Product Description

Johns-Manville Corporation was the leading historical producer of 85% Magnesia asbestos pipe covering and block insulation — the American industrial standard high-temperature pipe insulation for service temperatures up to approximately 600°F. “85 Mag” was formulated as nominally 85% basic magnesium carbonate bonded and reinforced with approximately 15% asbestos fiber, molded into half-round pipe-covering sections and rigid blocks and shipped in cartons of standard 3-foot lengths.

Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Johns-Manville 85% Magnesia pipe covering was specified across U.S. industry as the standard medium-temperature pipe insulation for:

  • Utility-plant feedwater, condensate, and auxiliary steam piping
  • Refinery process piping and heat-tracing lines
  • Chemical-plant, paper-mill, and steel-mill hot-fluid systems
  • Naval shipboard steam, feedwater, and hot-water piping
  • Institutional and industrial steam-distribution systems

The product was installed by insulator crews who cut sections to length with hand saws, scored and snapped covering to fit fittings, and finished joints with asbestos-fiber cement. Each of these steps is alleged to have released chrysotile fiber into the breathing zones of insulators and adjacent trades.

Johns-Manville is a corporate-trust defendant under the 11 U.S.C. § 524(g) bankruptcy-trust system through the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust — the original and largest asbestos personal-injury trust.

Workers Exposed

  • Insulators (HFIAW Locals) cutting, fitting, and cementing JM 85 Mag on steam and hot-fluid piping
  • Pipefitters and steamfitters (UA members) working adjacent to insulator crews and disturbing existing 85 Mag during pipe repairs
  • Boilermakers during rip-out and re-insulation of boiler auxiliary piping
  • Navy insulators, machinist’s mates, and hull technicians during shipboard steam-line insulation and rip-out
  • Bystander trades — millwrights, mechanics, and laborers — working in the same spaces as active insulation work

Tear-out of aged, brittle 85% Magnesia pipe covering during equipment repairs and plant demolitions is alleged to have been among the highest fiber-release activities in the insulation trade.