Product Description

Eagle-Picher Industries, Inc. marketed the Super 66 product family for high-temperature industrial thermal insulation service. Alongside Super 66 Insulating Cement — the site-applied plastic form — Eagle-Picher supplied Super 66 rigid block insulation as the preformed rigid-slab counterpart, designed for cutting and fitting onto boiler drums, turbine casings, superheater headers, breeching, and process-vessel exteriors.

Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Eagle-Picher Super 66 block insulation contained chrysotile asbestos fiber bonded into the rigid insulation matrix, and that Super 66 block was installed across U.S. utility power plants, refineries, chemical plants, paper mills, steel mills, and Navy shipboard machinery spaces from the 1930s through 1971.

Super 66 block was supplied in preformed slabs (typically nominal 3-foot lengths in standard thicknesses) and was installed by insulator crews using hand saws to cut and fit block to equipment geometry, wire-tying block into place, and finishing exposed joints with Super 66 or 85% Magnesia insulating cement. Cut faces, saw kerfs, and broken edges are alleged to have released respirable chrysotile fiber into the immediate work area.

Eagle-Picher is a corporate-trust defendant under the 11 U.S.C. § 524(g) bankruptcy-trust system through the Eagle-Picher Industries Personal Injury Settlement Trust.

Workers Exposed

  • Insulators (HFIAW Locals) cutting, fitting, wire-tying, and finishing Super 66 block onto industrial equipment
  • Boilermakers and millwrights during rip-out of aged Super 66 block for tube repairs and casing work
  • Pipefitters (UA members) during header-, valve-, and steam-trap re-insulation
  • Navy insulators and hull technicians during shipboard block-insulation work
  • Bystander trades working alongside insulation crews during installation and tear-out