About Clark Oil Refinery Hartford Illinois

Wood River, Illinois — in Madison County along the Mississippi River — became a major petroleum refining hub in the early to mid-twentieth century. Its proximity to waterways, rail lines, and Midwest crude oil pipelines made it a natural home for large-scale refining. Clark Oil and Refining Corporation operated the Clark Refinery in Wood River as part of a broader Midwest footprint that included the Clark Refinery in Wood River, IL, additional refineries and pipeline systems, and retail stations throughout the Midwest. The company changed hands several times — first acquired by Premcor Inc., then by Valero Energy Corporation, which continues to operate refining infrastructure in the Wood River area today.

The Clark Refinery and the adjacent Shell Oil/Roxana Refinery collectively processed millions of barrels of crude oil over their operational lifetimes. The refinery ran equipment that demanded enormous quantities of insulation — virtually all of it asbestos-containing during the peak decades of asbestos use — including crude oil, distillate, and refined product piping systems; heat exchangers and tube bundles; boilers fired with natural gas and petroleum coke; atmospheric and vacuum distillation towers; fluid catalytic cracking units; hydrotreating reactors; coking units; and reformer furnaces.

Asbestos use at the Clark Refinery was most intensive from the 1940s through the 1970s. During that period, asbestos appeared in virtually all process piping above standard temperature thresholds, insulated with asbestos-containing pipe covering; boilers and heat exchangers wrapped in asbestos blankets and finished with asbestos-containing cements; pumps, valves, and flanges packed with asbestos rope and valve packing materials; fireproofing sprayed or troweled onto structural steel supporting process equipment; and gaskets, seals, and packing rings throughout the refinery as standard equipment components. Even after OSHA and the EPA began regulating asbestos in the 1970s, the Clark Refinery continued running equipment that carried aging, friable asbestos insulation.

General Equipment at Clark Oil Refinery Hartford Illinois

The equipment below represents the systems and infrastructure documented or typically present at this facility during the era when asbestos-containing materials were specified in industrial construction. This is general facility-equipment reference — not a legal attribution of any specific product, manufacturer, or exposure event to this facility. Material-category and manufacturer information is addressed in the AsbestosIndex Product Crosswalk linked under the records table below.

Fired Heaters View crosswalk › Distillation Columns View crosswalk › Heat Exchangers View crosswalk › Catalytic Crackers View crosswalk › Reactor Vessels View crosswalk › Process Pumps View crosswalk › Storage Tanks View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Refractory Brick View crosswalk › Valves View crosswalk › Gaskets View crosswalk › Cooling Towers View crosswalk ›

Documented Asbestos Evidence

The records below are verified, state-documented asbestos removals at this facility. Each entry represents a regulated abatement project where the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (Illinois EPA) was notified under federal NESHAP rules, the work was logged, and the asbestos-containing material was confirmed and removed under regulated conditions. These are not allegations or estimates — they are paper records tying documented asbestos-containing material to this specific site.

Petroleum refineries operating during the mid-to-late twentieth century — including those that transitioned through multiple ownership structures as Clark Oil did — fall under the jurisdiction of several federal frameworks that remain relevant to former workers. The National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP), codified at 40 CFR Part 61 Subpart M, governs the handling and disposal of asbestos-containing materials during renovation and demolition activities. Any decommissioning or major structural work at the Hartford refinery site would have triggered mandatory notification and abatement requirements under this standard. OSHA’s construction and general industry asbestos standards, 29 CFR 1926.1101 and 29 CFR 1910.1001, further regulate worker exposure levels and employer obligations to disclose known asbestos-containing materials to tradespeople and maintenance personnel.

Material Categories in Documented Records

The materials documented above (and similar asbestos-containing materials commonly encountered in records of this type) appear in the AsbestosIndex catalog with historical manufacturer and trust-fund information. Click a category to view manufacturers historically associated with that material:

Thermal System Insulation View crosswalk › Asbestos-Cement Board View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Roofing & Flashing View crosswalk › Spray Fireproofing View crosswalk › Floor Tile & Mastic View crosswalk › Ceiling Tile View crosswalk › Gaskets & Packing View crosswalk ›

Who May Have Been Exposed at Clark Oil Refinery Hartford Illinois

These operations required skilled union labor, including members of Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1, UA Local 562, and Boilermakers Local 27. Workers in those trades have filed numerous asbestos cancer lawsuits through toxic tort counsel over the past four decades. The accumulated deposition testimony, site records, and product identification evidence from those cases directly benefits workers filing claims today. Former insulators and maintenance workers have repeatedly placed asbestos-containing pipe insulation at their work sites in deposition testimony. Workers disturbed asbestos insulation during routine maintenance, turnarounds, and repairs well into the 1980s. Former workers at Clark and comparable Illinois petroleum facilities have identified specific asbestos products from major manufacturers in decades of deposition testimony, including pipe insulation that was the single largest source of asbestos exposure at the Clark Refinery.

Critical Filing Deadline & Next Steps

Illinois law gives mesothelioma and asbestos-disease claimants 2 years from the date of medical diagnosis to file a personal-injury lawsuit (735 ILCS 5/13-202). For wrongful-death claims after an asbestos-related death, the filing window is 2 years from the date of death (740 ILCS 180/2). The two deadlines run on separate tracks — preserving one does not extend the other.

The personal-injury clock runs from diagnosis, not from exposure. Mesothelioma latency is typically 20 to 50 years, so workers exposed in the 1950s–1980s are being diagnosed today.

Practical first steps

  1. Document what you remember. Pay stubs, W-2s, union cards, photographs, coworker names, and dates of employment. The WorkChain widget on this page can save a copy you can email yourself.
  2. Preserve medical records. Pathology reports, biopsy results, imaging, and pulmonary-function tests are central to both civil claims and trust-fund filings.
  3. Identify household members. Spouses who laundered work clothing and children of plant workers are eligible for secondary-exposure claims when diagnosed with an asbestos-related disease.
  4. Speak with an asbestos attorney with Illinois experience. The first conversation is free and confidential. Asbestos trust-fund claims and civil claims run on different tracks — both can be pursued in parallel.

Asbestos-Related Diseases

Asbestos fiber exposure can cause several specific diseases that typically appear decades after the original exposure. The latency period — the gap between exposure and diagnosis — usually runs 20 to 50 years. That's why workers exposed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s are receiving diagnoses today.

Mesothelioma

A rare, aggressive cancer that affects the lining of the lungs (pleural mesothelioma), abdomen (peritoneal), or heart (pericardial). Mesothelioma is almost exclusively caused by asbestos exposure, which is why a mesothelioma diagnosis often points directly to historical workplace exposure. Average latency from first exposure to diagnosis is 30-50 years.

Asbestosis

A chronic, non-cancerous scarring of lung tissue caused by inhaled asbestos fibers. Asbestosis causes progressive shortness of breath, persistent cough, and reduced lung function. It does not improve with treatment, and it is a recognized basis for compensation under most trust schedules and civil claims.

Lung Cancer

Asbestos exposure significantly increases the risk of lung cancer, particularly when combined with a history of smoking. Asbestos-related lung cancer is compensable under the same trust schedules and civil claim avenues as mesothelioma.

Other Recognized Diseases

Pleural plaques, pleural thickening, laryngeal cancer, ovarian cancer, and certain gastrointestinal cancers are also recognized as asbestos-related under various trust schedules and case-law authorities, though eligibility and proof requirements vary by claim type.

If you have any of these diagnoses and you worked at this facility, lived with someone who did, or were exposed in any documented capacity, you may have a claim worth pursuing. Speak with an attorney before assuming you don't qualify.

Cross-State & Regional Corridor Workers

That industrial corridor straddled the Missouri-Illinois line, which means workers regularly crossed state lines for work — complicating exposure histories and making jurisdictional knowledge critical when filing a claim. Asbestos personal injury litigation involving Illinois refinery workers has been filed in both Illinois and Missouri courts, given the geographic proximity of the Hartford facility to the St. Louis metropolitan area and the interstate work histories of many refinery tradespeople and pipefitters who crossed state lines for employment.

Data Sources

Information about facility equipment, industrial materials, and occupational records referenced on this page is drawn from publicly available sources where applicable, including:

If specific equipment or product claims in this article are sourced from a non-public database, the source is identified parenthetically within the text above.