Armstrong S-89 Adhesive / S-90 Adhesive / Mastics / Emulsions / CC Navy Sealer

Armstrong S-89 Adhesive, S-90 Adhesive, Mastics, Emulsions, and CC Navy Sealer

Armstrong World Industries produced a line of flooring installation and sealing compounds throughout much of the mid-twentieth century, including the S-89 Adhesive, S-90 Adhesive, associated mastics and emulsions, and the CC Navy Sealer. These products were marketed primarily for use in commercial, industrial, and institutional settings where resilient floor tile installation demanded strong, durable bonding agents. Manufactured and sold from approximately 1950 through 1980, these adhesives and sealers were formulated with chrysotile asbestos as a functional ingredient—a decision that exposed countless workers to a known carcinogen during routine handling and application.

Product Description

Armstrong World Industries was one of the dominant manufacturers of flooring products and installation materials throughout the twentieth century. The S-89 and S-90 Adhesives were among the company’s flagship installation compounds designed to bond resilient floor tile—including Armstrong’s own asbestos-containing vinyl and asphalt tile lines—to subfloor surfaces in factories, schools, hospitals, shipyards, office buildings, and government facilities.

The mastics and emulsions in this product family served similar bonding and surface-preparation functions, while the CC Navy Sealer was a specialized compound used in naval and maritime construction environments to seal and protect flooring surfaces. These products were packaged in cans and buckets and distributed widely through Armstrong’s established commercial and industrial supply channels. The CC Navy Sealer’s name reflects its particular utility in U.S. Navy installations and shipbuilding environments, where it was applied as a finishing and protective coating over installed deck coverings and resilient flooring.

These compounds were typically thick, paste-like materials that had to be spread, troweled, or rolled onto surfaces in enclosed or semi-enclosed environments, conditions that significantly affected how workers interacted with the materials during each phase of use.

Asbestos Content

Documentation associated with the Armstrong World Industries Asbestos Personal Injury Settlement Trust confirms that the S-89 Adhesive, S-90 Adhesive, mastics, emulsions, and CC Navy Sealer contained chrysotile asbestos. Chrysotile, also known as white asbestos, is a fibrous serpentine mineral that was incorporated into adhesive and mastic formulations during this era for several practical reasons: it improved the viscosity and spreadability of the compound, enhanced heat resistance, added structural reinforcement to the dried adhesive layer, and increased the product’s overall durability under heavy floor traffic.

Although chrysotile is sometimes characterized as less potent than amphibole asbestos varieties, regulatory bodies including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have consistently classified all forms of asbestos, including chrysotile, as human carcinogens with no established safe level of exposure. OSHA’s current permissible exposure limit (PEL) for asbestos is 0.1 fibers per cubic centimeter of air as an eight-hour time-weighted average, a standard that reflects decades of scientific evidence linking chrysotile exposure to mesothelioma, lung cancer, and asbestosis.

The asbestos content in these adhesive and sealing products made disturbance of the material—whether during mixing, application, spreading, or cleanup—a potential source of fiber release into the breathing zone of workers.

How Workers Were Exposed

Industrial workers who handled Armstrong S-89 Adhesive, S-90 Adhesive, mastics, emulsions, and CC Navy Sealer during their installation and application were placed at risk of asbestos fiber inhalation through several recurring work tasks common to the flooring and construction trades during the decades these products were in use.

Mixing and preparation posed an initial exposure risk. Workers who opened containers of mastic or adhesive and stirred or mixed the compound to achieve working consistency could disturb settled asbestos fibers, releasing them into the air in concentrated form in poorly ventilated spaces.

Spreading and troweling were the primary means by which these adhesives were applied to subfloor surfaces. Workers using notched trowels, floor scrapers, or rollers to spread the compound across large surface areas performed this work at floor level, often in confined spaces with limited ventilation. The physical act of spreading a fiber-containing material across a surface generated airborne particulate, and workers inhaled this contaminated air throughout their shifts.

Cleanup and spill remediation exposed workers who scraped, wiped, or cleaned excess adhesive from floors, tools, and surrounding surfaces. Dried mastic or adhesive residue, when scraped or disturbed, could release asbestos fibers in a more concentrated form than the wet material.

Naval and shipyard environments presented compounding exposure risks for workers who used the CC Navy Sealer. Shipboard spaces are notoriously confined, often lacking adequate fresh-air circulation, and workers applying sealers to deck surfaces in these environments had little opportunity to avoid inhaling airborne fibers. Many shipyard workers were also exposed to asbestos from multiple other sources simultaneously, including pipe insulation, gaskets, and bulkhead materials.

Workers in these trades were typically not provided with adequate respiratory protection, and employers and manufacturers were not required to disclose the asbestos content of these products in worker-facing safety documentation during much of the 1950s through 1970s. Meaningful hazard communication standards did not take effect until OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard was implemented in the 1980s, leaving workers in this period largely uninformed of the dangers they faced.