Work at Mirant Halted Temporarily Over Asbestos

Some Workers Concerned About Possible Exposure When Fireproof Insulation Barrier Was Broken

Work on new pollution controls at Mirant's Morgantown Generating Plant in Charles County was halted Tuesday because asbestos might have been disturbed in the construction area.

"The construction to install the Selective Catalytic Reduction System, which is a pollution control technology, was temporarily halted due to a potential concern of asbestos in the construction work area," said Misty Allen, a Mirant spokeswoman.

"Once we brought in the equipment to do the testing and analysis, all the testing results came back favorable and well below any limits that would have triggered concern or additional required action," she said.

Construction on the SCR system, which captures nitrous oxide pollutants from the coal-fired plant's flue gas emissions, resumed Friday, Allen said.

Federal occupational safety standards set the limit for exposure over an eight-hour work shift at 0.1 fiber per cubic centimeter of air. Exposure to asbestos has been linked to lung damage and disease.

At the Morgantown plant, the asbestos was in insulation of an industrial fan that blows emissions out of the stacks. Allen said the area around the asbestos was marked and had a barrier that a contract worker broke through, disturbing the asbestos. The contract workers were cleared from the area, she said. A third-party asbestos removal contractor was brought in Wednesday.

Mirant is reviewing whether proper procedures were followed, Allen said in a statement.

However, some of the approximately 200 contracted workers, who have been working for three weeks at the plant, said they wanted more information on the incident.

"I don't think it was a big contamination, but it could be," said one worker from Kentucky, who added that workers told their superiors twice, on different days, that the barrier had been disrupted before testing was done. "Somebody needs to complain because people go home to their families after they work," he said.

An official complaint has been filed with the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health division with the state labor department, said Rhonda Wardlaw, a spokeswoman for the agency.

Another contract worker from West Virginia said he knew that the air tested positive for asbestos, but that no one could tell workers when they could go back to work or the severity of the situation.

"It happened the past two days," he said Wednesday. He and his colleagues would go to work, but were told to go home. He said he was getting paid despite not working, but was concerned about co-workers using public laundries.

"Asbestos ain't nothing to play with," the worker said. He and others who commented asked not to be named for fear of job repercussions.

Mirant, which owns three coal-burning plants in Maryland, was fined $175,000 this month for violating emissions limits. The Atlanta-based company must also donate $75,000 to reduce pollution from Prince George's County school buses, according to a consent decree filed in the county's Circuit Court.