ARTRA (Synkoloid) Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family worked with Synkoloid joint compound, spackle, or patching plaster and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the company behind those products left behind a trust built to pay these claims.

Synkoloid was one of the country's familiar names in wall-finishing products. From 1949 into the mid-1970s its joint compounds, spackling pastes, and patching and texture products were sold as a dry powder, mixed with water on the job, troweled onto walls and ceilings, and then sanded smooth. Sanding dried asbestos compound was about the dustiest task in the building trades, and that dust didn't stay with the finisher. It drifted to the painters, carpenters, and laborers in the same rooms and rode home on work clothes. ARTRA Group, the company that took on Synkoloid's asbestos liability, went bankrupt over that history, and the ARTRA Asbestos Trust has been paying claims since 2007.

You don't need to have kept old records, and you don't need to remember whether the bucket said Synko, Tex-Wall, or Triple Duty. The trust pays on documented exposure to Synkoloid asbestos products before 1983, and reconstructing that from your work history is our job, not yours. If you can tell us the trade you worked and roughly when, we have a place to start.

What the ARTRA trust pays by disease

Mesothelioma sits at the top of the ARTRA schedule (Level VI): a scheduled value of $275,000, and up to $700,000 through the trust's evidence-based Individual Review track. Those are the trust's set values before its payment percentage is applied. As explained further down, that percentage is low, so the amount that actually reaches a family is a fraction of these figures, and an ARTRA claim is usually one piece of a larger recovery rather than the whole of it.

A few notes on the table. Level I (other asbestos disease) was eliminated in 2011. Levels II and IV are currently suspended, because at the trust's present payment percentage a payment on those two levels would fall below the trust's minimum, so the levels paying today are mesothelioma (VI), lung cancer (V), and severe asbestosis (III). The em-dash in the Level II average column means the trust sets no separate average there; the scheduled and maximum values are the same.

A trust's schedule shows what one trust assigns to a diagnosis, not what a whole case is worth. Most people with a Synkoloid exposure history were around other companies' asbestos products too, which usually means other trusts and often lawsuits on top of this one. The numbers above are one share of that larger picture, and we explain below why the ARTRA share is rarely the only one.

How Synkoloid's products exposed workers to asbestos

Synkoloid made wall-finishing products: joint compounds, spackling and patching pastes, texture and stucco patches, and related paints and coatings. For about a quarter century, many of them carried asbestos, added for body, crack resistance, and a smooth finish.

The exposure came from how the products were used, not from anything unusual:

• Mixing the dry powder. The compound arrived as a dry mix that was poured and stirred with water on site, raising dust before a trowel ever touched the wall.
• Sanding the dried compound. Once it set, the finisher sanded the joints and patches smooth, by hand or with a pole sander, and that sanding turned dried asbestos compound back into fine airborne dust. It's the signature exposure of the trade.
• Breathing a neighbor's dust. The painters, carpenters, electricians, and laborers working the same unfinished rooms breathed the same sanding dust, whether or not they ever picked up a sander.
• Carrying it home. The dust settled into hair and clothing, so spouses who shook out and laundered the work clothes, and children in the household, were exposed too.

Because the products were sold through suppliers and hardware stores and used on homes as well as commercial jobs, the exposure reached a wide range of people: drywall finishers and tapers, plasterers, painters, carpenters, and laborers, demolition crews tearing out old finishes, and homeowners doing their own remodeling. The dust itself is the same story told on our asbestos joint compound page, which carries the industrial-hygiene measurements in full.

How the ARTRA bankruptcy created the asbestos trust

Synkoloid had made asbestos-containing products since 1949. ARTRA Group acquired the company in 1975 and, with it, responsibility for Synkoloid's asbestos liability. Asbestos was phased out by 1976, but the lawsuits kept coming, and by 2000 ARTRA faced claims from tens of thousands of plaintiffs. In 2002 it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the kind that lets a business reorganize rather than simply shut down. The Muralo Company, which had bought the Synkoloid brand in 1981 without taking on the older asbestos claims, was drawn into the litigation and filed its own bankruptcy soon after.

Asbestos bankruptcies are resolved through a part of the law written for exactly this problem, Section 524(g) of the Bankruptcy Code. It lets a court set up a trust to take over a company's asbestos liability, then issue a channeling injunction, a court order routing every asbestos claim, the filed ones and the ones not yet brought, into the trust instead of the company. The company funds the trust up front, and in return it's protected from being sued over asbestos again. Through that process the two companies' reorganizations established the joint ARTRA Asbestos Trust in 2007. The trust was funded with more than $70 million, the bulk of it from settlements with the company's insurers, alongside contributions tied to ARTRA and Muralo. That trust is what you file against today.

The old asbestos-era company is gone. ARTRA Group no longer operates, and the trust, not any working business, is what pays these claims. One point of confusion is worth clearing up: the Synkoloid name still appears on products sold today, made by other companies with no connection to the asbestos liability or the trust. Those modern products do not contain asbestos. The claims here concern the asbestos products Synkoloid made decades ago, and they're paid by the trust, not by anyone making or selling anything under the name now.

What the ARTRA trust pays, and why it's a percentage

The trust offers two filing tracks. Expedited Review is the fast path: if your diagnosis and exposure fit the trust's preset criteria, the claim is paid the fixed scheduled value for your disease level. Individual Review is the evidence-based path: the trust weighs the specifics of your case and can pay up to the higher maximum value, which takes longer but matters on a serious diagnosis. For mesothelioma we always do a thorough exposure-history investigation to determine whether filing Individual Review is warranted, because the gap between the scheduled and maximum values is large.

Whichever track you file, the trust doesn't pay the full value of a claim. It pays a percentage of it, currently 0.70%. That figure is strikingly low, and it's worth understanding why rather than being scared off by it.

Every bankruptcy works on the same principle: when a company can't cover everything it owes, the law spreads what exists across everyone it harmed, so a few don't collect in full while everyone else gets nothing. An asbestos trust has to do that across decades, holding back enough for the families who won't be diagnosed until years from now. ARTRA was sued by tens of thousands of people, and even funded at more than $70 million the trust has to answer that whole population, the claims already filed and the ones still years away. Spread fairly across everyone, past and future, the share each claim can draw is necessarily a small fraction. The trust set a higher rate at the start, cut it sharply in 2011 to make the fund last, and has since raised it twice, to 0.6% and then 0.70%. When it raised the rate in 2025 it paid catch-up supplements to people who had filed earlier at the lower rate, which is the opposite of a fund running dry.

The honest takeaway is that a low percentage pays a modest amount on its own. That's not a reason to skip the claim, it's the reason an ARTRA claim is almost never filed alone. It's one of several, and the others, explained below, are usually larger.

Is the ARTRA trust still able to pay?

Yes, with the honest context that a trust like this is built to pay its money out over time, not to hold it forever. Here's the picture from its most recent annual report.

• About $16.8 million on hand. The trust was funded with more than $70 million and has paid the bulk of that out to claimants across nearly two decades. At the end of 2025 it held roughly $16.8 million in net assets, most of it invested.
• Around $2.25 million paid in 2025. Most of that single-year figure was the catch-up supplements described above, money going out to claimants after the rate increase. In an ordinary year the trust's claim payments are far smaller, a few hundred thousand dollars.
• The rate has moved up, not down, in recent years. A trust raising its percentage and paying supplements to earlier claimants is a fund being managed steadily, not one in trouble.

The trust's assets are meant to be used up paying claims over time, and the low percentage is what stretches what's left across the claims still to come, including the families who won't be diagnosed for years. It's open, funded, and paying right now, and a claim filed today is paid at the current percentage.

Who qualifies for an ARTRA trust claim

A claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and documented exposure to a Synkoloid asbestos product during the period the trust covers. The diagnosis side is medical. The exposure side is where the trust's rules come in, and where most of our work happens.

The exposure has to fall before the end of 1982. The trust pays on exposure before January 1, 1983, the period when these products carried asbestos and the danger had not yet been widely acted on. Most careers that touched these products ran straight through that window, so the date is rarely the obstacle people fear. We explain your options if your exposure came later in our guide to how asbestos trust claims work.

For mesothelioma, you don't need heavy exposure. Mesothelioma can come from brief, limited exposure, and the trust recognizes that, so a meso claim isn't held to the higher-dose threshold that applies to the other disease levels. Those higher levels, lung cancer and the severe asbestosis level, ask for Significant Occupational Exposure, about five years of asbestos work that can add up across different jobs and employers. Importantly, that includes time spent working in close proximity to others doing the dusty work, not only doing it yourself, which matters in a trade where one person's sanding dust filled the room. The trust also asks that at least ten years have passed between first exposure and diagnosis, which is almost always met for these diseases.

You don't need to have known the brand, and there's no site list. Synkoloid sold its products through suppliers and stores, not to a handful of named plants, so unlike some trusts there's no approved-worksite list to be on or off. What the claim needs is credible evidence of exposure to a real Synkoloid product, by your account, a coworker's, or a family member's, together with the trade and setting where it happened. Being named in old litigation isn't enough on its own; the exposure has to be to an actual product. Reconstructing which products fit your trade and era is our job.

Family members can qualify too. If a worker brought Synkoloid dust home, a spouse who laundered the work clothes or a child in the household may file on the same exposure history that supports the worker's claim.

How an ARTRA claim gets filed

A trust claim isn't a lawsuit. There's no judge, no jury, no deposition, and no defense lawyer on the other side. You submit a documented claim to a fund that exists to pay it, and the trust reviews it against its written rules and pays on its schedule. What the claim needs is proof of two things, your diagnosis and your exposure to a Synkoloid asbestos product before the cutoff, and putting that together is our work, not yours. We gather the medical records, reconstruct the work history, match it to the trust's product list, and choose the track that fits.

The ARTRA trust is open and still accepting claims, so the door isn't closed. The fuller mechanics of how trust claims are prepared, filed, and paid are in our guide to how asbestos trust claims work. When you call, we'll tell you what your specific claim is likely to involve.

An ARTRA claim is rarely the only one

For a Synkoloid exposure history, this is the part that changes the math. The ARTRA share is modest on its own, but it almost never stands alone.

Think about the work. A finisher or a finishing crew didn't use one company's joint compound for a whole career; they used whatever was on the truck or the shelf, across different brands, jobs, and years. The same unfinished rooms held other companies' texture, ceiling products, and drywall. Several of those makers went bankrupt too and left their own trusts, including the large gypsum and wall-product companies, and others are still in business and can be sued directly. The same exposure history that supports your ARTRA claim usually supports a stack of others, and because each trust reviews and pays independently, the claims add up rather than compete.

This is why the thorough exposure investigation is worth so much on a trust like this one. A work history that turns up several joint-compound and wall-product trusts, plus lawsuits against solvent makers, can carry a mesothelioma case well past what any single modest trust pays. We walk through a worked example, several trusts totaled across one career, in our guide to mesothelioma trust settlement values. Our U.S. Gypsum trust page covers one of the larger wall-product trusts that often files alongside this one.

Sources of compensation beyond the ARTRA trust

An ARTRA claim usually sits inside a larger recovery, and the channels run in parallel without canceling one another out. We file across all of them that apply.

• Asbestos bankruptcy trusts. The ARTRA trust is one, and a finishing or construction career almost always reaches several others, the makers of the other joint compound, texture, and drywall on the same jobs. They review and pay independently, so they stack. Learn more about asbestos trust claims.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Not every maker of these products went bankrupt. Several are still in business and can be sued directly for selling a product they knew was dangerous, and a lawsuit can recover more than a trust claim, though it takes longer. Learn more about asbestos product liability lawsuits.
• Premises liability against the site owners. The general contractors and building owners who controlled the jobsites can be held responsible for the conditions there, separate from the companies that made the products. Learn more about premises liability lawsuits.
• Federal and disability benefits. These depend on where and how the work was done, and they're paid on top of the rest. Social Security disability is available to anyone whose illness stops them from working; work that reached a shipyard or military setting can add Longshore benefits (LHWCA, the federal program for maritime and harbor workers) or VA disability benefits. Learn about asbestos disability and benefit claims.

Your ARTRA trust claim has no defenses to answer. It's a paper claim: no opposing lawyer, no deposition, no courtroom. The trust either pays the claim or it doesn't, on its written rules.

Defenses only come up on the lawsuit side, the claims that run alongside the trust against the makers still in business and the site owners. Those defendants raise the same handful of arguments they raise in most asbestos cases, and none of them is new to us.