Product Description

Baroid Industries (a division of NL Industries, Inc., later acquired by Halliburton) manufactured and sold through the 1950s into the mid-1980s a line of drilling-mud viscosifier additives consisting in substantial part of raw, dry chrysotile asbestos fiber packaged for oilfield use under the trade names Visquik and Baroid Asbestos. The product was poured directly from sacks into the drilling-mud system at the rig to increase the carrying capacity of the circulating mud — particularly in lost-circulation zones and deep wells.

Baroid Visquik and similar oilfield asbestos additives are among the most heavily-documented direct-exposure asbestos products in U.S. occupational litigation. Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that rig hands, mud engineers, and oilfield laborers who opened and emptied Baroid asbestos sacks directly into drilling-mud systems were exposed to substantial concentrations of respirable chrysotile fiber — often without respiratory protection and in dust-dispersing outdoor rig environments where the dry fiber was readily airborne.

Baroid Industries / NL Industries has been named as a Manufacturer Defendant in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation.

Workers Exposed

  • Oilfield mud engineers (mud mixers)
  • Drilling-rig hands (derrick hands, floor hands, motormen)
  • Oilfield laborers and yard crews handling sacked product
  • Oil-and-gas industry workers across all regions — Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, the Gulf of Mexico, California, and offshore worldwide

If You Worked With Baroid Drilling Mud Asbestos Additives

If you handled, mixed, poured, or worked in proximity to Baroid Visquik, Baroid Asbestos, or similar asbestos-fiber drilling-mud additives during the asbestos era — including on land rigs, offshore rigs, or in oilfield supply yards — and have since been diagnosed with mesothelioma, asbestosis, lung cancer, or another asbestos-related illness, you may have legal rights.

Free, confidential case evaluation: Speak with O’Brien Law Firm — (314) 936-2956