Product Description

According to publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation records, Wilkens-Anderson Company — commonly referenced in mid-20th-century laboratory catalogs as “WACO” — allegedly manufactured, distributed, and sold bench-top and floor-standing laboratory muffle furnaces, crucible furnaces, and ignition furnaces fitted with woven asbestos-fabric door-face insulation and asbestos-refractory hearth pads. Plaintiffs alleged that the door-face insulation blanket was clamped or riveted to the inside of the swing-out furnace door and formed the primary thermal seal that kept the outer skin of the door cool while the chamber operated at ashing and calcination temperatures of 500 to 1200 degrees Celsius.

Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed litigation that operators loaded and unloaded the furnace many times per shift — placing porcelain, silica, or platinum crucibles onto the hearth pad, closing the door against the asbestos face, running the burn-off cycle, and then re-opening the door to remove the ashed sample. Plaintiffs alleged each door cycle compressed and abraded the asbestos-fabric face, and each crucible placement or removal scraped the asbestos-refractory hearth pad. Cracked and eroded hearth pads were periodically replaced by lab-equipment repair staff, and the replacement process — chip out the old pad, sweep debris, cut fresh asbestos-refractory board to shape, seat with high-temperature cement — allegedly liberated respirable fibers into the breathing zone of both the repair technician and the lab worker at the bench.

Workers Exposed

Plaintiffs alleged occupational asbestos exposure from WACO muffle-furnace asbestos door insulation and hearth pads among the following populations:

  • Metallurgical lab technicians performing ashing, sinter, and heat-treat work
  • Materials-testing lab operators (foundry sand, cement, ceramic firing, ignition-loss)
  • University and college laboratory technicians in analytical, inorganic, and geochemistry teaching labs
  • Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in chemistry, geology, and materials science
  • Industrial R&D lab chemists running gravimetric-residue and calcination determinations
  • Pharmaceutical development lab chemists doing sulfated-ash and residue-on-ignition testing
  • Lab-equipment repair and maintenance technicians who chipped out and replaced hearth pads
  • Central stockroom and receiving staff who unpacked and installed replacement furnace parts