Boiler Technician: Toxic Exposure and VA Claims

Asbestos was the standard thermal insulation of the steam Navy. Boilers, steam drums, piping, valves, and pumps were covered in asbestos lagging, and asbestos was used in gaskets, packing, and insulating cement. BTs disturbed these materials constantly: tearing out and replacing lagging during repairs, grinding old gaskets off steam flanges, and mixing insulating compound, all in confined spaces with limited ventilation and, for much of the rating's history, no respiratory protection. VA adjudication guidance has recognized that boiler technicians have a high probability of asbestos exposure, and Board of Veterans' Appeals decisions have conceded in-service exposure based on records showing the rating.

Steam ships burned heavy fuel oil or marine diesel, and the fuel system was the BT's responsibility. Duties included operating fuel oil service pumps, changing and cleaning burner barrels and sprayer plates, testing fuel, and cleaning up leaks in the bilges. That work meant breathing fuel vapors in enclosed spaces and repeated skin contact with fuel during equipment cleaning. The ATSDR reports that prolonged breathing of diesel fuel vapors may damage the kidneys, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer has determined that heavy fuel oils may possibly cause cancer in humans.

Incomplete combustion of fuel oil deposits soot on boiler firesides, tubes, and uptakes, and PAHs form during the incomplete burning of oil and gas and are present in that soot. During maintenance periods BTs climbed inside boiler casings to scrape, wire brush, and sweep soot from the firesides, work that raised heavy dust in a confined space. The Department of Health and Human Services has determined that some PAHs may reasonably be expected to be carcinogens, and NIOSH recommends strict workplace air limits for PAH-containing coal tar products.

Firerooms combined boiler radiant heat, hot steam piping, high humidity, and limited air movement, the same indoor conditions NIOSH identifies as producing occupational heat stress. Watchstanders spent hours near operating boilers. NIOSH links this kind of exposure to heat stroke, heat exhaustion, rhabdomyolysis, heat cramps, and injuries such as burns from hot equipment. Heat is not a carcinogen and follows a different claims path than toxic exposure, but documented heat injuries in service medical records can help corroborate that a veteran stood watches in the machinery spaces where the asbestos and fuel exposures described above occurred.