Mexico, Missouri was a refractories town, and that is unusual: most asbestos exposure happens to people who used asbestos products, but in Mexico the plants made the high-temperature materials that furnaces and boiler settings were lined with.
A.P. Green Industries was headquartered here. Its asbestos settlement trust is one of the largest single overlaps with Missouri facilities in our records — the trust’s approved-site list matches 90 Missouri facilities — which means A.P. Green material travelled well beyond Mexico itself. Kaiser Refractory operated in the same industry in the same town.
Alongside the refractories, the Mexico power station appears in the record with the powerhouse pattern seen across Missouri — confined spaces, sustained heat, and insulation disturbed repeatedly over decades of maintenance.
Refractory work is its own exposure category. Mixing, cutting and installing high-temperature block, brick and castable, and tearing out the old lining before relining, generate dust in confined hot spaces. The trades are bricklayers and refractory workers, boilermakers, insulators, millwrights and maintenance mechanics.