Refractory is the family of materials engineered to survive extreme heat, the castable cements, bricks, hot tops, and mortars that lined every furnace, kiln, ladle, and boiler in American heavy industry, and for decades much of it was made with asbestos. Unlike a sealed gasket, refractory was dangerous coming and going: pouring and gunning aerogun refractory cement has been measured at roughly 210 fibers per cubic centimeter, which in fifteen minutes puts about sixty years' worth of ordinary city background air through a worker's lungs1, and tearing out a spent furnace lining shattered the same material all over again. You don't need to remember which brand you handled or dig up any old records to find out whether you have a claim; if you worked around furnace linings, that's where we start.
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 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
| Did asbestos refractory really expose me? | Very likely, if your work touched furnace linings, kilns, ladles, boilers, or ingot molds before the 1980s. Mixing, pouring, and gunning the wet product were among the dustiest tasks ever measured, and tearing out spent linings was heavy exposure all over again. |
|---|---|
| I never installed linings, I just tore the old ones out. | Tear-out counts, and it was severe. Demolishing a spent furnace lining shattered brick, castable, and mortar into dry, crumbling debris, and reline crews often worked inside the furnace shell with the dust. |
| How much exposure do I need for a claim? | For mesothelioma, less than you'd expect. The bankruptcy trusts that pay many of these claims are built to compensate brief exposure on a worksite that used asbestos. Courts ask for a meaningful contribution, and we handle that distinction for you. |
| Which companies made asbestos refractory? | Names like A.P. Green, Harbison-Walker, North American Refractories (NARCO), Johns-Manville, Combustion Engineering, and Eagle-Picher. Most of the major makers now pay through bankruptcy trusts. |
| Do I need to remember the brand? | 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 refractory makers pay through trusts, which are paper claims with no courtroom. Where a solvent defendant or a premises owner is responsible, a lawsuit is an option we explain before anything is filed. |
| 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 refractory was and how it was used
Refractory (from the Latin for "stubborn") is any material built to hold its shape and strength at temperatures that would melt or crumble ordinary masonry. Steel mills, foundries, glass plants, cement kilns, power boilers, and refineries all ran on it, because every vessel that held molten metal, glass, or burning fuel needed a lining that could take the heat. For much of the twentieth century, asbestos was blended into that lining to add insulation, crack resistance, and workability.
The material came in several standard forms. Castables were refractory concretes, mixed wet and poured or trowelled in place. Gunning mixes were the same idea applied pneumatically, sprayed onto furnace walls through a nozzle under air pressure, a technique that filled the air around the nozzle operator with wet overspray and dry rebound. Bricks were fired shapes laid up into furnace walls and floors, cut and drilled to fit. Hot tops were insulating collars set on steel ingot molds to keep the top of the pour molten while the rest solidified. Mortars and finishing cements bonded and surfaced all of it. Nearly all of this material eventually had to be torn back out, because furnace linings are sacrificial by design; they erode in service and get demolished and replaced on a schedule.
One thing to be careful of: Refractory ceramic fiber, or RCF, is a man-made mineral fiber that largely replaced asbestos in high-temperature insulation from the 1970s onward. RCF is not asbestos, and the claims discussed on this page are about the asbestos-containing castables, bricks, hot tops, and mortars, not about RCF products.
Representative products and their asbestos content. Refractory ran the full range, from under 1% to 100% asbestos, and across all three major fiber types. These are examples, not a full list:
| Product | Maker | Fiber | Asbestos content | In production |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. 7 Asbestos Cement | A.P. Green | Chrysotile | 100% | 1957-1960 |
| Micacrete castable | Harbison-Walker | Chrysotile | ~30% | 1963-1975 |
| Aertite | Johns-Manville | Chrysotile | 18% | from 1919 |
| Nucon metal-case brick (crocidolite liner) | Harbison-Walker | Crocidolite | brick liner | 1955-1980 |
| Buck Stay Cement A-1360 | Combustion Engineering | Amosite | 1% | 1965-1966 |
Those last two rows have legal significance. "It was only low-percentage chrysotile" is a defense you'll hear in refractory cases, but Harbison-Walker's Nucon metal-case bricks carried a liner of crocidolite, or blue asbestos, and Combustion Engineering's Buck Stay Cement used amosite, both amphibole fibers, the more hazardous family.
How refractory put asbestos in the air
Refractory released fiber at both ends of its life. Going in, the dry ingredients were dumped, mixed, and either poured or gunned, and gunning in particular surrounded the nozzle crew with airborne mix; a castable that was 30% or higher asbestos going into the mixer put that fiber straight into the breathing zone of everyone handling it. Bricks were cut, drilled, and ground to fit around burners, ports, and taps. Coming out, spent linings were demolished with jackhammers, picks, and bars, work that shattered years-old friable (crumbly and dusty) material inside the confined shell of a furnace, where the dust had nowhere to go but into the crew.
Here is what that work measured. Each figure is a phase-contrast (PCM) measurement, which counts only the longer fibers and so reads as a floor, not a ceiling. Note the honest spread: pouring and gunning the cement were catastrophic, while cutting a fired brick, with its fiber locked in a hard ceramic matrix, ran far lower:
| Task | Measured (f/cc) | ≈ years of background per 15 min | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pouring/gunning aerogun refractory cement | ~210 | ~60 years | MVA Feb 20081 |
| Crumpling refractory paper/tape | 49 | ~14 years | GCA / Anderson 19822 |
| Drilling refractory brick | up to 7.1 | ~2 years | GCA / Anderson 19822 |
| Cutting/finishing refractory brick | 2-7.3 | ~1-2 years | GCA / Anderson 19822 |
By the illustrative math on our how we measure asbestos in air page, 15 minutes of pouring aerogun refractory cement put roughly 60 years of ordinary city air through the lungs. This estimates fibers in the air breathed, not a retained dose.
The full task-by-task story of who mixed, gunned, laid, and demolished this material, across the trades and the industries, lives on the occupation and industry pages linked below. What belongs here is the product itself, and the fact that its two dustiest moments, installation and tear-out, were both built into how refractory had to be used.
What the makers knew
The strongest part of a refractory case is unusual, and unusually direct: the refractory makers admitted the essential facts themselves, under oath, in litigation. This isn't reconstruction from fragmentary sales records; it's their own sworn paper.
The refractory defendants' own Answers to Interrogatories set out their product lines, manufacturing dates, and asbestos percentages in detail4. A.P. Green admitted its THERM-O-FLAKE Coating ran 18% asbestos (1963 to 1965, made at its Morris, Illinois plant), its No. 7 Asbestos Cement was 100% asbestos (1957 to 1960), its Asbestos Robe was 100%, and its Finishing Cement was 68%, with several product lines produced for 20 to 25 years. Harbison-Walker admitted its Micacrete castable ran about 30% asbestos and that its metal-case Nucon bricks carried a crocidolite liner from 1955 to 1980. When we file a refractory claim, the asbestos content of the product usually isn't something we have to fight hard to prove; the makers already swore to it.
That admission record sits on top of the industry's general knowledge timeline. The Sumner Simpson papers, the correspondence of the asbestos industry's leading executives beginning in 1935, document industry-wide knowledge of the asbestos hazard decades before these refractory products left the market4. And the fiber-type detail in the makers' own admissions carries medical weight: Smith and Wright's 1996 review established that amphibole asbestos is roughly 2 to 4 times more potent than chrysotile for inducing mesothelioma3, which bears directly on refractory because so much of it was amphibole.
Who was exposed
Refractory wasn't tied to one trade; it was everywhere industry made heat. Rather than retell each worker's story here, this page hands that off to the pages that own it:
- refractory bricklayers, whose entire trade was laying, gunning, and tearing out furnace linings
- boilermakers, on furnace and vessel refractory
- steelworkers, around ladles, soaking pits, and hot tops
- glass plants, smelters, and kilns, where furnace rebuilds were a way of life
If you or your family member worked in or around any of these settings, the exposure history is usually easy to reconstruct.
The manufacturers and the trusts
Nearly every major asbestos refractory maker eventually went through bankruptcy, which means most refractory recovery today runs through the asbestos bankruptcy trusts: paper claims, filed with documentation, with no lawsuit and no courtroom. A single furnace-lining career often supports claims against several trusts at once, because a reline crew handled castable from one maker, brick from another, and mortar from a third, and one recovery doesn't reduce another.
| Manufacturer / brand | Status | How claims are handled |
|---|---|---|
| Harbison-Walker Refractories |
Harbison Walker Trust | Trust claim, no lawsuit |
| North American Refractories (NARCO), | Narco Asbestos Trust | Trust claim, no lawsuit |
| A.P. Green Industries | A.P. Green Asbestos Trust | Trust claim, no lawsuit |
| Combustion Engineering | Combustion Engineering Asbestos Trust | Trust claim, no lawsuit |
| Eagle-Picher (specialty refractory products) | Eagle Picher Asbestos Trust | Trust claim, no lawsuit |
A note on the corporate family trees: refractory brands were bought, sold, and rebranded for decades, so which trust answers for which product line is a lineage question, and that analysis is something we work through for your file rather than something you need to sort out. And because so much refractory work happened inside steel mills, glass plants, and foundries under the site owner's control, the facility owners can often be reached as premises defendants alongside the trust claims.
Sources of compensation
A refractory case usually draws from several sources at once, and they run in parallel:
- Asbestos bankruptcy trusts. The refractory makers who went bankrupt set aside money to pay the people they harmed. These are paper claims, with no lawsuit and no courtroom, and one furnace-lining career often supports filings against several trusts. How asbestos trust claims work.
- Lawsuits against solvent companies. Where a responsible maker or supplier never went through bankruptcy, a direct lawsuit remains available, and we identify those defendants from your work history. How product liability lawsuits work.
- Premises liability against site owners. The steel mills, glass plants, foundries, and utilities that controlled the worksite can be held responsible for the conditions they allowed during relines and rebuilds. How premises liability claims work.
- Federal and disability benefits. Navy boiler-room service can support VA disability benefits, and disability programs can pay alongside everything above. How asbestos disability and benefit claims work.
In our case-law library
82 court decisions in our case-law library involve refractory products. Among them:
- Rublee v. Carrier Corp.Washington Supreme Court, 2018 · Machinist at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, 1966-1980
- Lawrentz v. Constellium Rolled Products Ravenswood, W Va: Supreme Court of Appeals 2015West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, 2015 · Millwright at Constellium Rolled Products Ravenswood, thirty years
- In re Certified Question From the Fourteenth District Court OF Appeals OF TexasMichigan Supreme Court, 2007 · Stepdaughter who washed her stepfather's work clothes at Ford Rouge plant, Dearborn, 1954-1965
- Miller v. American President Lines, Ltd.U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, 1993 · Seaman: maintenance reefer, oiler, electrician and wiper at defendants' ships, 1944-1951 and 1953-1969
- Dykes v. Raymark Industries, Inc.U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, 1986 · Utility mechanic at Union Carbide, mid-1960s-1967
- Harris v. Thomas Dee Engineering Co., Inc.California Court of Appeal, 2021 · Hull maintenance technician at U.S.S. San Jose, repaired at the Triple A Machine Shop, San Francisco, 1973
In our products database
The refractories 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.
Combustion Engineering: Light Wate 22 & 50
Eagle-Picher: 106
GAF: Windsor Brick
General Refractories Company: Fibrous Adhesive (General Refractories)
George W. Bromley: Bromley's Honor Pledge
Johns-Manville: 319 Semi-refractory · 678 Semi-refractory · Johns-Manville Jm · Thermo-Chem · Thermo-Pac · Thermo-Pac 2700
Kaiser Refractories: Coelex 60 Unitab Brick
Lasting Products: Lasting Protection
Lehon: "Not A Kick In A Million Feet" · Mule-Hide · So Good That Only The Dealers Sell It
Mobil Chemical: Dum Dum Armacote
Munn And Steele: Mascote
National Gypsum: Woodrock
Norristown Magnesia & Asbestos Company: Cellotone
North American Refractories: Aerogun · Anti-erode Trowel · Bof-cote · Bof-patch · CM Gun Mix · Cm-18 Gun Mix · Kurosaki Slide Gate Refractory · Low-k · Mc-gun Mix · Narcocast ES Fine Trowel · Narcocrete · Narcocrete Trowel · Narcogun Cm-343 · Narcogun CO. · Narcogun Cr-346 · Narcogun Cr-346 HN · Narcogun Crd-347 · Narcogun Mc-339 · Narcogun Mcd-344 · Narcogun P-340 · Narcogun Pd-345 · Narcogun Sd-336 · Narcolite · Narmag OH Gun Mix · Super 505 Hot Gun C · Wo-339 MC Gun
Philip Carey: Alumino-Hi-Temp · Refractory Bonding Asbestos Furnace Cement · Vitricel
Plastic Wallplug & Bolt Co.: Mister Philplug
Quigley: Insulag
U.S. Gypsum: Pyrobar
The defenses companies raise, and how we answer them
The makers raise the same handful of arguments in most refractory cases, and none is new to us. 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 refractory cases
"Refractory was only low-percentage asbestos, so the exposure was low." Percentage isn't dose. What matters is the fiber that reached the breathing zone, and gunning and pouring sprayed tons of mix into the air at levels measured around 210 f/cc, while tearing out spent linings shattered the material inside a confined furnace shell. And the premise is wrong on its own terms: the makers' own sworn answers put many refractory products at 30, 68, even 100% asbestos.
"It was only chrysotile." Chrysotile is a recognized cause of mesothelioma, and the argument fails on the facts here anyway: Harbison-Walker's Nucon bricks used a crocidolite liner and Combustion Engineering's Buck Stay Cement was amosite, both amphibole fibers, and amphiboles are roughly 2 to 4 times more potent than chrysotile for inducing mesothelioma3. The composition table on this page shows it.
"Refractory fiber isn't asbestos." This one trades on a real distinction, so we answer it precisely. Refractory ceramic fiber (RCF) is a separate man-made mineral fiber, and it is true that RCF is not asbestos. But the claims here aren't about RCF; they're about the asbestos-containing castables, bricks, hot tops, and mortars that the makers themselves admitted contained asbestos, in the percentages set out in their own interrogatory answers. The defense answers a question no one asked.
Frequently asked questions
What if I have no paperwork or employment records?
That's the normal starting point, not a problem. We reconstruct the work history from our exposure database, the trust documentation for each manufacturer, purchase and specification records, and the recollections of coworkers. The conversation starts with what you remember.
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.
I worked relines for years but never bought or specified the material. Does that matter?
No. The claim follows the exposure, not the purchase order. Laborers, helpers, and tradesmen who worked around the mixing, gunning, and tear-out were often the most heavily exposed people on the job, whoever signed for the material.
My exposure was mostly during furnace demolition and rebuilds. Is that enough?
Reline and tear-out work is at the heart of these cases. Demolishing spent linings shattered old asbestos-containing material inside confined furnace shells, and crews often worked those jobs around the clock during outages. That history supports claims on its own.
Could my family have been exposed through the work clothes?
Yes, and it's common. Fiber that settled on a reline worker's clothes 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 refractory exposure
Whether you're a worker who was just diagnosed or 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
- Materials Analytical Services. Aerogun refractory cement work-practice study; February 2008 (personal breathing-zone samples 187-224 f/cc). 2.
- Anderson PH, Grant MA, McInnes RG, Farino WJ. Analysis of Fiber Release from Certain Asbestos Products. GCA/Technology Division (EPA); 1982 (Table 26, secondary fabrication).
- Smith AH, Wright CC. Chrysotile asbestos is the main cause of pleural mesothelioma. Am J Ind Med. 1996;30(3):252-266. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-0274(199609)30:3<252::AID-AJIM2>3.0.CO;2-0(amphibole potency 2-4× chrysotile).
- Refractory defendants' Answers to Interrogatories (product lines, manufacturing dates, asbestos percentages, and corporate-knowledge admissions), together with the Sumner Simpson papers (1935 forward).
- 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.