Pittsburgh Corning Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family worked around Unibestos asbestos insulation and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, Pittsburgh Corning left behind a trust built to pay exactly these claims.

Pittsburgh Corning made Unibestos, a high-temperature pipe and block insulation built with amosite, one of the most hazardous types of asbestos, that wrapped steam lines, boilers, and process piping in factories, refineries, power plants, and ships. It sold Unibestos for about a decade, from 1962 to 1972, but the insulation stayed in service far longer, and the men who later tore it out during repairs and demolition breathed its dust for years after the sales stopped. The weight of that sickness drove the company into bankruptcy, and after one of the longest asbestos bankruptcy fights on record, the reorganization funded a trust with about $3.7 billion to pay the people Unibestos harmed. That trust has been paying mesothelioma and other asbestos claims since 2017, and it's still open and still paying.

You don't need to have kept your old records, and you don't need to have known the insulation was Unibestos or that Pittsburgh Corning made it. The trust pays on documented exposure to Unibestos, whether you were there when it went in or when it came out, and reconstructing that, from work history, military records, 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 Pittsburgh Corning 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 $175,000, but its maximum value runs to $500,000, 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 (Level I) means that level is a small flat cash-discount payment with no higher tier above it.

These are one trust's values, not your family's whole recovery. The amounts above are what a single trust, Pittsburgh Corning's, assigns to each disease before its payment percentage comes off, and almost everyone exposed to Unibestos was exposed to other companies' asbestos too, each with its own trust or lawsuit. What the Pittsburgh Corning 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 Pittsburgh Corning's Unibestos insulation exposed workers

Pittsburgh Corning made one asbestos product that drives almost every claim against its trust: Unibestos, a high-temperature insulation sold as molded pipe covering that wrapped steam and process lines and as flat block that went on boilers, tanks, and other hot equipment. The company sold Unibestos from 1962 to 1972, into the factories, refineries, power plants, and ships that ran on high-pressure steam.

What set Unibestos apart was what it was made of. It was an amosite product, amosite being an amphibole, the more hazardous family of asbestos fiber, and that's not a small detail. Amphibole asbestos is the form most strongly tied to mesothelioma, so a Unibestos exposure history carries real weight even when the contact was relatively brief.

None of it released much fiber sitting still. Unibestos got into the air when it was worked: sawing and cutting the pipe covering to length, fitting block to a boiler, and especially tearing out old, friable (crumbly and dusty) insulation to reach the equipment underneath during repairs. The men doing that breathed it directly, and so did everyone working near them, because the dust filled the whole space. And because the insulation stayed in service for decades after Pittsburgh Corning stopped selling it, the tearing-out kept exposing workers long after 1972. See how asbestos pipe and block insulation caused exposure.

That's why a Pittsburgh Corning claim reaches across the trades that worked around insulation: the insulators who installed and removed it, the pipefitters and plumbers who ran the lines it covered, the boilermakers who built and repaired the boilers it wrapped, and the Navy sailors and shipyard workers who lived alongside it in engine and boiler rooms. That spread is the first sign of why a Pittsburgh Corning claim is rarely the only one.

How the Pittsburgh Corning bankruptcy created the asbestos trust

By the late 1990s, the asbestos claims from Unibestos had grown into a liability Pittsburgh Corning could not resolve one lawsuit at a time. In 2000, the company 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 trust is funded up front, and in return the company, and the companies that helped fund it, are protected from being sued over that asbestos again.

This particular bankruptcy took an unusually long time. Pittsburgh Corning had been jointly owned by two large companies, Corning and PPG, and the plan to fund the trust, drawing on those parent companies and on decades of insurance coverage, was fought over for years before it was finally approved. The plan didn't become effective until 2016, and the trust began paying claims in 2017. When it was funded, it was funded heavily: about $3.7 billion, built from cash, the value of Pittsburgh Corning's own business, and a very large insurance recovery. That trust is what you file against today; the company can no longer be sued for the asbestos in Unibestos.

The trust, not an operating company, pays these claims. The long fight over this bankruptcy was, in large part, about making sure the trust was funded well enough to pay claims for decades, and its parent companies, Corning and PPG, remain large, going concerns today. What that means for you is simple: filing a claim doesn't take a dollar from anyone's job, because it's paid by a dedicated trust that was funded years ago for exactly this purpose, not by an operating business.

Why the Pittsburgh Corning 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 like asbestosis 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 19%, nineteen 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. Paying a set fraction of each claim is what lets the trust treat the hundreds of thousands of people who've already come, and still have money for the ones who haven't.

For Pittsburgh Corning the figure has been stable: it's 19%, and unlike some trusts it isn't currently under reconsideration, which means we can tell you with some confidence what a claim is likely to pay. The percentage isn't frozen forever, the trust still reviews it over time, 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 Pittsburgh Corning trust still able to pay?

Yes, and this is one of the largest and healthiest asbestos trusts operating. Here's the picture from its most recent annual report.

• About $1.14 billion on hand, and it grew in 2025. At the end of 2025 the trust held roughly $1.14 billion in net assets, up from about $1.11 billion a year earlier. It earned more from its investments than it paid out, so the fund grew over the year rather than shrinking.
• About $83 million paid to claimants in 2025. In that single year the trust paid out roughly $83 million across thousands of claims.
• More than $3.5 billion paid since 2017. In the years since it began paying claims, the trust has already paid more than $3.5 billion to asbestos victims, and it still holds well over a billion more.

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, growing, and paying right now, and a claim filed today is paid on the current schedule. We track the annual reporting and can walk through the full financial picture with you when you call.

Who qualifies for a Pittsburgh Corning trust claim

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

The exposure rule has two doors, and you only need one. Pittsburgh Corning sold Unibestos for about ten years, and the trust's exposure rule starts there, but it doesn't end there:

• You were around Unibestos while it was being sold and installed, between July 1, 1962 and December 31, 1972. This is the original sales window, when the insulation was going onto new pipe and equipment, and exposure anywhere in that decade qualifies.
• Or you were exposed tearing out Unibestos that was already in place. This is the door that matters for a great many workers, because insulation installed in the 1960s stayed on the pipe for years and was ripped out long after, often into the 1980s. If you have credible evidence that you were around the removal of existing Unibestos, that exposure can qualify even though it came after the sales window closed. The maintenance workers, insulators, and demolition crews who tore out old Unibestos are exactly who this door is for.

That second door is why a later date doesn't count you out. If your exposure to this insulation came from ripping it out in 1979 or 1983, that's not a reason to assume you're ineligible; it's a reason to call, because documenting rip-out exposure is exactly the kind of reconstruction we do.

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 before 1982. It applies to lung cancer and other cancers, and to the more serious asbestosis claims; the base asbestosis and pleural-disease levels pay their set amounts without it. The SOE clause looks at your whole asbestos career, not just your Unibestos exposure, which is why its date reaches to 1982 even though Unibestos itself was sold only through 1972. SOE can add up across different employers, and it can come from working near the dust, not only from handling the material yourself.

Family members can qualify too. If a worker brought Unibestos dust home, a spouse who laundered the work clothes or a child in the household can file on the worker's exposure history, the same history that supports the worker's own claim. How take-home asbestos exposure works.

How the trust's site list and product identification work

The trust recognizes exposure two ways, and you only need one of them. The first is its approved site list: more than 1,000 worksites across all 50 states and the District of Columbia that the trust already accepts as places Unibestos was present. If you worked at a listed site in the covered period, that part is straightforward. The second is product identification: proof that you were around Unibestos, even at a site the list never names. A coworker's account, a purchase or specification record, or the kind of work you did and where can establish it.

But proving Unibestos was at your worksite, by either door, isn't the same as being exposed to it, and a solid claim shows both. Unibestos released its amosite fiber when it was sawed, cut, fitted, and above all torn out, so we use the exposure record on asbestos pipe and block insulation, together with your work history, to connect your tasks to exposure. Whether you did that work yourself or worked alongside the crews who did, the list or the product puts Unibestos at your site; the task evidence is what ties it to you.

Not finding your site on the list is a reason to look closer, not to give up, and it pairs with the rip-out door above: the demolition or maintenance job where you tore out old Unibestos may never appear on a sales-based site list at all. You can also search our directory of asbestos exposure sites to see whether the place you worked is already documented.

How a Pittsburgh Corning 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 Unibestos, whether that came while it was being installed or from tearing it out later. 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 Unibestos 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 Pittsburgh Corning trust has been open and paying since 2017 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.

A Pittsburgh Corning claim is rarely the only one

Here's the part that changes the math for most families: the Pittsburgh Corning trust is usually one claim out of several, and the others come from the very same work.

A working life around insulation meant a working life around many manufacturers' asbestos, not just Pittsburgh Corning's. The pipe covering on one job came from one maker, the block on the next from another, and the gaskets and packing on the same equipment from still others, job after job and year after year. The insulator who handled Unibestos also handled other companies' pipe covering; the pipefitter working alongside him breathed all of it. Many of those makers went bankrupt too, and each one left its own trust.

So the same work history that supports your Pittsburgh Corning 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. How asbestos trust claims work.

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 a Pittsburgh Corning 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 Pittsburgh Corning trust

A Pittsburgh Corning 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 Pittsburgh Corning trust is one, and a career around insulation almost always reaches several others, the makers of the other products on the same equipment. They review and pay independently, so they stack. How asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Not every asbestos maker went bankrupt. Many, especially in the gasket and packing world, 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. How asbestos product liability lawsuits work.
• Premises liability against the site owners. The shipyards, power plants, refineries, and plants where Unibestos was installed and torn out can be held responsible for the conditions in their boiler and engine rooms, separate from the companies that made the products. How premises liability claims work.
• 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. Navy service can support VA disability benefits; civilian shipyard work can support Longshore benefits (LHWCA, the federal program for maritime and harbor workers); civilian work at a federal facility can support FECA benefits (the Federal Employees' Compensation Act); and Social Security disability is available to anyone whose illness stops them from working. How asbestos disability and benefit claims work.

Your Pittsburgh Corning 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. The liability was settled when the trust was funded, 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.