Celanese Memo Forwarding NIOSH's List of Trade-Name Products Containing Regulated Carcinogens (1977)

On August 26, 1977, C. D. Barrett, an industrial hygienist at Celanese Chemical Company's Technical Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, sent colleagues a list from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) of trade-name products that contained one or more of the 16 carcinogens OSHA then regulated. He had obtained it from an OSHA regional consultant. In his cover memo, Barrett noted that most of the products on the list contain asbestos, and that if Celanese used any of them its handling procedures should be reviewed.

NIOSH's covering letter explains that the list came from its National Occupational Health Survey and describes product compositions between 1972 and 1974. NIOSH found 411 such products. Their makers had marked 146 as trade secrets, so it released only the other 265, and it noted that it did not know whether the products were still made or had been reformulated. The list (PDF pp. 3–13) gives each product's name, the hazard, its percentage in the product, and a seven-digit manufacturer code. A key (pp. 14–18) gives the company name and address for each code.

Of the 262 rows, 233 are asbestos products, mostly roof cements and coatings, caulks, sealants, adhesives and mastics. Among the better-known names are Johns-Manville's Thermobestos pipe insulation (7%), 85% magnesia (15%) and Duxseal (50%), Owens-Corning's Kaylo (15%), Pittsburgh Corning's Unibestos (71%), Armstrong's Insulmastic (5%) and Nicolet's asbestos pipe-line felt (69%). The remaining rows are vinyl chloride ("chloroethylene") paints and plastics, a benzidine base and two MOCA epoxies. The key skips from code 0474265 to 1013956, so the makers of 45 rows, with codes in that range, can't be identified from this copy. The last row of the table is struck out by hand.

Reading the list

• The percentages are as NIOSH printed them, as whole numbers ("06" means 6%). The highest figure printed is 99, given for Asbestine and several J-M fiber grades, and also for J-M's #352 refractory cement and mortar.
• These are the makers' reports to NIOSH for 1972–74, not test results. Other documents give different figures for some of the same products; see each product's page.
• Code 0148850 is Armstrong Products Co. of Warsaw, Indiana (an epoxy maker), not Armstrong Cork.