Sitting on the Kankakee River about an hour south of Chicago, Kankakee grew as a manufacturing and processing center — grain and food processing, chemical production, and the rail and industrial operations that connected them. The plants that anchored that economy were built and expanded across the decades when asbestos-containing materials were the standard choice for insulating high-temperature equipment and piping.
Why asbestos-containing materials were common in Kankakee
Grain processing and chemical production generate heat, and from roughly the 1930s through the late 1970s the boilers, dryers, process vessels, steam lines, and pumps that carried it reportedly used asbestos-containing pipe covering, block insulation, gaskets, valve packing, and refractory. Workers who installed, maintained, and removed those materials may have inhaled airborne fibers — an exposure now understood to cause mesothelioma, asbestosis, and other diseases with latency periods of 20 to 50 years.
Documented Kankakee sites
The facilities documented below — including large grain and chemical operations — are drawn from publicly available records: Illinois EPA asbestos-abatement (NESHAP) notifications, OSHA and EPA inspection data, and other public sources. Each page summarizes the site’s history, the trades likely to have worked around asbestos-containing materials, and the categories of material reportedly present.
Trades most often affected
Insulators, pipefitters and steamfitters, boilermakers, millwrights, process operators, electricians, and general laborers were typically the trades with the most contact with asbestos-containing materials at Kankakee-area plants.
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