Philip Carey Corporation

The Philip Carey Manufacturing Company of Lockland, outside Cincinnati, Ohio, made asbestos roofing, 85% magnesia and asbestos-paper pipe covering, insulating cements, asbestos-cement shingles and board, and mined asbestos at East Broughton, Quebec, later through Carey-Canadian Mines. It became Philip Carey Corporation and then Panacon, and the Celotex Corporation answered for it as successor. Celotex and Carey Canada filed for bankruptcy in 1990, and the Celotex Asbestos Settlement Trust now pays claims for Carey products.

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

History

A company history printed in Asbestos, the industry's trade journal, in April 1948 dates the business to 1873, when Philip Carey, described as a young Irish immigrant, began experimenting with pipe coverings and prepared roofings, and it says 1884 "saw the first production of asbestos pipe covering."⁶ According to the 1986 Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, a compilation by plaintiffs' attorneys, the company was incorporated in Ohio in 1888.³⁵ In the data sheet The Travelers Insurance Company compiled for a 1980 asbestos seminar from defendants' interrogatory answers, Celotex, answering for Carey, gave a later start: it said Philip Carey had made and marketed asbestos products since 1906.³⁶ A 1920 profile of George D. Crabbs, who went to work for Philip Carey at seventeen, describes the early shop: a small building on Gilbert Avenue in Cincinnati where Carey made roofing, "personally supervised the manufacture, sold the goods," and began making pipe coverings.¹⁰

Crabbs rose to lead the company. He sat on the executive committee of the Magnesia Association of America in 1920, and in 1933, as president of the company, he represented the asbestos magnesia products division on the industry's Asbestos Committee.¹¹¹² At the 1942 annual meeting he was re-elected chairman, with Robert S. King as president.¹³ By 1950 John W. Humphrey was president.¹⁴

The company grew by plants. The Lockland works, which Celotex later dated to 1906, made high- and low-temperature insulation.² The Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, works made 85% magnesia; Celotex dated it 1906 to 1962.³ In 1930 Carey put Alumino-Hi-Temp, a bauxite insulation containing asbestos fiber, on the market from a new factory at St. Louis.¹⁵ In 1935 it bought a plant at Lennoxville, Quebec, and formed Philip Carey Company Limited, and the same year it started asbestos-cement production at a newly acquired plant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.¹⁶⁵ A new asbestos-cement plant at Cincinnati was nearing completion in 1947, and in 1953 Asbestos put the company's Perth Amboy, New Jersey, plant on its cover.¹⁷¹⁸ The 1986 Sourcebook says Carey also acquired the Asbestos Company of Texas in 1951 and the General Magnesite & Magnesia Company.³⁷

Carey also mined asbestos. The 1948 company history says that in 1915 Carey bought all the asbestos properties and mills of the Quebec Asbestos Corporation at East Broughton, Quebec.⁶ In 1956 Asbestos described Quebec Asbestos Corp. at East Broughton as a Philip Carey subsidiary, and by 1958 the company was advertising fiber from "the new Carey-Canadian mine" there.⁷⁸ In 1967 the journal reported that Carey was a subsidiary of Glen Alden Corporation.¹⁹ By 1969 it was Philip Carey Corporation, and by 1970 Panacon Corporation.²⁰² The 1986 Sourcebook gives the steps: Carey stayed independent until 1966, when Glen Alden acquired control; in 1967 Glen Alden merged Carey into itself and at once moved the assets to a new wholly owned subsidiary, The Philip Carey Manufacturing Company; that company was renamed Philip Carey Corporation in 1968; and in April 1970 it was merged into Briggs Manufacturing Company, a Michigan corporation, which renamed itself Panacon Corporation.³⁵³⁷ An insurer's 1981 product list notes one Carey cement as "CELOTEX:1972-77."²¹ Celotex, then part of Jim Walter Corporation, acquired the Philip Carey business in 1972. The Sourcebook says Panacon was merged into Celotex on June 30, 1972; in the 1980 Travelers data sheet Celotex said it purchased the assets and assumed the liabilities of Philip Carey Corporation that year.³⁵³⁶

Asbestos products

A 1923 Carey advertisement listed 85% magnesia and asbestos pipe coverings, asbestos shingles and siding, asbestos paper and millboard, insulating and high-temperature cements, boiler-setting cement, asbestos rope and wick packing, asbestos gaskets, and asbestos roof cements alongside asphalt roofing.⁴ Its paper pipe coverings, Aircel among them, were made of asbestos paper and sodium silicate; the company's sworn answers of 1969 and 1970 dated Aircel 1906 to 1960, and a 1990 EPA notice of what Celotex reported put the paper pipe products at about 60 percent asbestos.²² In 1938 the journal described Careyduct as "the all-asbestos duct recently placed on the market," and in 1943 it reported that using Careyduct in the new War Department Building at Arlington, Virginia, saved 1,500,000 pounds of steel.²³²⁴

Careytemp, a pipe and block insulation introduced in 1959, shows how the record can differ. Carey's notices in Asbestos described it as expanded silica "reinforced with an inorganic fibre" and never named the fiber.²⁵ In its later answers the company, as Panacon, said Careytemp held about 6 percent asbestos fiber until September 23, 1969, and that since then "asbestos fiber has been eliminated from regular Careytemp and fiberglass has been substituted therefor."³ The 1980 Travelers data sheet gives two reasons for the change: glass fiber made the insulation less likely to break than shorter asbestos fibers, and "health hazards."³⁶

Carey asbestos fiber

Carey also sold raw fiber to other manufacturers: its 1923 advertisement offered asbestos fibre in "Eight Standard Grades," and in the 1950s and 1960s its Asbestos Fibre Division advertised fiber from East Broughton, including grades such as Carey-Canadian 7M-90 and the 7RF-9 float.^4182627 Customers named in the documents include the floor tile maker Kentile: a 1974 Union Carbide memo records that Kentile's three tile plants used "Atlas, Carey and Calidria asbestos."²⁸ In 1978 a Union Carbide sales report mentioned "the settlement of the Carey asbestos strike."²⁹ A 1979 Carey Canada advertisement said the company "started in the Asbestos Business back in 1918"; that is the company's own claim, and it differs from the 1915 date in the 1948 history.³⁰⁶ In the 1980 Travelers data sheet, Celotex said Carey-Canadian Mines, Ltd. was formed on September 1, 1958, and had mined at East Broughton Station, Quebec, since 1918.³⁶

What the documents show

Carey's dealings with the insulators' union appear in The Asbestos Worker, the union's journal. In 1925 the union's delegates listed grievances against Carey, including its "repudiation of its signed Trade Agreement" at Toledo and non-union work at its Chicago shop.³¹ In 1938 the journal warned that if a Carey-approved contractor's shop at Charlotte stayed non-union, members would receive instructions affecting work in "all Philip Carey approved contractors shops."³²

In the 1980 Travelers data sheet, Celotex gave 1971 as the year Philip Carey first put warning labels on its products, and the sheet says Celotex "probably had knowledge (imputed from Philip Carey) in late 1950's."³⁶ The sheet says Philip Carey sold to government purchasing agents for Navy use, had block products on the Qualified Products List (QPL) as early as 1951, and ran contracting units in San Francisco from 1955 to 1959 and in Los Angeles from 1966 to 1969. It also notes a workers' compensation claim by a Philip Carey employee in 1949.³⁸

Philip Carey Corporation was one of the six insulation makers held liable to the widow of Clarence Borel, an insulation worker, in Borel v. Fibreboard Paper Products Corporation, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed in 1973.³³ The court held that a maker of asbestos insulation must warn users of foreseeable dangers.³³ Our case-law library names Philip Carey as a defendant in eight other decisions from 1979 to 1997.³⁴

Bankruptcy and trust

The Celotex Corporation and Carey Canada filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 12, 1990; the plan was confirmed on December 6, 1996, and the Celotex Asbestos Settlement Trust was established on May 30, 1997.⁹ The trust pays claims for exposure to Celotex and Carey Canada products, including the many products sold under the Philip Carey and Carey names.⁹

References

1. Asbestos magazine, April 1956, p. 11
2. Philip Carey and later owners plant at Lockland, Ohio
3. Philip Carey plant at Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania
4. Asbestos magazine, February 1923, p. 34
5. Philip Carey Company plant at Portsmouth, New Hampshire
6. Asbestos magazine, April 1948, p. 5
7. Asbestos magazine, March 1956, p. 4
8. Asbestos magazine, September 1958, p. 25
9. Celotex Asbestos Trust Claims
10. Asbestos magazine, June 1920, p. 22
11. Asbestos magazine, February 1920, p. 28
12. Asbestos magazine, November 1933, p. 5
13. Asbestos magazine, April 1942, p. 40
14. Asbestos magazine, January 1950, p. 10
15. Alumino-Hi-Temp (Philip Carey)
16. Philip Carey Company Limited / The Philip Carey Mfg. Company plant at Lennoxville, Quebec
17. Philip Carey Corp. / Celotex plant at Cincinnati, Ohio
18. Asbestos magazine, December 1953, cover
19. Asbestos magazine, October 1967, p. 29
20. Asbestos magazine, December 1969, p. 8
21. 7M (Philip Carey)
22. Aircel (Philip Carey)
23. Asbestos magazine, March 1938, p. 35
24. Asbestos magazine, February 1943, p. 20
25. Careytemp (Philip Carey)
26. Asbestos magazine, January 1967, p. 14
27. Asbestos magazine, August 1964, p. 13
28. UC-3871: W. C. Thurber Memo to Files on Conversation with Don Miller of Kentile Floors about Calidria Use in Floor Tile (1974)
29. UC-2871: John L. Myers to G. R. Adams Transmitting Third-Quarter 1978 Calidria Sales and Marketing Services Summaries (1978), p. 6
30. Asbestos magazine, September 1979, p. 52
31. The Asbestos Worker, January 1925, p. 4
32. The Asbestos Worker, July 1938, p. 6
33. Borel v. Fibreboard Paper Products Corporation (5th Cir. 1973)
34. Philip Carey Corporation (company page)
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. 163.
36. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Celotex Product Information, p. 2
37. 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. 164.
38. Travelers Asbestos Seminar Booklet (1980): Celotex Product Information, p. 3

People

People the documents tie to Philip Carey Corporation, most often named first, with the titles the documents give them.

• M. K. Smith: Research Chemist unreviewed

Asbestos trust

If you or a family member worked with or around Philip Carey Corporation's asbestos products and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, a claim may be paid by the Celotex Asbestos Settlement Trust. Free case review.

Asbestos products

122 products our documents name Philip Carey Corporation as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

Plants

Plants where asbestos products were made that the documents say Philip Carey Corporation ran.

• Philip Carey / The Celotex Corporation plant at Linden, New Jersey
• Philip Carey and later owners plant at Lockland, Ohio
• Philip Carey Company Limited / The Philip Carey Mfg. Company plant at Lennoxville, Quebec
• Philip Carey Company plant at Portsmouth, New Hampshire
• Philip Carey Corp. / Celotex plant at Cincinnati, Ohio
• Philip Carey plant at Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania

Court cases

9 court decisions in our case-law library name Philip Carey Corporation as a defendant, newest first.

• Mtr. OF Nyc Asbestos Litig. (1997)
• King v. Armstrong World Industries, Inc. (1990)
• Krull v. Celotex Corp. (1985)
• Bertrand v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp. (1982)
• Fusco v. Johns-Manville Products Corp. (1981)
• Nolan v. Johns-Manville Asbestos (1981)
• Mooney v. Fibreboard Corp. (1980)
• Nolan v. Johns-Manville Asbestos & Magnesia Materials Co. (1979)
• Borel v. Fibreboard Paper Products Corporation (1973)

In our library

3 documents in our library name Philip Carey Corporation, by collection.

Other library documents (3)

• Carey Asbestos and Magnesia Products: Pipe and Boiler Coverings (1920) (publisher)
• Catalog page: SprayCraft Sprayed Mineral Fiber (Philip Carey) (publisher)
• Label: Asbestos Cement (Philip Carey) (publisher)

In the Union Carbide documents

Philip Carey Corporation is named in 7 Union Carbide documents dated 1960 to 1980 (7 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

• Sales Development Status Report on Asbestos Markets, to L. A. Bliss (1960) UC-3152 (mentioned)
• Union Carbide Chemicals Company, Design and Construction Department: Thermal Insulation Specifications Manual issued to R. P. Little (1961) UC-4905 (mentioned)
• Union Carbide Chemicals and Plastics Memos on the Asbestos Flooring and Paper Markets, with King City Calidria 1969 Budget Pages (1969) UC-819 (mentioned)
• Users of Asbestos Fibres: Directory of Companies by Product Category (1973) UC-2648 (mentioned)
• William P. Barrett, 'Not told, workers say: 6 charge DuPont hid data on asbestosis,' The Bulletin (1980) UC-1947 (mentioned)
• The Asbestos Factbook: Excerpted Pages on Origin, History, World Production, Uses and Fiber Grades UC-1386 (mentioned)
• Robert L. Bockstahler Deposition Excerpts on Eagle-Picher Asbestos Insulation Products and Fiber Suppliers (1984-1985) UC-4913 (mentioned)

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for Philip Carey Corporation, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: Philip Carey · Philip Carey Corp · Philip Carey Company · Phillip Carey Co.

Where this comes from

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