now with all the stuff i was exposed to over 40 plus years, she wound up getting cancer. Go figure

 

[Glenwood]

From an electrician's point of view, PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls) in transformer oil or fluorescent ballasts is a nasty carcinogen and I often wonder about the effects of electromagnetism at high levels, particularly on linesman.
Had to work around asbestos periodically, but not usually an issue if undisturbed. They used to coat structural steel with it though as a fire/heat retardant, so running conduit around it made it tough to not disturb it.
I remember watching a couple of guys insulating an attic with regular pink fibreglass, while we were doing some wiring in there. These guys could barely breath, weren't wearing masks and were smoking to boot! If they're still around, I'm sure they're toting around oxygen tanks.

I agree with shiftwork taking a toll. I've had to do little of it, but I've watched my wife struggle with it for years as a cop. I think the lack of sleep and altered eating schedules are bad for you're mind particularly. While travelling on business over the years, I've noticed that companies I dealt with in Europe do not operate 24/7. One company in Italy for example, a typical day for them starts with 4-5 hours of work, a 1-2 hour heavy lunch (with wine!), and another 4-5 hours of work and home to a light dinner. I've seen similar examples of this in Germany & Norway too. They seem to value life more than we do here in NA, where profit is the #1 priority.

 

[moparnation74]

I had a lot of friends that worked at the shipyard in Virginia when I lived there. Great guys and worked their azzes off in very shitty conditions....

Asbestosis was prior to their time and there is no amount of reimbursement that returns a life or makes their life better....In the hospital in VA where I worked we saw a lot of shipyard workers with asbestosis...It is very sad and sickening these wonderful people got constant exposure to that back in the day....and basically suffocated to death...

 

[super-bee_ski]

We are exposed to countless "doses" of RF Radiation
Constantly....
From missile telemetry, RADAR, Data Telemetry transmitters...
Also: Beryllium
And: countless other substances from Stealth aircraft...

Prior to this I flew in a Military plane for 18 years...
LOTS of Radiation Exposure

 

[5.7 hemi]

Would this include STD's? Just asking!!

 

[Mopars & Missiles]

I've been exposed since 1962 (earliest I remember) to Dodges, Plymouths, Chryslers, and a few Desotos too. So far, all's good.

 

[steve from staten island]

I had a lot of friends that worked at the shipyard in Virginia when I lived there. Great guys and worked their azzes off in very shitty conditions....

Asbestosis was prior to their time and there is no amount of reimbursement that returns a life or makes their life better....In the hospital in VA where I worked we saw a lot of shipyard workers with asbestosis...It is very sad and sickening these wonderful people got constant exposure to that back in the day....and basically suffocated to death...

Sometime in the mid eighties when i was a union rep our company had to comply with OSHA regulations that said we had to have a yearly chest X-ray to be read by a radiologist who was specifically trained as a "B" reader, meaning that the physician was trained in occupational disease's such as asbestosis. The results for many, maybe half always was the same and stated "Pleural Plaque of no clinical experience". So you had that written on your report you thought you were good to go. We the union officers at the power house grew suspicious. As it turned out in the course of our investigation for what that statement meant we learned that every man who had that diagnosis in fact had various degrees of asbestosis and in fact that written diagnosis meant asbestosis was present in that persons X-ray. Our company stalled, dragged there feet but we now knew the truth. If i recall correctly there was a huge steam pipe explosion on a line under the street that was very old. It blew a huge hole in the street and spewed asbestos insulation everywhere. The city went ballistic on the responsible utility and only then did things get serious. It was the beginning of responsible handling removal of asbestos insulation at my workplace.
To get a idea of what we were dealing with was a complete denial of how serious the asbestos issue was. A few years earlier three junior mechanics were assigned the task of removing a large area of insulation in preparation for some major work. These young guys had little more than paper masks and Tie Vec coveralls. They ripped this stuff off with picks scrapers shovels what ever they had in there hands. On the lower elevations it looked like white Christmas. The stuff was everywhere. Those guys were covered head to toe. When somebody complained the safety officer took a chunk in his hand and wiped it all over his face and mouth, mocking the complainers, saying look it wont hurt you......years later after he retired at 62 he never made it to 70........ The effort a small group of concerned dedicated employees who i was part of played a very big part in bringing our company to the fact that they now had to deal responsibly with asbestos and its removal. We educated a lot of guys and were also responsible for men to now know and deal with the fact that they had asbestosis. The good news is some as a result of that knowledge stopped smoking which makes there condition worse.