Product Description
Flexitallic — best known for its spiral-wound gaskets and ring-joint gaskets — also distributed through the mid- to late twentieth century a line of compressed asbestos gasket sheet under the Camprene brand, positioned for use as sheet stock at flanged joints where a full spiral-wound or ring-joint gasket was not specified. Camprene sheet was supplied in rolls or cut sheets and stocked in refinery, chemical-plant, and power-plant storerooms as the general-purpose flange gasket material for temperature and chemical service conditions.
Camprene sheet was used across refinery process-piping flanges, chemical-plant heat-exchanger and reactor covers, steam-line flanges, valve-bonnet and pump-casing gaskets, and Navy shipboard piping and equipment joints where a compressed-sheet gasket was specified.
Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Flexitallic Camprene gasket sheet was manufactured with chrysotile asbestos fiber compressed with an elastomeric binder into a resilient sheet that mechanics cut, punched, or stamped to specific flange dimensions at the point of installation. The fiber content gave Camprene its high-temperature service rating and its resistance to chemical attack — the same properties that also made cutting, installing, and removing the material a fiber-generating activity for the workers who handled it.
Workers Exposed
Pipefitters, millwrights, boilermakers, refinery operators, chemical-plant maintenance workers, and Navy pipefitters who fabricated and installed Camprene gaskets allegedly generated asbestos-fiber release throughout the maintenance cycle. Cutting Camprene sheet to the required flange shape — whether by knife, hollow-die punch, or gasket-cutting stamp — released chrysotile dust into the immediate breathing zone. Installing the fresh gasket, bolting the flange down, and torquing the fasteners deformed the gasket into its final seated shape, with additional fiber shedding at the outer edges. Removing a spent Camprene gasket at the next turnaround required scraping the heat-bonded, chemically deteriorated residue from the flange face with a knife, chisel, or wire brush — plaintiffs alleged that this scrape-out step consistently generated the highest fiber release in the service cycle. These tasks were repeated across every flange joint on the pipe rack, exchanger nozzle, and equipment cover over careers spanning decades.