ASARCO Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family worked around Capco asbestos-cement pipe, raw asbestos fiber, or one of the many products made with the asbestos ASARCO mined, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the company left behind a trust built to pay exactly these claims.

For most of the twentieth century ASARCO was one of the country's largest mining and smelting companies, and it was in the asbestos business three ways: it owned Lake Asbestos of Quebec, a major asbestos mine; it sold that raw fiber in bulk to other manufacturers, who built it into their own products; and it made Capco asbestos-cement pipe itself. The weight of asbestos sickness drove the company into bankruptcy in 2005, and its reorganization required it to fund a trust with more than $900 million to pay the people that asbestos harmed. That trust has been paying mesothelioma and other asbestos claims since 2009, and it's still open and still paying.

You don't need to have kept old records, and you don't need to have known ASARCO's name, because much of its asbestos reached workers inside other companies' products. The trust pays on documented exposure to ASARCO's asbestos, the fiber, the Capco pipe, or a product made with its fiber, and unlike most asbestos trusts it sets no cutoff date on when that exposure happened. Reconstructing that history, from work records, product information, and the trust's own documentation, is our job, not yours. If you can tell us where you worked and when, we have a place to start.

What the ASARCO trust pays by disease level

Mesothelioma sits at the top of the trust's schedule, at Level VIII. Its scheduled value (the trust's preset amount) is $170,000, but its maximum value runs to $900,000, and that gap is the whole reason the filing track matters: for mesothelioma we always do a thorough exposure-history investigation to determine whether filing Individual Review is warranted, because Individual Review is what opens the higher figure your evidence can support. Every amount below is then reduced by the trust's payment percentage, explained further down the page.

A dash in the scheduled column (Lung cancer 2, Level VI) means that level has no fixed fast-track amount; it's paid through review against the average and maximum instead. A dash in the average and maximum columns (Levels II and I) means those levels are paid a single set amount with no higher tier above them.

These are one trust's values, not your family's whole recovery. The amounts above are what a single trust, ASARCO's, assigns to each disease before its payment percentage comes off, and almost everyone exposed to ASARCO's asbestos was exposed to other companies' products too, each with its own trust or lawsuit. For ASARCO that's almost the definition of the claim, because its fiber went into products that carry their own makers' trusts. What the ASARCO claim is worth on its own matters far less than what the whole set of claims comes to, and we come back to that below.

How ASARCO's asbestos exposed workers

ASARCO, the American Smelting and Refining Company, was one of the largest mining and metals companies in the country, and its asbestos exposure didn't come from a single product the way a boiler maker's does. It came from ASARCO's place in the asbestos supply chain itself. The company was in the asbestos business at three different points, and each one reached a different set of workers.

It mined the fiber. ASARCO owned Lake Asbestos of Quebec, which ran one of North America's large asbestos mines. The raw asbestos that came out of that mine was milled, bagged, and shipped, and the workers who mined, milled, and handled that loose fiber, along with the people who later opened the bags and poured it into a mix, breathed some of the most concentrated exposure there is, because raw fiber is nothing but asbestos.

It sold the fiber to other manufacturers. Most of that fiber didn't stay with ASARCO. It was sold in bulk to companies that built it into their own products: pipe insulation, gaskets, fireproofing spray, ceiling tile, and more. That's the route that surprises people, because it means a worker who never heard of ASARCO, who only knew the brand name on the box, was still breathing ASARCO's asbestos. The trust keeps a list of those products, which is where many claims begin.

It made asbestos-cement pipe. Through its Capco operation, ASARCO made asbestos-cement pipe itself, the rigid gray pipe used in municipal water and sewer systems for decades. Cutting it, drilling it, or snapping it to length released the fiber locked in the cement, exposing the plumbers, pipefitters, and utility crews who installed and repaired it. See how asbestos cement pipe caused exposure.

On top of all of that, ASARCO ran its own smelters and mining operations, where asbestos was present in the plants themselves, so workers at those sites can qualify on premises exposure even apart from any single product.

Because ASARCO's asbestos traveled so many ways, an ASARCO claim reaches across very different trades: the pipefitters and plumbers and utility crews who cut Capco pipe, the insulators and boilermakers who worked with the pipe insulation its fiber went into, the fireproofers and other tradesmen who used products built on that fiber, and the mine, mill, and smelter workers who handled the asbestos at its source. That spread is the first sign of why an ASARCO claim is rarely the only one.

How the ASARCO bankruptcy created the asbestos trust

By the early 2000s, ASARCO faced asbestos claims it couldn't resolve one by one. In 2005 it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the kind that lets a business reorganize instead of shutting down. Filing didn't erase the claims. It moved them into a process built to handle them all at once.

That process runs on a part of the bankruptcy law written specifically for asbestos cases, Section 524(g). It lets a court set up a trust to take over a company's asbestos liability, then issue a channeling injunction, a court order that routes every asbestos claim, the ones already filed and the ones that haven't happened yet, away from the company and into the trust. From that point on, the trust pays the claims in the company's place. The trade the law strikes is straightforward: the company funds the trust up front, and in return it's protected from being sued over asbestos again.

After several years of proceedings, ASARCO's reorganization was confirmed in 2009, and the ASARCO Asbestos Personal Injury Settlement Trust was created that December. The company funded it with more than $900 million, structured as over $650 million in cash plus a $280 million secured note, to pay current and future claimants. That trust is what you file against today; the company itself can no longer be sued for the asbestos in its old products and fiber.

The company is still in business today. The bankruptcy didn't shut ASARCO down. The channeling injunction that created the trust moved the asbestos liability into the trust, which let the business reorganize and keep operating. ASARCO continues today as a copper mining and smelting company, a business separate from the asbestos mining and pipe-making that caused these claims. That matters for two reasons. It shows that an asbestos bankruptcy didn't mean the company vanished, so the records and history behind your exposure still exist. And because the trust, not the operating company, pays these claims, filing yours doesn't take a dollar from anyone working there today.

Why the ASARCO trust pays a percentage, not the full amount

The trust pays set amounts based on your diagnosis, scaled to how serious the disease is, with mesothelioma at the top of the schedule and the non-malignant conditions lower down. The full breakdown is in the table near the top of this page.

How you file decides which of those amounts is within reach, because the trust offers two tracks:

• Expedited Review is the fast track. If your diagnosis and exposure fit the trust's preset criteria, the claim is paid the fixed scheduled value (the trust's set amount) for your disease level, with no negotiation and a quicker turnaround. It's the simplest path when the standard amount is the right amount.
• Individual Review is the evidence-based track. Instead of the fixed figure, the trust weighs the specifics of your case, your age, your work history, your dependents, and the strength of the exposure proof, and it can pay up to the much higher maximum value. It takes longer and asks for more, but for a serious diagnosis it's usually worth it. 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 the maximum value is large enough to matter to your family.

Whichever track you file, the trust doesn't pay the full value of the claim. It pays a percentage of it, currently 35%, thirty-five cents on each dollar of a claim's value.

That number surprises people, so here's why it's there. It's the same principle behind every bankruptcy: when a company can't cover everything it owes, the law shares what there is across everyone it harmed, so that everyone gets a fair portion instead of a lucky few collecting in full and everyone else collecting nothing. An asbestos trust has to do that across time as well, because these diseases can take thirty to fifty years to surface, so the trust has to hold back enough for the family that won't be diagnosed until 2045. ASARCO funded the trust with more than $900 million, but if it paid every mesothelioma claim its full top-tier value of $900,000, that entire fund would be gone after about a thousand people, and everyone after them would get nothing. Paying a set fraction of each claim is what lets the trust treat the tens of thousands of claimants who've already come, and still have money for the ones who haven't.

Here's the part that sets ASARCO apart from most trusts. Its percentage has gone up, not down. It started at 22% and was raised to 35% in 2018, and it's held there since. That matters in two ways. When a trust raises its percentage, it doesn't only pay more on the claims that come after; it goes back and pays supplements to the people who already filed at the lower rate, so earlier claimants share in the increase. And a rising percentage is, in plain terms, the opposite of a trust struggling to stretch its money: it's a sign the fund has held up better than its planners feared. The percentage isn't fixed forever, and the trust reviews it periodically, so we work from whatever it's paying when your claim is filed and confirm it against the trust's current notice rather than any figure that might be out of date.

Is the ASARCO trust still able to pay?

Yes. A trust that pays a percentage of each claim can leave people wondering whether there's anything left, so here's the picture from its most recent annual report.

• About $626 million on hand. At the end of 2025 the trust held roughly $626 million in net claimants' equity, the trust's term for what it has left to pay claims. That's down from about $659 million a year earlier, because in 2025 its claim payments and costs ran ahead of what its investments earned back, which is the fund doing its job, not a warning sign.
• About $74 million paid to claimants in 2025. In that single year the trust paid out roughly $74 million across thousands of claims.
• More than $800 million paid since 2009. Over its history the trust has paid more than $800 million to asbestos claimants. With more than $600 million still on hand on top of that, the trust has put more than its original funding back into claimants' hands while its investments kept the fund replenished.

None of that means the money is unlimited, and it's exactly why the trust pays a set percentage rather than the full value of each claim: it's holding reserves against a long line of claims still to come. But the trust is open, funded, and paying right now, it has raised its payment percentage rather than cut it, and a claim filed today is paid on the current schedule.

Who qualifies for an ASARCO trust claim

A trust claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and proof that you were exposed to ASARCO's asbestos. The diagnosis side is medical. The exposure side is where ASARCO's rules are genuinely different from most trusts', and where most of our work happens.

Unlike most asbestos trusts, there's no cutoff date on your exposure. Most trusts pay only on exposure from before the end of 1982, the point when the dangers were widely known and warnings went up. ASARCO is different, because it mined asbestos, sold the raw fiber, and ran asbestos-bearing operations right up until its 2005 bankruptcy, so the trust sets no calendar limit on when your exposure happened. Exposure in the 1980s, the 1990s, or even the early 2000s can support a claim, which means a worker who was told they were too late for the other trusts may still have an ASARCO claim. How long you have to file, as opposed to when you were exposed, is a separate deadline that depends on your state, and some of those deadlines are short, so it's still best to call promptly. Find your state's filing deadlines.

How the trust recognizes ASARCO exposure

The trust recognizes that ASARCO's asbestos was present two ways, and you only need one of them.

An approved site. Like many trusts, ASARCO's keeps a list of worksites it already accepts as places its asbestos was present, more than 300 of them across 37 states, including its own smelters and mines and the sites that received its fiber and pipe. If you worked at a listed site during the covered period, that part is straightforward.

Product identification. This is the door that matters most for ASARCO, and it comes in three forms:

• Capco asbestos-cement pipe, which ASARCO made itself. Plumbers, pipefitters, and the water- and sewer-system crews who cut, drilled, or snapped that pipe breathed the fiber it released. See how asbestos cement pipe caused exposure.
• Raw asbestos fiber from the Lake Asbestos of Quebec mine, which ASARCO owned and sold in bulk and handled at its own facilities. Workers who bagged, mixed, or worked around that loose fiber were exposed to it directly.
• A product another company made with ASARCO's fiber. This is the route most people don't expect, because it means you can have an ASARCO claim through a product you'd never connect to ASARCO. ASARCO's fiber went into brand-name products other manufacturers made, and the trust accepts identification of specific products on its approved list as proof of ASARCO exposure. The list includes names many asbestos workers will recognize, like Owens-Corning Kaylo pipe insulation, Garlock gaskets and packing, Armstrong Armaspray fireproofing, and Celotex ceiling tile, each with its own conditions that we check for you.

But proving ASARCO's asbestos was at your worksite, by any of these doors, isn't the same as being exposed to it, and the trust asks both questions: whether ASARCO asbestos was present, and whether the work you did would have put its fiber in your air. So we look at what you actually did. Cutting, drilling, or snapping cement pipe released fiber; bagging and mixing raw fiber released it directly; and cutting into or tearing out the insulation, gaskets, and fireproofing made with ASARCO's fiber released it the way those products always did. Whether you handled the material yourself or worked alongside the tradesmen who did, we use the exposure record on those products, together with your work history, to connect your tasks to exposure from ASARCO's asbestos. The site or the product puts ASARCO's fiber at your worksite; the task evidence is what ties it to you.

Not being on the site list, and not being able to name the exact product, doesn't disqualify you. The list captures the worksites and products the trust already knows about, not every place ASARCO's fiber ended up, and that's why the exposure investigation matters. We check the site list and the approved products first, but we don't stop there, and we document what you worked with through work history, purchasing and specification records, and coworkers' accounts. You can also search our directory of asbestos exposure sites to see whether the place you worked is already documented.
For mesothelioma, you don't need heavy exposure. Mesothelioma can come from brief, limited exposure, and the trust recognizes that, so a meso claim doesn't have to meet the higher dose threshold that applies to some other diseases. That threshold, Significant Occupational Exposure (SOE), is about five years of total asbestos exposure with at least two of those years in work that put you in regular contact with asbestos. It applies to lung cancer and other cancers and to the more serious asbestosis claims; the base nonmalignant levels pay their set amounts without it. SOE can add up across different employers, and it can come from working near the dust, not only from handling the material yourself.

Your diagnosis has to come at least ten years after your first exposure. Like the medicine itself, the trust recognizes that asbestos diseases take years to develop, so it asks for at least ten years between first exposure and diagnosis. For mesothelioma and the other asbestos diseases, which typically surface thirty to fifty years after exposure, that's almost always met; we mention it only so it isn't a surprise.

Family members can qualify too. If an ASARCO-exposed worker brought the dust home, a spouse who laundered the work clothes or a child in the household can file, through the evidence-based Individual Review track, on the same exposure history that supports the worker's own claim. Learn more about take-home or secondary asbestos exposure.

How an ASARCO claim gets filed

A trust claim isn't a lawsuit, and that surprises people who expect a courtroom. There's no judge, no jury, no deposition, and no defense lawyer arguing the other side. You're not suing anyone. You're submitting a documented claim to a fund that already 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 ASARCO's asbestos. Putting that together is our job, not yours. We gather the medical records, reconstruct the work history, match it against the trust's approved site list or document the ASARCO fiber, Capco pipe, or listed products you worked around, and choose the track, Expedited or Individual Review, that fits your situation. You don't need to have kept paperwork or remember product names to start.

The ASARCO trust has been open and paying since 2009 and is still accepting claims today, so the door isn't closed. The fuller mechanics of how trust claims are prepared, filed, and paid are laid out in our guide to how asbestos trust claims work. When you call, we'll tell you what your specific claim is likely to involve and how the timeline tends to run.

An ASARCO claim is rarely the only one

For most trusts the multi-claim picture takes some explaining. For ASARCO it's almost built into how the claim works, because the very thing that proves your ASARCO claim usually proves several others at the same time.

Start with the products on the trust's list. ASARCO supplied the raw fiber, but it didn't make Kaylo insulation, or Garlock gaskets, or Armaspray fireproofing. Other companies did, using ASARCO's fiber, and those companies went bankrupt over asbestos too and left their own trusts. So the same exposure can be a claim in two directions at once: against ASARCO for the fiber, and against the maker for the finished product.

Take Kaylo, the high-temperature pipe insulation on the trust's list. The asbestos in it was often ASARCO's fiber, which is what makes it an ASARCO claim, but Kaylo was made and sold by other companies, and breathing it is a claim against their trusts as well: the Owens-Corning asbestos trust for Kaylo from 1958 on, and the Owens-Illinois Paddock trust for the Kaylo made before then. One run of pipe insulation, cut on a single job, can be three separate trust claims. The same doubling holds for the Garlock asbestos trust behind its gaskets and packing, the ACandS asbestos trust behind Armaspray fireproofing, and the Celotex asbestos trust behind its ceiling tile.

Now stretch that across a career. A working life around insulation, pipe, or the trades that used these products meant exposure to dozens of manufacturers' asbestos, job after job, year after year, and many of those makers left trusts of their own. The same work history that supports your ASARCO claim usually supports a stack of others, and because each trust reviews and pays independently, the claims don't compete with each other. They add up.

This is why the thorough exposure investigation is worth so much. Each trust pays its own fraction, and most pay modestly on their own, but a work history that turns up eight trusts instead of three can change the total on a mesothelioma claim by a wide margin. We walk through a full worked example, several trusts totaled across one career, in our guide to mesothelioma trust settlement values.

Even stacked across many trusts, trust claims are still only one part of an ASARCO recovery, and some of the other parts can be larger. The full set of channels, including the lawsuits and benefits that run alongside the trusts, is laid out in the recovery options on this page.

Sources of compensation beyond the ASARCO trust

An ASARCO 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 ASARCO trust is one, and because its fiber went into so many other companies' products, an ASARCO claim almost always reaches several other trusts at once. They review and pay independently, so they stack. Learn more about asbestos trust claims.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Not every company whose product carried ASARCO's fiber went bankrupt. Some 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. ASARCO ran its own smelters and mines, and its fiber and pipe were used at industrial sites, water and sewer systems, and plants across the country. The owners of those workplaces can be held responsible for the conditions they allowed, 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 trust and lawsuit recovery. Military service can support VA disability benefits; civilian work at a federal facility can support FECA benefits (the Federal Employees' Compensation Act, the program for federal civilian workers); and Social Security disability is available to anyone whose illness stops them from working. Learn about asbestos disability and benefit claims.

Your ASARCO trust claim has no defenses to answer. It's a paper claim: no opposing lawyer, no deposition, no courtroom, no one arguing the other side. ASARCO settled that question when it funded the trust, and 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 manufacturers still in business and the site owners where you worked. Those defendants raise the same handful of arguments they raise in most asbestos cases, and none of them is new to us. The short version is that each one describes a cleaner, smaller version of the work than the one your loved one actually did, and the evidence answers it.