IBB Boilermakers Asbestos Workplaces

Through the asbestos era, members of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers (IBB) were dispatched to every category of facility in the United States that ran on pressurized steam or fabricated the pressure vessels that carried it. The categories below represent the broad workplace types where IBB boilermakers welded, bricked, gasketed, and relined asbestos-containing equipment. Industrial Exposure Archive state-specific jobsite catalogs documenting individual facilities are linked from within each Local page on this site.

Fossil-fuel electric powerhouses

Coal-fired, oil-fired, and natural-gas generating stations were the highest-volume IBB workplaces of the 20th century. Every utility boiler — from the sub-critical drum units of the 1940s and 1950s to the super-critical once-through units of the 1960s and 1970s — required boilermaker field-erection, tube-panel welding, refractory brick and castable installation, and gasket work at every drum manway and hand-hole. Outage cycles (typically 12 to 36 months) brought crews back for tube replacement, refractory rebrick, and gasket renewal, in the highest-fiber-release conditions the trade documented.

Nuclear power plants

The commercial nuclear buildout of the 1960s through the 1980s dispatched IBB boilermakers to reactor containment structures, steam generator installation and later replacement, main steam and feedwater piping welding, and the associated auxiliary boilers. Asbestos-containing gasket sheet, packing, and insulation persisted in nuclear balance-of-plant systems through the peak-construction decade.

Petroleum refineries

Refineries — particularly along the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi River corridor, the Great Lakes industrial belt, and the West Coast — dispatched boilermakers to process heaters, cracking units, coker drums, hydrotreater vessels, distillation towers, and utility boilers. Refinery turnarounds (planned shutdowns every 2 to 5 years) brought thousands of boilermakers and allied trades on-site simultaneously for vessel-entry inspection, tube replacement, and refractory rebrick.

Chemical plants

Chemical processing facilities — particularly along the Mississippi, Ohio, and Kanawha Rivers and the Gulf Coast — had reactor vessels, distillation towers, heat exchangers, and utility boilers that boilermakers fabricated, welded, and repaired. Asbestos-refractory brick and castable lined the fired heaters; asbestos gasket sheet and packing sealed every flange and pump.

Integrated steel mills

The integrated steel mills of the Midwest and Northeast — Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Youngstown, Detroit, Chicago/Calumet, Buffalo, Birmingham, Gary — concentrated IBB work on blast-furnace stoves, coke-oven batteries, open-hearth furnaces, basic-oxygen furnace vessels, soaking pits, rolling-mill reheat furnaces, and the utility boiler infrastructure that fed the mill’s steam and power load. Ladle relining and hot-repair work exposed boilermakers and refractory bricklayers to airborne asbestos fiber throughout the shift.

Pulp and paper mills

Pulp mills — particularly the kraft and integrated mills concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the South, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Maine — required boilermaker work on recovery boilers (the most demanding pressure vessel in the industry, with black-liquor firing and constant tube-fouling repair), lime kilns, digesters, power boilers, and the extensive steam distribution serving paper-machine dryers.

Cement plants

Portland cement plants ran rotary kilns and preheater towers lined with refractory brick and castable; IBB boilermakers on the rebrick crew tore out and replaced the fireside refractory on a scheduled cycle, in the confined-space, high-fiber-release conditions characteristic of interior kiln work.

Breweries and food-processing plants

Breweries — Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, Miller and Pabst in Milwaukee, Coors in Golden, and regional plants in every state — ran brewhouse kettles, mash tuns, and fermentation vessels heated by asbestos-refractory-lined utility boilers. Boilermakers dispatched to brewery outage work handled the pressure-vessel side of that steam load. Food-processing plants — canneries, meat packers, dairies, sugar refineries — ran similar utility-boiler infrastructure.

Hospitals and universities (institutional powerhouses)

The major teaching hospitals and university campuses built or expanded between the 1920s and the 1970s ran central-plant boilers that IBB boilermakers erected, tube-repaired, and relined. Hospital pipe tunnels distributing steam and chilled water across multi-building campuses connected to the central plant, and the powerhouse boilers themselves were asbestos-refractory-lined and asbestos-gasketed throughout the asbestos era.

Shipbuilding yards

IBB boilermakers dispatched to private and Navy shipyards — Newport News, Bath Iron Works, Fore River (Quincy), Sun Ship Chester, Ingalls Pascagoula, Litton, National Steel & Shipbuilding, Todd, Bethlehem Sparrows Point, Levingston Beaumont — fabricated and welded the marine boilers, main steam piping, condensers, and evaporators on merchant vessels, tankers, and warships. Naval combatants of the 1940s-1970s used asbestos throughout their boiler rooms, fire rooms, and engine rooms.

Navy Ship Exposure Archive — full 1,713-ship documentation →

Navy shore installations

Beyond the shipyards themselves, IBB boilermakers dispatched to Navy shore installations — public works powerhouses, base steam plants, Naval Air Station heating plants, and drydock support systems — welded and repaired the utility boilers that fed shore steam distribution networks. These plants used the same asbestos-refractory and asbestos-gasket materials as commercial powerhouses of the era.

Railroad roundhouses (steam locomotive era)

The IBB was founded in the railroad shops, and through the steam-locomotive era (running through the late 1950s on most Class I roads) boilermakers were the trade that repaired the fireboxes, replaced the crown sheets, and rebricked the arch of every steam locomotive in service. Railroad roundhouses in Kansas City, Chicago, St. Louis, Altoona, Roanoke, Sacramento, and hundreds of division points concentrated this work.

Pressure-vessel manufacturing shops

The OEM shops where boilers, drums, superheaters, and pressure vessels were originally fabricated employed the largest concentrations of IBB shop boilermakers in the country:

• Babcock & Wilcox — Beaver Falls PA, Alliance OH, Barberton OH, Mount Vernon IN
• Foster Wheeler — Livingston NJ, Carteret NJ, Dansville NY
• Combustion Engineering — Windsor CT, Chattanooga TN
• Riley Stoker — Worcester MA, Erie PA
• Erie City Iron Works — Erie PA
• Struthers Wells — Warren PA
• Nooter Corporation — St. Louis MO

Shop boilermakers at these plants welded and formed pressure-vessel shells with asbestos gasket and packing materials, asbestos welding pads, and asbestos burn-hood curtains as standard shop supplies throughout the asbestos era.

Boiler-relining contract crews

Independent boiler-relining and refractory-service contractors — many staffed by IBB traveling members — moved from powerhouse to refinery to mill on the outage cycle, doing nothing but interior firebox tear-out and rebrick. These crews had the highest cumulative exposure to airborne asbestos-refractory dust of any subset of the trade.

Where to find specific facilities

Every IBB Local page on this site links out to the Industrial Exposure Archive state jobsite catalog covering that Local’s jurisdiction. For direct access:

For any other state, see the Industrial Exposure Archive cross-state hub.

Free, confidential case evaluation: Speak with O’Brien Law Firm — (314) 237-3332