For most of the twentieth century, the floors of American homes, schools, hospitals, and stores were laid in vinyl-asbestos tile, asphalt-asbestos tile, and sheet flooring bedded in black asbestos mastic, and the tile itself was one of the quieter asbestos products: with the fiber bound in vinyl, an installed floor shed very little while it sat underfoot. The danger was in the work. Dry-scraping the asbestos felt backing off a floor has been measured at 2.168 fibers per cubic centimeter, which in fifteen minutes puts roughly seven months' worth of ordinary city background air through a worker's lungs1, and a flooring installer did that kind of scraping, sanding, and tear-out across thousands of jobs in a career. You don't need to remember which brand of tile you handled or dig up any old records to find out whether you have a claim; if you laid, removed, or sanded this flooring for a living, that's where we start.
That's one fifteen-minute scrape. A flooring installer didn't do it once; he did it on job after job, alongside belt-sanding, scoring, snapping, and chipping, for years. Even ordinary city air carries a faint trace of asbestos everywhere, from natural mineral erosion and decades of industrial use, and that trace is the baseline both sides of the panel are measured against.
What these numbers mean. Asbestos in air is measured in fibers per cubic centimeter (f/cc), a unit that hides how dangerous a task was. Across this site we translate each measurement into fibers breathed, feet of fiber end to end, and months or years of ordinary city air, using conservative, government-sourced assumptions. See how we measure asbestos in air for the method and its limits.
You don't need the product names or old records. No fee unless we recover compensation for your family.
Quick answers
| Floor tile seems so ordinary. Was it really an asbestos product? | Yes. Vinyl-asbestos and asphalt-asbestos tile, felt-backed sheet flooring, and the black mastic underneath all contained asbestos, typically 5% to 30% chrysotile in the tile and sometimes much more. |
|---|---|
| I heard tile is "non-friable" and doesn't release fiber. Is that true? | Intact, installed tile is low-release; that part is true. But scraping the felt backing, belt-sanding old tile off a slab, and chipping tile out all released measurable fiber, and that's the work installers actually did. |
| The exposure sounds smaller than an insulator's. Can I still have a claim? | Yes. Mesothelioma is caused by asbestos at low doses, the trusts are built to compensate documented exposure, and an installer's dose accumulated across a whole career of jobs, not one afternoon. |
| Which companies made asbestos flooring? | Armstrong, Congoleum, Flintkote, and Kentile were the major names. All four went through bankruptcy and now pay claims through asbestos trusts. |
| Do I need to remember the brand of tile? | No. We reconstruct the products from your work history, our exposure database, and the trust documentation. The brand names are our job, not yours. |
| Do I have to file a lawsuit? | Often not. The major flooring makers pay through trust claims, which are paper claims with no courtroom. Depending on the facts, lawsuit paths can run alongside. |
| Can a spouse or adult child call for the worker? | Yes. Most of our first calls come from a wife or an adult child. You don't need a power of attorney to ask questions. |
“I started this firm after learning that the cancers that killed my father and grandparents were caused by asbestos, something we did not realize until it was too late to hold anyone accountable. That experience is why we built this site: so that no other family misses their chance to ask the questions, hear the options, and decide for themselves what to do.”
What asbestos flooring was
Vinyl-asbestos tile, usually shortened to VAT, was a floor tile made of vinyl resin loaded with chrysotile (white) asbestos as a filler and binder, and it was everywhere: nine-inch and twelve-inch squares in kitchens, schools, hospitals, supermarkets, and office corridors from roughly the 1950s into the 1980s. Its predecessor, asphalt-asbestos tile, used an asphalt binder and dates back further. Sheet vinyl flooring often rode on an asbestos felt backing, a paper-like layer that was nearly pure fiber. And underneath much of it sat black mastic, a cutback adhesive (an asphalt adhesive thinned with solvent) that itself contained asbestos.
The asbestos made the flooring cheap, dimensionally stable, and fire-resistant, which is why it dominated the market for decades. It also meant that every stage of the flooring trade's dirty work, cutting, scraping, sanding, and demolition, was work on an asbestos product.
Representative products and their asbestos content. Vinyl-asbestos tile typically ran 5% to 30% chrysotile, with some products higher. These are examples, not a full list:
| Product | Maker | Fiber | Asbestos content |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flexachrome floor tile (1/16") | Flintkote | Chrysotile | 46% |
| Vinyl-asbestos surface-decorated tile | Flintkote | Chrysotile | 15% |
| Classic Royale non-surface tile | Flintkote | Chrysotile | 6% |
| Excelon vinyl-asbestos tile | Armstrong | Chrysotile | ~10-25% |
| Vinyl-asbestos tile | Kentile Floors | Chrysotile | ~10-25% |
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How asbestos flooring put fiber in the air
A tile sitting in a floor is non-friable, meaning it won't crumble under hand pressure, and it releases very little fiber. We say that plainly because it's true, and because the honest version of this page is stronger than an inflated one. The fiber came loose when the flooring was worked: dry-scraping the felt backing off a floor during a tear-out, belt-sanding old tile and leveling the slab underneath, scoring and snapping tile to fit, chipping stubborn tile out by hand, and grinding off the old black mastic. That was not unusual work. It was the ordinary daily work of the flooring trade, because every new floor started with getting the old one out.
Here is what that work measured. Each figure is a phase-contrast (PCM) measurement, which counts only the longer fibers and so it represents the minimum level of exposure, not the maximum.
| Task | Measured (f/cc) | ≈ background per 15 min | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dry-scraping flooring felt backing | 2.168 | ~7 months | GCA / Anderson SRI 19821 |
| Belt-sanding old tile to the slab | 1-3 | ~4-11 months | Floor-tile IH literature2 |
| Installing sheet vinyl (felt-backed) | up to 1.016 | ~4 months | GCA / Anderson SRI 19821 |
| Scoring and snapping tile to fit | 0.44 | ~7 weeks | MAS3 |
| Hand-scraping tile removal (recommended practice) | 0.15-0.33 | ~3-7 weeks | Fowler & Chatfield 19884 |
| By the illustrative math on our how we measure asbestos in air page, 15 minutes of dry-scraping flooring felt put roughly 7 months of ordinary city air through the lungs. This estimates fibers in the air breathed, not a retained dose. |
No single task on this table reads like an insulator's numbers, and we don't pretend otherwise. The case is cumulative: a flooring installer scraped, sanded, and snapped his way through thousands of floors, and those months-of-background increments stacked across a career. The task-by-task story of who did this work lives on the occupation and industry pages linked below.
What the industry knew
The corporate-knowledge story on flooring is unusual, and it's the asset of this page: the industry commissioned its own exposure science, and the science it paid for captured both the defense it wanted and the exposure it didn't.
In the late 1970s, the Resilient Floor Covering Institute (RFCI), the flooring makers' trade association, funded studies at SRI International measuring asbestos in the air during flooring work. The studies of routine maintenance, mopping and buffing an installed floor, came back at 0.0 f/cc by PCM, and those figures became the backbone of a long-running industry position: vinyl-asbestos tile is non-friable and releases negligible fiber.
But the industry's own commissioned program also measured the real work. The same body of RFCI-funded research recorded dry-scraping the flooring felt at 2.168 f/cc1, more than twenty thousand times the background level in ordinary city air. And the reassuring numbers held only under the RFCI's controlled "recommended work practices," wet methods and careful hand-scraping, not the dry-scraping, belt-sanding, and chipping that installers actually did on real jobs, where nobody handed the crew a spray bottle and a protocol. The gap between the tested conditions and the actual trade is the heart of the case.
That's why the depth of this literature cuts against the defense rather than for it. Flooring is among the most-studied asbestos products in the industrial hygiene record, with more than two dozen published studies, so when a defendant argues the exposure was negligible, the answer comes out of the very research program the industry built.
Who was exposed
Flooring exposure wasn't spread across dozens of trades the way pipe insulation was; it was concentrated in the people who worked the material.
- flooring installers, the primary trade, scraping, sanding, and laying this material across a career
- construction workers, who demolished, renovated, and worked alongside flooring tear-outs
If you or your family member earned a living in either of those settings, the exposure history is usually straightforward to reconstruct.
The manufacturers and the trusts
Every major asbestos flooring maker went through bankruptcy, and every one of them now pays claims through an asbestos trust. For families, that has a practical upside: a flooring claim against these companies is a paper claim, filed with documentation, with no lawsuit, no deposition, and no courtroom. Where a career also touched other products or worksites, lawsuit paths can run alongside the trust claims, and one pathway doesn't reduce another.
| Manufacturer / brand | Status | How claims are handled |
|---|---|---|
| Armstrong World Industries (VAT, sheet flooring) | AWI Asbestos Trust | Trust claim, no lawsuit |
| Congoleum-Nairn / Congoleum (VAT, sheet flooring) | Congoleum Asbestos Trust | Trust claim, no lawsuit |
| The Flintkote Company (VAT, asphalt-asbestos tile) | Flintkote Asbestos Trust | Trust claim, no lawsuit |
| Kentile Floors (VAT, asphalt-asbestos tile) | Metex Asbestos Trust | Trust claim, no lawsuit |
If the idea of any legal claim is uncomfortable, you're in good company; Clarence Borel, the refinery insulator whose 1973 case built the modern asbestos-litigation system, didn't want to sue either, and trust claims involve no lawsuit at all.
Sources of compensation
A flooring case usually starts with the trusts, and it can draw from several sources at once:
- Asbestos bankruptcy trusts. Armstrong, Congoleum, Flintkote, and Kentile all set aside money to pay the people their products harmed. These are paper claims, and one career often supports filings against several trusts. How asbestos trust claims work.
- Product liability lawsuits. Where a work history reaches products from still-solvent companies, those makers can be sued directly. How product liability lawsuits work.
- Premises liability against site owners. The general contractors, institutions, and building owners who controlled a worksite can be held responsible for the conditions they allowed. How premises liability claims work.
- Federal and disability benefits. Depending on the work history, Social Security disability and, for veterans, VA benefits can be paid in addition to the rest. How asbestos disability and benefit claims work.
In our case-law library
109 court decisions in our case-law library involve floor tile. Among them:
- Letcher County Board OF Education v. HallKentucky Supreme Court, 2023 · Teacher at Old Letcher County High School boiler room, 1976-2003
- Letcher County Board OF Education v. HallKentucky Supreme Court, 2019 · Teacher at Letcher County High School (old high school boiler room), 1976-2003
- Accident Fund Insurance Company v. CaseyMissouri Supreme Court, 2018 · Floor tile installer at E.J. Cody Company, Inc., 1984-1990
- Olivotto v. DeMarco Bros. Co.Nebraska Supreme Court, 2007 · Terrazzo installer at doctor's office, 1960s or 1970s
- Upsher v. Grosse Pointe Public School SystemU.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, 2002 · Student employed as temporary custodian at South High School, Grosse Pointe, July 1995
- Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock Corp. v. FaulkU.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, 2000 · Shipfitter at Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock Corp. (Navy ships), 1978-1996
In our products database
The floor tile our document library describes, by the company that made or sold it. Each product's page says when it was made and how much asbestos it held, from the documents.
Adamite Company: Altro
Albert C. Fischer: Servicised
American Biltrite: Amtico · Amtico, Baronette · Amtico, Brick · Amtico, Chalet · Amtico, Homestead · Amtico, La Mancha · Amtico, La Paz · Amtico, Mandalay · Amtico, Marbleized · Amtico, Metropolitan · Amtico, Mini-Brick · Amtico, Pearlstone · Amtico, Random Slate · Amtico, Seville · Amtico, Stony Brook · Amtico, Tijuana · Amtico, Travertine · Amtico, Valley Stone · Amtico, Yosemite · Baronette · Zip Stik
American Biltrite Rubber: Travertine
Armstrong Cork: Chancery · Chandelle · Corlon, Aprina · Corlon, Mantina · Corlon, Norager · Corlon, Pirelle · Corlon, Serenada · Corlon, Tessera · Custom Excelon Tile, Voltaire · Excelon · Excelon (some styles) · Excelon Feature · Hydrocord · Imperial Excelon · Imperial Modern Excelon · Montrel Excelon · Palatial · Place'N Press Excelon Tile, Chancery · Presidential Excelon · Standard Excelon · Styletone · Travatex, Excelon · Travertine · Voltaire
Azrock Floor Products: Palacio Del Sol · Terrazo Originals
Azrock Floor Products Div., Uvalde Rock Asphalt: Cortina
Columbia Wax: Columbia Star
Congoleum: Catalina · Dominique · Fontenay · Modernaire · Parthenon · Profile · Romanaire · Rondelle · Vinylbest, The Artistry Collection, Fontenay
David E. Kennedy: Kensert
Flintkote: Aland · Cirelle · Classic Premiere · Colonial Stone · Designer Solids · Flex-Slate · Flexachrome · Flexchrome Marbleized · Flexgold · Flexslate · Flintkote Peel & Stick · Gf-8 Tile Cement · Peel And Stick · Piedra · R-14-D · Rendezvous · Roca · Salon · Stone Chip · Taza · Tile-tex · Tile-Tex Marbleized · Travertine · Woodflex
GAF: Alabaster · American Sampler Prismatic Collection · Antigua · Astrolan · Casablanca · Colonial Wood · Fashioncraft · Marbleized · Maticove · Ming · Mini Chip · Monticello · Parquet Wood Hues · Patioflor · Pebbleflor · Pirouette · Prismatic · Quadrangle · Randomgrain · Roll-On · Royal Stoneglow · Royal Travertine · Ruberoid Monticello · Splitstone · Stone Mosaic · Stoneglow · Strip-N-Lay · Sure-Stik · Thru Chip · Travertine · Venetian Marble · Vinylflex · Vinylflex Taj Mahal · Windsor Brick
J.C. Penney: La Paz · La Paz Pattern · Penny's Cat. No. 9893
Johns-Manville: Bouquet · Centurian Terraflex · Flexstone Mineral Surfaced Asbestos Roofing · Johns-Manville Jm · Lombeau Parquet · Lunette · Marrakech · Montage · Parquet Terraflex · Phoenician · Terraflex · Thermafoam · Travertine · Vinylcraft Floor Tile
Kentile: Agate Chip · Alcazar · Arch-Series · Architectural Criterion · Architectural Marbles · Au Natural · Au Naturel · Avanti · Beaushard · Beaux Arts · Brookstone · Chantilly · Constellation · Corktone · Debonair · Eerkshire · Federal Stone · Holland Tile · Marbleized · Moonstone · Parkchester · Pavana · Ribandel · Sand Pebbles · Tanglewood · Terrazo Pastels · Textured Woodgrain · Touch-Down · Travertine · Wedge-Stone · Woodgrain
Lehon: "Not A Kick In A Million Feet" · Mule-Hide · So Good That Only The Dealers Sell It
Malott & Peterson-Grundy: Fibre-Tuff
Montgomery Ward: Wards Cat. No. 41502 · Wards Cat. No. 41832 · Wards Style House Cat. No. 4190R · Wards Style House Cat. No. 4191R
National Floor Product: Nafco Thru Chip Viva Designer Collection · Nafco Viva
Philip Carey: Colonial · Industro-Tile
Ruberoid: Stoneglow
Sears: Casa Viva · Homart · Ready-Stick · Sears Cat. No. 2292 · Starglo
Tile-Tex: Tuff-Tex
Unalde Rock Asphalt: Azrock · Azrock, Aegean Stone · Azrock, Carpet Tone Metallics · Azrock, Embossed Woods · Azrock, Florentine · Azrock, Inlaid Marbles · Azrock, Kingston · Azrock, Roman Stone · Azrock, Tarantino · Azrock, Terrazo Originals · Azrock, Travertine · Azrock, VC Group
Videos
The defenses companies raise, and how we answer them
Because flooring genuinely was a lower-release product, the defenses in these cases have more surface plausibility than most, and we meet them head-on rather than around. All of this applies only to the lawsuit side. Trust claims are a paper process: no opposing lawyer raises defenses, no one is deposed, and no one goes to court.
How we answer the defenses raised in floor tile cases
"Vinyl-asbestos tile is non-friable, so it released negligible fiber." Intact tile is low-release; we say so on this page. But the claim isn't about tile sitting in a floor, it's about the work: dry-scraping the felt backing, belt-sanding old tile to the slab, and chipping tile out all released measurable fiber, and the industry's own commissioned study recorded dry-scraping at 2.168 f/cc. The low readings the defense cites came from controlled "recommended work practices" that real job sites didn't follow. PCM undercounted the thin fibers, so the true release ran higher than the published figures. And a flooring installer's exposure was cumulative, built across a full career of jobs, not measured by any single afternoon.
"It was only chrysotile." Chrysotile is classified by IARC as a Group 1 carcinogen, carcinogenic to humans, and it is a recognized cause of mesothelioma6. We don't claim it carries the potency of the amphibole fibers, and we don't need to: "less hazardous" is not "safe," and the disease chrysotile causes is the disease our clients have.
"The exposure was too small to cause disease." Mesothelioma is caused by asbestos at low doses; there is no established safe threshold. The trusts were built to compensate documented exposure of exactly this kind, and in court we prove a meaningful contribution with the task evidence, the career history, and the industry's own measurements.
Frequently asked questions
I laid asbestos tile in my own house once. Do I have a claim?
A single do-it-yourself job is a much lighter exposure than a career in the trade, and we won't tell you otherwise. But claims don't turn on one job; they turn on the whole history. If you've been diagnosed with mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, it's worth a call so we can look at everything you were around, because the flooring is often just one piece.
What about the black mastic under the tile?
Cutback mastic, the black adhesive under much of this flooring, contained asbestos too, and grinding or scraping it off during a tear-out released fiber just as the felt backing did. It counts as part of the exposure history, and we document it the same way.
There's still asbestos tile in my house. Is my family in danger?
Intact tile that stays put is low-risk, and the standard guidance is to leave it alone or cover it rather than rip it out dry. The hazard is disturbance. If it needs to come out, that's a job for a licensed abatement contractor, not a belt sander.
My loved one has already passed away. Can we still bring a claim?
Yes. Families regularly file after a death, both trust claims and, depending on the state, a wrongful death lawsuit. Some of these deadlines are short, so it's best to call promptly. We handle wrongful death and estate claims as a matter of routine.
Could my family have been exposed through the work clothes?
Yes. Fiber from scraping and sanding settled on an installer's clothes and came home with him, and spouses who laundered the clothes were exposed too. Our representation includes free asbestos health screening for family members, and if one is later diagnosed, they may have a claim of their own. The screening is a chest X-ray read by a B-reader, with a CT scan if needed; it looks for asbestos-related changes in the lungs and isn't a diagnosis or a reliable way to find mesothelioma early.
What does it cost to work with you?
Nothing up front, and nothing at all unless we recover for you. We work on a contingency fee, which means our fee comes only out of money we recover, and the case review is free.
What happens when I call?
A member of our litigation team, not a screener, takes the call, and the first conversation usually runs twenty to thirty minutes. We listen to the work history, explain which claims may apply, and lay out the timeline. No one is pressured to sign anything.
Talk with an asbestos lawyer about floor tile exposure
Whether you spent a career laying and tearing out this flooring or you're a spouse or adult child trying to find help for someone who is sick, we're ready to talk. You don't need the product names, you don't need the old records, and you don't need to travel to us. Start with what you remember, and we'll take it from there.
Related resources
Sources and references
- Anderson PH, et al. Asbestos Fiber Release During Installation and Removal of Resilient Flooring. SRI International / GCA, commissioned by the Resilient Floor Covering Institute; 1982.
- Floor-tile industrial hygiene literature (belt-sanding old tile to the slab).
- Materials Analytical Services (MAS). Floor-tile scoring, snapping, and removal work-practice measurements.
- Fowler DP, Chatfield EJ. Industrial Hygiene Survey of Asbestos Exposure During Resilient Floor Tile Removal Pursuant to Recommended Work Practices at Ten Sites. December 1988.
- OSHA asbestos standard, permissible exposure limit 0.1 f/cc over eight hours with a short-term excursion limit of 1.0 f/cc over thirty minutes. 29 C.F.R. § 1910.1001.
- International Agency for Research on Cancer. Arsenic, Metals, Fibres, and Dusts. IARC Monographs, Vol. 100C (all forms of asbestos classified as carcinogenic to humans, Group 1).
This page is provided for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. Every asbestos case turns on its own facts, exposure history, diagnosis, deadlines, available evidence, and applicable law. Reviewing this page does not create an attorney-client relationship. For advice about your specific situation, call 833-4-ASBESTOS for a free case review.