Globe valves — used for flow throttling and isolation in Navy steam systems, feedwater systems, and auxiliary service piping — were among the most numerically abundant valve types aboard Navy steam-powered surface ships. Globe valves from manufacturers including Jenkins Brothers (Bridgeport CT), Powell Valve Company (Cincinnati OH), Crane Co. (Chicago IL), Lunkenheimer (Cincinnati OH), NIBCO (Elkhart IN), and other suppliers all used asbestos braided packing as the standard stem sealing material for steam service applications throughout the WWII and Cold War eras.

Asbestos Globe Valve Packing

The globe valve’s design made it the valve type most commonly repacked in Navy engineering departments:

  • Stuffing box construction — globe valves use a stuffing box around the valve stem, packed with rings of braided packing material to provide the stem seal. In steam service applications, braided asbestos packing was the industry standard sealing material throughout the WWII and Cold War periods — selected for its ability to provide an effective steam seal at elevated temperatures
  • Packing replacement necessity — globe valve packing was the primary wearing consumable in a steam plant’s valve inventory. As asbestos packing compressed and deteriorated under steam service conditions, valves began to drip or weep at the stem — requiring repacking to restore the stem seal. The large number of globe valves in a steam plant’s piping inventory meant that repacking was a continuously recurring maintenance task throughout any engineering tour aboard a steam-powered surface ship
  • Repacking procedure asbestos exposure — repacking a steam globe valve involved: (1) tightening the packing gland to maximum and verifying the leak persisted; (2) backing off the packing gland and removing the old packing rings from the stuffing box with a packing pick tool; (3) cutting new packing rings from the packing spool and installing new rings in the stuffing box; (4) tightening the gland. Each of these steps — particularly removing old compressed asbestos packing and cutting new asbestos packing rings from the spool — released asbestos fiber during the operation

Engineering Department Valve Maintenance

The large number of globe valves in a steam plant required continuous packing maintenance:

  • A destroyer’s steam plant contained hundreds of globe valves in steam service; a carrier’s steam plant contained thousands. Each valve’s packing required attention at intervals that varied from months to years, generating a continuous stream of repacking maintenance tasks distributed across the engineering department’s work cycle
  • Engineering ratings — MMs, BTs, and EMs — accumulated repeated asbestos exposure from valve repacking throughout their engineering tours, with the exposure multiplied by the total number of valves repacked during a shipboard career

VA Claims

VA presumptive service connection under 38 CFR § 3.309(d) covers asbestos exposure from valve packing maintenance in Navy steam plants. Engineering ratings who performed steam globe valve repacking aboard surface ships built before the mid-1970s asbestos phase-down and have since been diagnosed with mesothelioma, asbestosis, or asbestos-related lung cancer may qualify for VA disability benefits. Globe valve repacking represents one of the most commonly performed and frequently repeated asbestos exposure tasks in the Navy engineering rating community.