About Keystone Steel Wire Bartonville Illinois

Keystone’s Bartonville plant sat just southwest of Peoria on the Illinois River — a facility that ran continuously for most of the twentieth century and drew workers from Peoria, East Peoria, Bartonville, Pekin, Morton, and communities throughout central Illinois. The plant produced steel rod, wire, nails, fencing, and related products, employing thousands of workers across its operational history. Its manufacturing profile closely paralleled other regional facilities — Granite City Steel / U.S. Steel in Granite City, Illinois; Laclede Steel in Alton, Illinois; and Monsanto and Labadie operations in Missouri — across the Mississippi River industrial corridor.

Steel manufacturing generates temperatures that destroy conventional insulation. Keystone’s Bartonville facility operated electric arc furnaces exceeding 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, rod mills with heated process equipment, wire drawing machines requiring continuous thermal control, annealing furnaces at extreme operating temperatures, and facility-wide steam systems distributing process heat to every corner of the plant. Every one of those systems required insulation that could withstand thermal extremes no asbestos-free alternative of that era could match.

Keystone Steel & Wire was later acquired by North Star Steel and folded into successive corporate ownership structures.

General Equipment at Keystone Steel Wire Bartonville 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.

Coke Ovens View crosswalk › Blast Furnaces View crosswalk › Open Hearth Furnaces View crosswalk › Pouring Ladles View crosswalk › Hot Tops View crosswalk › Rolling Mills View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Refractory Brick View crosswalk › Cooling Beds View crosswalk › Industrial Boilers 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.

Facilities of this type fall under EPA NESHAP regulations codified at 40 CFR Part 61, Subparts A and M, which govern asbestos emissions during renovation and demolition activities. OSHA’s construction and general industry asbestos standards — 29 CFR 1926.1101 and 29 CFR 1910.1001, respectively — also apply to any abatement or maintenance work performed at the site. No specific publicly available OSHA citation records or EPA enforcement actions directed exclusively at the Bartonville facility’s asbestos management have been identified in current public reporting, though this does not preclude regulatory correspondence in agency administrative files.

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 Keystone Steel Wire Bartonville Illinois

Workers who spent careers at Keystone, worked maintenance shutdowns, or came through the gates as contractor tradespeople from Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 (St. Louis), Plumbers and Pipefitters UA Local 562 (St. Louis), or Boilermakers Local 27 (Kansas City) didn’t encounter asbestos occasionally. They breathed it every shift, in every corner of that plant, for years.

Insulators, pipefitters, boilermakers, electricians, millwrights, and production employees all faced significant exposure. Pipefitters and insulators cut, removed, or disturbed asbestos-containing pipe covering at Keystone, with cutting operations using handsaws generating clouds of friable asbestos dust that spread across surrounding work areas. Boilermakers who worked at Keystone touched boiler and furnace insulation materials on virtually every piece of equipment, with tear-out of old refractory lining generating massive dust clouds and workers inside boiler drums facing some of the highest documented asbestos exposures recorded in any industrial setting. Electricians serviced equipment containing asbestos throughout maintenance calls — in arc chutes, panel linings, and insulating boards. Pipefitters and millwrights who pulled flanges, replaced packing, and installed new gaskets worked with asbestos materials constantly, with these operations happening in confined spaces where fiber concentrations built to dangerous levels.

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

Its manufacturing profile closely paralleled other regional facilities — Granite City Steel / U.S. Steel in Granite City, Illinois; Laclede Steel in Alton, Illinois; and Monsanto and Labadie operations in Missouri — across the Mississippi River industrial corridor. Workers who spent careers at Keystone, worked maintenance shutdowns, or came through the gates as contractor tradespeople from Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 (St. Louis), Plumbers and Pipefitters UA Local 562 (St. Louis), or Boilermakers Local 27 (Kansas City) didn’t encounter asbestos occasionally.

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.