Product Description
Erie City Iron Works of Erie, Pennsylvania — later Zurn Industries’ Erie City Energy Division — manufactured packaged watertube and firetube boilers for industrial, institutional, and marine service. According to publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation, Erie City packaged boilers shipped with an outer jacket assembly that incorporated asbestos-cloth blanket and asbestos-millboard insulation between the pressure vessel and the sheet-metal casing.
Plaintiffs alleged that the jacket blanket was fabricated from asbestos textile — commonly amosite/chrysotile-blend woven cloth or asbestos-paper millboard — and was cut, wrapped, and fitted around the boiler drums, headers, and mud drums during factory assembly. Field crews allegedly disturbed the same blanket during installation trim-out, during scheduled outages to gain tube access, and during end-of-life boiler removal.
Workers Exposed
Trades allegedly encountering asbestos through Erie City Iron Works boiler-jacket blanket insulation include:
- Boilermakers installing Erie City packaged boilers, cutting jacket blanket for penetrations, and re-wrapping insulation after tube inspections.
- Insulators (HFIAW) applying and repairing asbestos jacket blanket on installed Erie City units in paper mills, hospitals, schools, and industrial plants.
- Marine machinists and Navy Machinist’s Mates working Erie City marine boilers — jacket disturbance during underway maintenance and in-yard overhaul.
- Powerhouse operators and stationary engineers performing routine outage work adjacent to insulation removal crews.
- Demolition and scrap crews removing decommissioned Erie City boilers — cutting through jacket casing exposed and aerosolized the interior asbestos blanket.
Take-home exposure to spouses and children via contaminated work clothing was a commonly alleged pathway.