Benjamin Foster Company

Benjamin Foster Company was a Philadelphia maker of mastics, coatings, sealants and adhesives used to finish and protect thermal insulation, sold under names such as Sealfas, Insulfas, Lagfas and H.I. Mastic, and of roofing products such as Black Cat Roof Coating. American Chemical Paint Company bought it in 1956, and in 1969 it became the Benjamin Foster Division of Amchem Products, Inc. A 1990 federal notice lists many Foster products as having contained asbestos; our library holds no record of a Foster bankruptcy or trust.

Draft. The history on this page was written from the documents in our library and has not yet been reviewed by a person.

History

The earliest dates in our library for Foster come from trademark files. A file card for Sealfas gives first use in commerce on March 27, 1926, and a 1926 stencil label reads "Foster I.B.M. Impregnated Bituminous Materials, Sealfas, Benjamin Foster Co., Phila., Pa."⁶ The trademark file for I.B.M. gives first use on March 8, 1930.⁷

A 1990 Environmental Protection Agency notice, summarizing what the company's successor reported, gives Foster's office from 1930 to 1948 at 1411 Walnut Street in Philadelphia, its factory from 1930 to 1940 at 31st Street and Magazine Lane, and its office and factory from 1946 to 1970 at 4635–37 West Girard Avenue.¹ In 1953 the trade magazine Asbestos reported that Foster had built new general offices at the Girard Avenue plant, adding laboratory space, and described it as "a leading manufacturer of adhesives and plastic coatings for severe industrial and marine use."⁸

On September 19, 1956, American Chemical Paint Company of Ambler, Pennsylvania, announced that it had acquired all of Foster's stock. Asbestos reported that Foster and its subsidiary, Benjamin Foster Company of Canada, would run as wholly owned subsidiaries, and that Benjamin Foster was then president of the Foster firm.² By 1964 Foster's advertisements in Asbestos called it a division of Amchem Products, Inc., of Ambler.⁹ In August 1969 the magazine reported that, after 13 years as a wholly owned subsidiary of Amchem Products, Foster had merged into Amchem and would operate as the Benjamin Foster Division.⁴ The advertisements and the 1969 report thus differ on when Foster became a division of Amchem.⁹⁴ The 1986 Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases also gives 1969 for the change from subsidiary to division.³⁵

The company grew in those years. Asbestos reported in December 1963 that Foster had opened its second plant in two years, in Chicago, and in August 1966 that it had let a contract for 17,000 square feet of new manufacturing and warehouse space in Houston.¹⁰¹¹ Its 1968 advertisements listed Philadelphia; Kearny, New Jersey; Atlanta; Chicago; Houston; Los Angeles and Fremont, California; and Toronto, Windsor and Montreal in Canada.¹² In 1971 Asbestos reported that the Philadelphia insulation firm Philadelphia Asbestos Corporation distributed Foster products, and in 1972, after it renamed itself PACOR, that it represented Amchem-Benjamin Foster.¹³¹⁴

Foster's staff took part in the insulation trade's technical groups. H. L. Pickel of Foster was president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Thermal Insulation Society for 1957–58.¹⁵ In 1957 Asbestos reported that Committee C-16 had assigned Dr. Wayne Ellis of Foster to work on test methods for radiation effects on thermal insulation.¹⁶

Asbestos products

Foster's products were mostly the finishing materials that went on over pipe and equipment insulation: weather-barrier mastics, vapor-barrier coatings, joint sealers and insulation adhesives. Asbestos described the company in 1956 as specializing in "industrial coatings and adhesives for protection of thermal insulation."² A 1952 advertisement offered "Foster H. I. Mastic 90-7" as a breathing mastic for tanks, pipe lines, ducts and cold rooms.¹⁷

The 1990 EPA notice gives Foster's years of manufacture of the reported products as "Early 1930's through 1976." It lists adhesives, coatings, sealants and mastics "which contained small amounts of encapsulated asbestos," as the successor described them.¹ The list includes Insulfas (designed 1941), H. I. Mastic (designed 1941), Sealfas Mastic (designed 1959), Lagtone, Foamseal and fire-resistive mastics and adhesives, as well as roofing products named Foster IBM Asphalt Fibre Roof Coating and Black Cat Roof Coating (Asphalt with Asbestos).¹ A Black Cat Roof Coating label in our library reads "Asphalt" and "Asbestos," with the slogan "Adds 9 lives to your roof."³ A can label for Foster I.B.M. Asbestos Furnace Cement names the Benjamin Foster Co. of Philadelphia.⁷

Union Carbide's 1962 insulation manual lists Foster products under product types it describes as containing asbestos. It names Foster 81-27 and 81-93 under "sodium silicate with fibrous asbestos fillers," Foster 60-25 and 60-46 under joint sealers of the "asphalt-solvent type with asbestos fibers," Foster 90-07 H.I. Mastic under an asphalt emulsion with "asbestos fibers," and Foster 60-25 and 60-26 CI Mastic under a fibrated mastic of "special asphalts, asbestos fibers, inert fillers and mineral spirit solvents."^18192021 Union Carbide's South Charleston plant insulation specifications of 1957 and 1958 name Foster's Sealfas "C" as a weather-barrier coating and a Foster non-setting sealer, each "or approved alternate."²²²³

What the documents show

Most of what the library holds on Foster is evidence of where its products went. In 1984 ACandS, an insulation contractor, listed Benjamin Foster Company among the manufacturers from which it obtained asbestos-containing products.²⁴ In 2001 Union Carbide answered interrogatories about its Seadrift, Texas, plant by naming Benjamin Foster among manufacturers believed to have sold products to Union Carbide and its contractors there.²⁵ A product list in the case file of Tomplait v. Combustion Engineering, from the deposition of a representative of the Aber Company, names a Benjamin Foster Co. mastic, Sealfas.²⁶ The attachments to a 1972 letter from Thorpe Products Co. to Shell Oil on the OSHA asbestos dust standard list "Benjamin Foster Coating and Adhesives" among protective coatings.²⁷

Benjamin Foster Company also appears as a party in asbestos lawsuits in the library: its lawyers are listed in a 1976 deposition in DeRocco v. Forty-Eight Insulation, and it is among the defendants in a 1989 Illinois case, Bank of Alton v. A. P. Green Refractories.²⁸²⁹ The library holds no Foster documents about dust, health or warnings.

Successors

The 1990 EPA notice lists Foster's information under Rhone-Poulenc Ag Company, which it names as successor to "Achem Products, Inc., formerly American Chemical and Paint Company and Benjamin Foster Company."¹ The trademark file for Sealfas names H.B. Fuller Company as the mark's last assignee.⁶ Later court papers name other companies as Foster's successors. A 2015 federal opinion in Louisiana describes the defendant Bayer CropScience, Inc. as "successor to Rhone-Poulenc AG Company, formerly known as Benjamin Foster Products, Inc., formerly known as Amchem Company"; a 2014 caption names H.B. Fuller Company as "Successor/or parent of Benjamin Foster Division of Amchem Products, Inc."; and a 2021 opinion in Connecticut says Union Carbide filed its answer "individually and as successor to Amchem and Benjamin Foster."³⁰³¹³² These describe how the parties were sued or appeared; none of the courts decided who Foster's successor was.³⁰³¹³² According to the 1986 Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, Amchem Products was in 1969 a division of Rorer-Amchem, Inc., a holding company; in 1977 Amchem was spun off from Rorer-Amchem and acquired by Union Carbide, in a deal involving $140 million in Union Carbide stock.³⁴ Amchem Products, Inc. was the first-named of the twenty Center for Claims Resolution companies in the U.S. Supreme Court case Amchem Products, Inc. v. Windsor (1997), which upheld the decertification of a proposed class settlement of future asbestos claims.³³ Our list of asbestos trusts has none for Foster or Amchem.⁵

References

1. Asbestos; Publication of Identifying Information (EPA, Federal Register, February 13, 1990), p. 17
2. Asbestos, October 1956, p. 14
3. Label: Black Cat Roof Coating (Benjamin Foster Co.), ACL Doc 20263
4. Asbestos, August 1969, p. 18
5. Asbestos trusts A–Z
6. Label: Foster I.B.M. Sealfas stencil (Benjamin Foster Co.), 1926, with trademark file card, ACL Doc 20345
7. Label: Foster I.B.M. Asbestos Furnace Cement (Benjamin Foster Co.), 1930, with trademark file card, ACL Doc 20343
8. Asbestos, November 1953, p. 46
9. Asbestos, July 1964, p. 21
10. Asbestos, December 1963, p. 9
11. Asbestos, August 1966, p. 19
12. Asbestos, February 1968, p. 30
13. Asbestos, December 1971, p. 34
14. Asbestos, November 1972, p. 18
15. Asbestos, February 1958, p. 10
16. Asbestos, September 1957, p. 40
17. Asbestos, December 1952, p. 37
18. Union Carbide Chemicals Company: Thermal Insulation and Accessories Manual (1962), p. 113
19. Union Carbide Thermal Insulation and Accessories Manual (1962), p. 114
20. Union Carbide Thermal Insulation and Accessories Manual (1962), p. 126
21. Union Carbide Thermal Insulation and Accessories Manual (1962), p. 134
22. UC-2366: Specifications for Thermal Insulation, South Charleston Plant, Carbide and Carbon Chemicals Company (1957), p. 21
23. UC-4035: Union Carbide Chemicals Company, Specifications for Thermal Insulation Material and Application, South Charleston (1958), p. 38
24. ACandS's Answers to Plaintiffs' Master Interrogatories in Bellows v. Fibreboard (1984), p. 10
25. UC-2040: Union Carbide's Third Amended Answers to Interrogatories in Rehak v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas, Seadrift Facility (2001), p. 7
26. Tomplait v. Combustion Engineering case file, deposition of Aber Company representative, p. 12
27. UC-2065: M. P. Proctor (Thorpe Products Co.) to D. S. Meaden (Shell Oil Co.) on the OSHA Asbestos Dust Standard (1972), p. 8
28. Deposition of Dr. Kenneth W. Smith in DeRocco v. Forty-Eight Insulation (1976), p. 2
29. North American Refractories Company's Supplemental Rule 220 Compliance in Bank of Alton v. A. P. Green Refractories (1989), p. 3
30. Vedros v. Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding, Inc. (E.D. La. June 25, 2015)
31. Wood v. Crane Co. (4th Cir. 2014), caption
32. Erhardt v. BMW of North America, LLC (D. Conn. 2021)
33. Amchem Products, Inc. v. Windsor (U.S. Supreme Court, 1997)
34. Barbara J. Peters and George A. Peters, Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases: Medical, Legal, and Engineering Aspects, vol. 2 (New York: Garland Law Publishing, 1986), p. 172.
35. Barbara J. Peters and George A. Peters, Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases: Medical, Legal, and Engineering Aspects, vol. 2 (New York: Garland Law Publishing, 1986), p. 158.

Asbestos products

10 products our documents name Benjamin Foster Company as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

• 60-25 (Benjamin Foster)
• 60-26 CI Mastic (Foster)
• 60-46 (Benjamin Foster)
• 81-27 and 81-93 (Benjamin Foster)
• 90-07 H.I. Mastic (Benjamin Foster)
• Black Cat Roof Coating (Benjamin Foster)
• Foster (Benjamin Foster)
• I.B.M. Asbestos Furnace Cement (Benjamin Foster)
• Insulfas (Benjamin Foster)
• Sealfas (Benjamin Foster)

In the Union Carbide documents

Benjamin Foster Company is named in 2 Union Carbide documents dated 1962 (2 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

• Thermal Insulation and Accessories Manual, Design and Construction, Union Carbide Chemicals Company (1962) UC-4036 (mentioned)
• Union Carbide Chemicals Company Thermal Insulation and Accessories Manual (1962), with Errata Sheet and 1997 Hendrickson and Long Transmittal Letter UC-4912 (mentioned)

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for Benjamin Foster Company, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: Foster.

Where this comes from

This page brings together every document in our library that names Benjamin Foster Company, across collections. Titles and affiliations are taken from the documents themselves, and units and subsidiaries are grouped under the company they belong to.