Cape Girardeau’s documented sites cover the three industrial categories that produce the most asbestos exposure in Missouri: cement, consumer-products manufacturing, and power generation.
Lone Star Industries cement plant is the heaviest of the three. Cement production runs kilns at sustained high temperature, and kiln seals, ductwork, preheaters and the surrounding pipework were insulated and repeatedly repaired. Procter & Gamble operated a manufacturing plant here, and the Ameren UE viaduct turbine appears in the generation record.
Kiln and furnace work is its own exposure category — refractory tear-out and relining generate dust in confined, hot spaces. The trades are bricklayers and refractory workers, insulators, boilermakers, millwrights and maintenance mechanics.
Few work histories involve a single site. Tradesmen moved between plants on shutdowns and turnarounds, so an exposure history is normally several employers and several premises rather than one.
Secondary exposure: “take-home” risk
Fibres carried home on work clothes exposed spouses and children who laundered them — a pattern documented in Missouri cases, and one reason a diagnosis in someone who never held an industrial job still warrants investigation.
Missouri filing deadlines
Two deadlines run independently. Personal injury is five years under Mo. Rev. Stat. § 516.120, reaching these claims through subdivision (4). Wrongful death is three years after the cause of action accrues under Mo. Rev. Stat. § 537.100.
When the five years start is set by a different statute: under Mo. Rev. Stat. § 516.100 a claim accrues “when the damage resulting therefrom is sustained and is capable of ascertainment.” That is usually read from the diagnosis, but it is an objective test decided on the facts and it can fall earlier. How Missouri asbestos claims work →