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Texas Refinery

Texas Refinery Corp. was a Fort Worth, Texas, maker of roof coatings that bought asbestos fiber for its asphalt and aluminum roof coatings, including Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos from at least 1971 into the mid-1980s. A reference book describes its Mightyplate as a liquid asbestos roof coating. Our library holds no record of an asbestos bankruptcy or trust for the company.

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

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The company and its products

Union Carbide mailing lists give the company's address in Fort Worth as One Refinery Place in 1978 and 840 N. Main Street in 1982.67 Our library has two product records for it. The Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases (1986) describes Mightyplate as a "liquid asbestos roof coating."5 The library also holds photographs of a blue, white and orange TRC pail, described as 1979 views from the files of a lawsuit.8

Buying asbestos fiber

Union Carbide's sales report for 1971 lists Texas Refinery Company of Fort Worth as a customer for its RG-110 grade of Calidria asbestos.3 Calidria was not its only source. The 1975 operations report of Lake Asbestos of Quebec, an ASARCO subsidiary, lists among that year's sales-service calls an April complaint from Texas Refinery Corp. over the pressure packing of Lake's 7M5 fiber. The report says the car was rejected and resold to Parr Inc. of Fort Worth.9

In September 1974 the company was among those listed as attending a Johns-Manville meeting on asbestos and health, held for customers in Dallas.10

The spraying rules

In March 1977 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed changes to its National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, and Texas Refinery sent a written response to the proposal on spraying.111 Union Carbide later quoted that response in testimony it sent to California's Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board in October 1978.1 In the excerpt, Texas Refinery said its coatings were sprayed onto roofs "because of convenience, safety and the ability to get a uniform coating."1 It said it had tested clays, cork, styrofoam, ground rubber, vermiculite, feldspar, polyethylene powders, hemp and a ceramic fiber as substitutes for asbestos, and had "found none to be satisfactory."1 It said a ceramic fiber from Babcock and Wilcox gave the coating strength, fire resistance and biological resistance, but settled over time, was not widely available and was "very expensive."1 The same attachment quotes the EPA's June 1978 amendments, which exempted from the spraying rules asbestos materials sealed in a bituminous or resinous binder that are not friable after drying; the EPA said commenters had told it there were no acceptable substitutes for these uses.12 Union Carbide's testimony also used airborne-fiber figures from Texas Refinery's response for a table on the spraying of cutback asphalt coatings.13 A Union Carbide marketing manager sent the testimony to a distribution list that included Texas Refinery's technical director.6

Union Carbide's sales calls in Mexico

From 1983 to 1985 Union Carbide salesman T. P. Norris called on Texas Refinery's office in Mexico City, where he met Tony Galvan, named in the call reports as vice president and in a 1985 letter as plant manager.14152 The reports say the company was evaluating RG-110 for an aluminum asphalt roof coating and put the potential at 100 tons a year.1415 A November 1983 report says Calidria would let the company make a single-package roof coating "rather than the two part system now in production."14 Sample bags sent from King City and Fort Worth went missing on the way to Mexico City, the reports say, before a sample arrived in 1984.141617 An October 1984 report says the evaluation in Fort Worth was successful.15

In September 1983 Union Carbide handed the Texas Refinery account to its distributor D & F Distributing.18 Union Carbide's 1984 distributor report shows 16,800 pounds of RG-110 going to Texas Refinery in Fort Worth through D & F.4 In May 1985 J. E. Walsh wrote, after a trip to Mexico City, that Texas Refinery bought RG-110 for its "aluminized asphaltics," supplied from its headquarters in Fort Worth. His letter put the company's asbestos use at 140 tons a year.2 An April 1985 call report says the Mexico City office was importing a ton of RG-110 from the Fort Worth plant to make a new aluminum asphalt roof coating.19

Bankruptcy and trust

Our library holds no record of an asbestos bankruptcy or trust for Texas Refinery Corp., and none of the court decisions in our case-law library names it as a party.

References

  1. UC-3008: H. B. Rhodes to Ron Rinaldi, CAL-OSHA Standards Board, Transmitting Union Carbide Testimony on Asbestos Coating Exemptions (1978), p. 30
  2. UC-470: J. E. Walsh to J. T. Kelly on Calidria Sales Prospects in Mexico City (1985), p. 1
  3. Union Carbide 191: John L. Myers Transmittal of December and Year-End 1971 Calidria Asbestos Sales Report (1972), p. 35
  4. UC-841: J. E. Walsh, 1984 Distributor Activity Report on Calidria Sales by Distributor and Customer (1985), pp. 10–11, 43
  5. Mightyplate (Texas Refinery Corp.), citing Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, Volume Two (1986), p. 92
  6. UC-3896: John L. Myers to Distribution List Transmitting Union Carbide Testimony on Spraying of Asbestos-Containing Materials (1978), p. 4
  7. UC-5211: T. P. Norris to "Calidria" Asbestos Customers Enclosing Material Safety Data Sheet and AIA/NA Asbestos Pamphlet (1982), p. 2
  8. Product photo: TRC pail (Texas Refinery Corp.)
  9. Lake Asbestos of Quebec, Ltd.: Report on Operations, Year 1975 (1976), p. 54
  10. AIA-112: Johns-Manville Corporation, A Condensation of Environmental Facts on Asbestos and Health, with Customer Seminar Attendee Lists (1974), pp. 56–57
  11. UC-3008 (1978), p. 4 (list of appendices)
  12. UC-3008 (1978), p. 31
  13. UC-3008 (1978), p. 21
  14. UC-4779: T. P. Norris Customer Call Report on Texas Refinery, Mexico City (1983), p. 1
  15. UC-695: Calidria Customer Call Reports by T. P. Norris on Mexico City Accounts (1983–1984), p. 1
  16. UC-4578: Customer Call Report on Texas Refinery, Mexico City, by T. P. Norris and G. L. Dickson (1984), p. 2
  17. UC-5389: T. P. Norris Customer Call Report on Texas Refinery, Mexico City (1984), p. 1
  18. UC-2651: G. L. Dickson to J. T. Kelly Transmitting Third Quarter 1983 Calidria Asbestos Sales Summaries (1983), p. 5
  19. UC-4705: Customer Call Report on Texas Refinery, Mexico City, Regarding RG-110 and Roof Coatings (1985), p. 1

Asbestos products

2 products our documents name Texas Refinery as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

In our library

1 document in our library name Texas Refinery, by collection.

Other library documents (1)

In the Union Carbide documents

Texas Refinery is named in 16 Union Carbide documents dated 1978 to 1985 (16 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for Texas Refinery, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: Texas Refinery Corp · Texas Refinery Corporation · Texas Refinery Corp..

Where this comes from

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

Cite this page

“Texas Refinery.” AsbestosClaims.Law Library. https://asbestosclaims.law/library/organizations/texas-refinery.

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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.