Product Description
Buffalo Pumps Inc. (Amherst, New York — a separate corporate entity from Buffalo Forge Company, which manufactured industrial fans and blowers) produced through the twentieth century a specific line of utility-service centrifugal pumps engineered for continuous-duty operation in electric utility power stations and municipal water-works. These pumps were distinct from Buffalo’s Navy-specification and general industrial process product lines: they were sized and configured for the long service intervals, high-temperature feedwater duty, and large flow rates characteristic of utility applications.
Typical utility-service applications for Buffalo centrifugal pumps included boiler-feedwater service at coal- and gas-fired generating stations, condensate return from surface condensers, circulating-water and cooling-water service for condenser tubes, auxiliary-water service for plant balance-of-plant systems, and municipal raw-water and treated-water pumping at drinking-water plants and pumping stations.
Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Buffalo Pumps utility-service centrifugal pumps were furnished through the asbestos era with asbestos braided packing at the shaft stuffing boxes, asbestos compressed-sheet gaskets at the casing-split flanges and cover joints, and — when installed in hot-water or feedwater service — were routinely lagged with asbestos thermal insulation applied over the pump body by insulator crews after installation.
Workers Exposed
Workers who installed, operated, and maintained Buffalo utility-service centrifugal pumps allegedly disturbed asbestos-containing materials during routine service. Pipefitters and millwrights who set the pumps, aligned the couplings, and made up the suction and discharge piping cut and installed asbestos flange gaskets. Power-plant operators and mechanics who repacked the stuffing boxes on shift removed dried-out braided asbestos packing rings, cleaned the stuffing box, and cut and installed new asbestos packing — a task performed on a regular preventive-maintenance schedule for each pump on the plant. Boilermakers working around the pumps on adjacent boiler and feedwater piping were exposed as bystanders. Municipal water-works maintenance workers performed the same repacking and gasket-replacement tasks on the water-service pumps in their pumping stations. Insulators who applied and later stripped the asbestos lagging over feedwater and hot-water pump bodies allegedly generated significant fiber release during both installation and tear-out.