North American Refractories Co.: NARCO Refractories (1950s)

A pocket handbook and catalog of North American Refractories Co. (NARCO) of Cleveland, probably from the 1950s: it cites a February 1953 manual and gives the 'Cleveland 14' postal zone. It covers fireclay, high-alumina, silica and insulating firebrick, high-temperature mortars and fireclays, plastic and castable refractories and chrome specialties, followed by engineering data: brick sizes and shapes, masonry bonds, brick counts for circles and arches, conversion tables, pyrometric cones and a refractories glossary. The catalog itself never mentions asbestos.

Two of the names in it appear in NARCO's later asbestos answers. In 1994 interrogatory answers in Bexar County, Texas (Exhibit A, PDF p. 36), NARCO listed NARCOLITE as containing 2% chrysotile at its Curwensville plant from March 1961 to April 1977 and at Farber from November 1961 to July 1978, and a NARCOCRETE TROWEL (not necessarily the Narcocrete of this catalog) at 2% from 1963 to 1977. It said all its asbestos products used chrysotile and, except for one metal-clad brick, were gunning mixes or castables. The answers don't say when NARCO first used asbestos; its earliest date in Exhibit A is 1961, while a NARCO witness in a 1989 Madison County exhibit agreed that company records show 1963 as the first use. That exhibit's internal reports say NARCOLITE was converted from asbestos to Attagel 50 clay by December 1977. If this catalog dates from the 1950s, as it appears to, it predates all of those years. Courts have also recorded NARCO's admission that it sold asbestos-containing Narcolite Insulating Castable to Armco in 1970 and 1972 (Bailey v. North American Refractories Co., Ky. App. 2001), and a steelworker's testimony about 'NARCO Lite and NARCO Crete' (North American Refractory Co. v. Easter, Ala. 1999). The Eagle-Picher cements NARCO sold under its own label as Staz-On and Unicote until 1971 do not appear in this catalog; 1964 letters show Eagle-Picher made them for NARCO and put asbestos cautions on their bags.