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American Biltrite

American Biltrite, known in earlier documents as American Biltrite Rubber Company, made vinyl asbestos floor tile, asphalt tile and asbestos-backed sheet vinyl flooring through its Amtico division, with tile plants in New Jersey, California and Quebec. It bought asbestos fiber from Union Carbide and others into the late 1970s. It was the parent company of Congoleum, whose asbestos bankruptcy began in 2003, and it has itself remained a defendant in asbestos lawsuits.

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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History and asbestos products

The fullest account of American Biltrite's asbestos products is the company's own submission to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, published in summary in the Federal Register in 1990.1 In it, the Amtico Division of American Biltrite Inc., of Lawrenceville, New Jersey, said it bought the assets for making vinyl asbestos tile and asphalt tile in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, from Bonafide Mills Inc. on January 1, 1961, and bought a sheet vinyl flooring plant in Norwood, Massachusetts, from New London Mills in 1974.1 It said both earlier owners had made asbestos flooring at those sites, and that it had no records of what they made before it bought them.1

The submission gives these dates: asphalt tile containing asbestos from January 1, 1961 through 1970, and sheet vinyl flooring with an "asbestos felt backing" from 1962 to 1968 and from 1974 through 1980.1 For vinyl asbestos floor tile it gives two different end dates: its "years of manufacture" heading reads 1961 through 1980, while its product description says the tile was produced from January 1, 1961 "through early December 1985."1 This entry does not choose between them. A 1983 Union Carbide product review still counted "Amtico, Trenton, New Jersey" as one of the two remaining U.S. makers of vinyl asbestos tile.14

The library's company page lists twenty American Biltrite products, eighteen of them under the Amtico name.13 The Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases describes Amtico Travertine, Baronette and Zip Stik each as "vinyl asbestos floor tile."15,16,17 A 1972 industry study by Morton Research Corporation, now a Union Carbide trial exhibit, lists a new Amtico vinyl asbestos pattern from the "Amtico Division, American Biltrite Rubber Co., Chelsea, Mass."2

In Canada, American Biltrite Rubber Company (Canada) Limited was one of the firms reporting Canada's vinyl-asbestos floor tile figures to the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, as Asbestos reported in March 1969; by 1978 the journal placed it in Sherbrooke, Quebec.5,18

Asbestos supply

Union Carbide's records follow American Biltrite as a customer for its short-fiber Calidria asbestos. A 1969 Union Carbide business plan listed "American Biltrite (2 plants)," at 4,000 tons a year, among the major tile accounts where its sales force would "actively solicit business."6 A 1969 memo on the flooring market listed American Biltrite's La Mirada and Trenton plants and said American Biltrite was among the tile makers that "can use Coalinga asbestos," the short fiber from the Coalinga field that Union Carbide was selling.3 A 1974 Union Carbide market analysis estimated American Biltrite's 1973 asbestos use in floor tile at 10,000 short tons, out of a U.S. total of 105,000.19

In June 1973 Union Carbide's John L. Myers wrote to W. A. Dawe of American Biltrite Rubber Company in Trenton that demand for its pelletized asbestos had forced it to limit shipments of grade SG-101 to the company.20 In September 1975 Union Carbide sent supply agreements for its SG-104 pellets to American Biltrite Inc. in Trenton, for 2,700 tons over 15 months, and to American Biltrite (Canada) Ltd. in Sherbrooke, for 675 tons from October 1975 through December 1976.4,7 A Union Carbide sales summary for 1977 said that, because of Canadian competition, it had "in the past been unable to sell to tile manufacturers in the east," and that it appeared to have "broken through at American Biltrite (Trenton, NJ)."8 That statement sits uneasily with the earlier letters to Trenton, and the documents do not explain the difference.

What the documents show

In 1972 Paul W. McDaniel, an industrial hygiene engineer for Union Carbide, measured airborne asbestos at two American Biltrite plants. At Trenton on March 1, 1972, where the tile mix used Phillips-Carey asbestos, most readings were between about 0.5 and 2 fibers per milliliter, against an OSHA limit the report gives as 5; the exception was 21.09 fibers per milliliter inside a box car while bags of asbestos were handled by hand.9,21 McDaniel wrote that the paper throwaway respirators workers wore "do not conform with the requirements of the proposed OSHA amendments and therefore are not acceptable for control of exposure to asbestos."9 At the La Mirada plant on May 24, 1972, he reported no heavy concentrations of fiber, and Myers wrote to the plant that all samples were under the OSHA standard and that the data indicated "a marked reduction of airborne fiber while using pelletized asbestos."10,22 McDaniel's memo and Myers' letter both said the plant's operations did not allow a clean comparison of pellets with open fiber.10,22 These are a supplier's measurements and conclusions, not American Biltrite's own.

American Biltrite Rubber Company was among the member companies to which the Asbestos Information Association/North America, an industry group, sent a June 1972 notice of a special meeting on industry action on OSHA's new asbestos standards.23 In 1976 "American Biltrite Inc., (AMTICO)" was among the companies endorsing the association's comments to OSHA on its proposed asbestos standard.24 A 1986 OSHA rulemaking table of floor tile exposure data cites a site visit to Amtico Flooring in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.25

Congoleum and the lawsuits

American Biltrite was Congoleum's parent company. Congoleum filed its Chapter 11 petition on December 31, 2003.12 In In re Congoleum Corp. (Bankr. D.N.J. 2007), the bankruptcy court noted that American Biltrite would keep 53% of Congoleum's voting shares under one form of the proposed plan and that "ABI's sole contribution remains $250,000 in cash."11 The court held that this contribution was not substantial enough to extend the plan's asbestos channeling injunction to American Biltrite, and found that plan unconfirmable.11 The library has no trust page for Congoleum or American Biltrite.

The library's case-law collection names American Biltrite as a defendant in 37 decisions from 2007 to 2024, most from New York courts.13 In Pistone v. American Biltrite (N.Y. App. Div. 2021), the court reversed summary judgment for American Biltrite and Mannington Mills, holding that the experts' conflicting views on causation presented a "credibility battle" for a jury to resolve.26

References

  1. Asbestos; Publication of Identifying Information, Federal Register (1990), p. 4
  2. UC-2655: Morton Research Corporation, The Asbestos Products Industry: An Economic Investigation (1972), p. 27
  3. UC-812: N. J. Setter to F. D. Dexter, W. S. Young and L. P. Jehle on The Asbestos Market in the Flooring Industry (1969)
  4. UC-2218: American Biltrite (Canada) Ltd. Supply Agreement for Calidria SG-104 Asbestos, with W. Hall Masterson Cover Letter to John L. Myers (1975)
  5. Asbestos, March 1978, p. 24
  6. UC-811: F. D. Dexter to J. Clayton Stephenson Transmitting Calidria Asbestos Discussion Outline and 1969 Business Plan (1969), p. 12
  7. UC-2231: W. C. Thurber's Office to J. L. Myers Transmitting Executed SG-104 Asbestos Supply Agreements, with Myers' Cover Letters to Customers (1975), p. 2
  8. UC-3675: Calidria Asbestos Sales Summaries and Related Metals Division Memos (1978), p. 1
  9. UC-2906: Paul W. McDaniel to J. L. Myers on Asbestos Fiber Survey at American Biltrite Plant, Trenton, N.J. (1972)
  10. UC-2903: Paul W. McDaniel to J. L. Myers on Asbestos Dust Exposure Study at American Biltrite, Los Angeles (1972)
  11. In re Congoleum Corp. (Bankr. D.N.J. 2007)
  12. In re Congoleum Corp. (D.N.J. 2009)
  13. American Biltrite, company page
  14. UC-2652: T. P. Norris to G. L. Dickson on the SG-100 Product Review for Calidria Asbestos (1983), p. 2
  15. Amtico, Travertine (American Biltrite), product page
  16. Baronette (American Biltrite), product page
  17. Zip Stik (American Biltrite), product page
  18. Asbestos, March 1969, p. 35
  19. Union Carbide 278: G. J. Weihs, Chrysotile Asbestos, Group 7 (Shorts): Market Analysis and Forecasts (1974), p. 13
  20. UC-2856: John L. Myers to W. A. Dawe, American Biltrite Rubber Company, on Limiting SG-101 Pelletized Asbestos Shipments (1973)
  21. UC-424: M. A. Peters to W. N. Johnson on Experimental Results for Airborne Asbestos, Part II (1972), p. 5
  22. UC-2904: John L. Myers to Richard Allen (American Biltrite Rubber) Transmitting May 24, 1972 Airborne Asbestos Fiber Sample Results (1972)
  23. AIA-11: M. M. Swetonic to AIA/NA Member Companies on the June 22 Special Meeting on OSHA Asbestos Standards (1972)
  24. AIA-115: R. H. Hereness (AIA) to OSHA Docket Officer, Docket H-033, Transmitting Industry Comments on the Proposed Asbestos Standard (1976), p. 2
  25. Federal Register: Occupational Exposure to Asbestos, Tremolite, Anthophyllite, and Actinolite (1986), p. 89
  26. Pistone v. American Biltrite, Inc. (N.Y. App. Div. 2021)

People

People the documents tie to American Biltrite, most often named first, with the titles the documents give them.

Asbestos products

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

Floor tile (22)

Court cases

37 court decisions in our case-law library name American Biltrite as a defendant, newest first.

In the Union Carbide documents

American Biltrite is named in 28 Union Carbide documents dated 1966 to 1981 (28 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 American Biltrite, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: American Biltrite Rubber Company · American Biltrite Rubber Co · American Biltrite Rubber Co. Inc · American Biltrite Inc · American Biltrite Company · American Bilt Rite Rubber Company · American Biltrite Rubber · American Biltrite (Canada) Ltd · American Biltrite Co · American Biltrite, Inc.

Where this comes from

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

Mentioned on this site

Cite this page

“American Biltrite.” AsbestosClaims.Law Library. https://asbestosclaims.law/library/organizations/american-biltrite.

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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.