About Wood River Refinery Shell Oil Roxana Illinois

The Wood River Refinery has operated continuously for over a century, making it one of the older industrial complexes in the American Midwest. Oil refineries of the Wood River Refinery era relied extensively on asbestos-containing products for insulation, gaskets, sealing compounds, and equipment components. Facilities of this age and operational profile routinely experienced fires, explosions, and unplanned shutdowns — events that historically disturbed asbestos-containing insulation on pipes, boilers, heat exchangers, and pressure vessels. Refinery maintenance turnarounds, which occurred periodically throughout the mid-twentieth century, required workers to remove and replace asbestos-laden materials in confined spaces, generating concentrated fiber exposures.

General Equipment at Wood River Refinery Shell Oil Roxana 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.

Boilers View crosswalk › Compressors View crosswalk › Flanges View crosswalk › Heat Exchangers View crosswalk › Pipe Insulation View crosswalk › Pumps View crosswalk › Reactors View crosswalk › Valves 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.

No Illinois EPA NESHAP abatement notifications have been identified for this facility in current public records. Per the framing above, absence of state-agency documentation should not be read as absence of asbestos — only as absence of a formal, regulated abatement event meeting reporting thresholds. Workers who recall encountering pipe insulation, block insulation, gaskets, or other asbestos-era construction materials at this facility may still have viable claims regardless of whether a state record exists.

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 Wood River Refinery Shell Oil Roxana Illinois

Insulators dispatched by Heat and Frost Insulators Local 1 — whose jurisdiction spans both Missouri and southwestern Illinois — handled pipe insulation at Roxana and at Missouri-side industrial facilities, accumulating exposures on both sides of the river. Members of Plumbers and Pipefitters UA Local 562, headquartered in St. Louis and dispatching members to both Missouri and Illinois job sites including the Roxana Refinery, removed and replaced gaskets and packing at hundreds of flanges during each turnaround. Members of Boilermakers Local 27, whose jurisdiction includes both Missouri industrial facilities and southwestern Illinois refineries, worked with these gasket products during boiler and pressure vessel maintenance at Roxana. The specific job classifications—pipe insulators, maintenance technicians, equipment operators, and laborers—carry documented exposure risks at facilities of this type. Compressed asbestos sheet gasket material was cut to shape at the job site — a process that released high concentrations of asbestos fibers directly into the breathing zone of maintenance mechanics and pipefitters. Rope packing was pulled from valve stems and pump stuffing boxes and replaced by millwrights and pipefitters working bare-handed with the material.

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

Thermobestos has been alleged in publicly filed asbestos litigation to have been installed on high-temperature pipe runs, vessels, and heat exchangers at petroleum refineries throughout the Mississippi River industrial corridor — from refineries and chemical plants on the Missouri side to the Roxana Refinery and other Illinois facilities on the east bank. The same product ran concurrently at Missouri-side facilities including Monsanto’s chemical operations in St. Louis County and industrial plants along the Missouri River corridor — meaning many workers accumulated asbestos exposure in Missouri before or after working at Roxana. Former Local 1 members who handled pipe insulation at multiple sites on both sides of the Mississippi may have claims arising from asbestos exposure in Missouri and Illinois simultaneously.

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.