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American Optical Co

American Optical, of Southbridge, Massachusetts, made industrial safety equipment through its Safety Products Division, including asbestos heat gloves and mittens, aluminized asbestos protective clothing, and respirators that asbestos plants issued to their workers. Courts have heard claims that its respirators failed to protect against asbestos dust and that its asbestos clothing exposed workers. Its respirator business later passed to Cabot, which sold it in 1995. Our library has no record of an asbestos bankruptcy or trust for the company; it was still being named as a defendant in 2019.

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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Asbestos gloves and protective clothing

An American Optical advertisement for AO Safety Products, which our library dates to 1944, recommends asbestos gloves and mittens "for operations requiring protection from heat" and says they are made of "the finest grade of long fibered asbestos."3 Catalog pages that our library also dates to 1944 list the 514 plain asbestos glove and the 1514 leather-reinforced asbestos glove, each also offered in an 11-inch short version and a 23-inch long gauntlet version.9 The trademark file for these pages gives first use in commerce as September 11, 1944.39 In November 1940 the trade journal Asbestos reported that the company had been awarded a $10,115 contract for asbestos mittens.10

By 1961 the Safety Products Division was selling an aluminized asbestos hood and coat; the trademark file gives first use in October 1961.1 A Minnesota industrial supplier's catalog from about 1977 still offered American Optical aluminized clothing, including pants "in aluminized asbestos," and said the company had "one of the largest leather clothing, glove, and mitten capabilities in the industry."2 A 1973 directory of asbestos fiber users, found in the Union Carbide files, lists American Optical's Safety Products Division in Southbridge.11

Respirators

American Optical's respirators appear throughout the industry's own papers on dust control.

  • The Manville fund's 1989 answers to interrogatories in Gunn v. Celotex list American Optical among the companies holding U.S. Bureau of Mines approvals for respirators in 1941, 1949, 1950, 1958 and 1965.12
  • In August 1946 a Johns-Manville safety engineer reported to the Asbestos Textile Institute on respirator trials at the Manville, New Jersey, plant. Operators rated American Optical's R9100 "small and light," and the letter says it was "standard" at the plant.4
  • A paper on respirators attached to 1957 Asbestos Textile Institute committee minutes names the American Optical R-2000 among light respirators with a breathing resistance of 13 to 18 millimeters.13
  • A 1963 industrial hygiene report on Union Carbide's King City, California, asbestos mine recommended that some mine workers wear respirators approved by the Bureau of Mines, and named American Optical's Sure-Guard R9100T as a relatively inexpensive respirator "found adequate."14
  • Johns-Manville safety advice forwarded inside Union Carbide in 1969 says: "Other manufacturers of approved respirators include American Optical and Willson."15
  • A 1973 Reichhold Chemicals handling procedure for asbestos in polyesters says each worker required to wear a respirator should be issued an American Optical R-2090 respirator with an R-90 filter "or its equivalent."16
  • A 1974 NIOSH list of certified equipment records approval of the A.O. R1050 single-use respirator for pneumoconiosis- and fibrosis-producing dusts on August 14, 1974.5
  • A 1984 Du Pont study of respirators worn during asbestos removal, circulated within Union Carbide, concluded that all the respirators tested gave protection against asbestos. It found that the American Optical R1050 reliably gave a workplace protection factor of five or greater, while the other respirators tested reliably gave ten or greater.17
  • In a 1982 deposition, an insulation supervisor at Union Carbide's Texas City plant named American Optical and MSA as makers of the masks used there.18

In February 1971 Asbestos reported that a new disposable dust-mist respirator introduced by American Optical the year before had received Bureau of Mines approval under Schedule 21B.19

In the courts

Two 1981 decisions of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concerned American Optical respirators used at National Gypsum Company plants. In Porter v. American Optical Corp., the court said American Optical had supplied respirators to National Gypsum's New Orleans plant since 1953. A jury found the respirator and filter apparatus defective and a cause of the worker's illness and death, and the Fifth Circuit upheld the verdict. The court noted that the Bureau of Mines testing the company relied on used lead and silica particles, not asbestos.6 In Petes v. Hayes, a worker who had been given American Optical respirators after 1960 lost at trial, but the Fifth Circuit reversed because one question put to the jury could have misled it, and sent the case back.20

Later decisions show the same two kinds of claims. In Macias v. Saberhagen Holdings (2012), the Washington Supreme Court allowed a shipyard tool keeper's failure-to-warn claims against American Optical and two other respirator makers to go forward. It reasoned that the respirators "were specifically designed to and intended to filter contaminants from the air," including asbestos, and had to be cleaned for reuse; the state Court of Appeals had ruled the other way in 2010.21 In MacLachlan v. AW Chesterton (2019), a federal court in Ohio noted that American Optical "admits that it manufactured both asbestos- and nonasbestos-containing protective wear" and left it to a jury whether a steelworker was exposed to its asbestos clothing.7 In American Optical Corporation v. Spiewak (2011), the Florida Supreme Court held that Florida's 2005 Asbestos and Silica Compensation Fairness Act could not be applied to claims, including claims against American Optical, that had already accrued before it was passed.22 In Cabot CSC Corporation v. Aearo Technologies (2017), the Massachusetts Appeals Court wrote that Cabot had acquired a respirator manufacturing business from the American Optical Corporation and in 1995 sold it to a buyer of which Aearo is the successor in interest; as the court quotes the 1995 agreement, Cabot kept liability for claims over respirators sold by the sellers or their predecessors "(including, without limitation, American Optical Corporation and its predecessors)" involving "medical conditions involving exposure to asbestos, silica or silica products."8

Union Carbide's answers to discovery in Texas asbestos cases in 2000 and 2001 cite In re American Optical Corp., 988 S.W.2d 711 (Tex. 1998), a Texas Supreme Court decision, to object to requests as overly broad.23

References

  1. Protective clothing: Aluminized asbestos hood and coat, No. 10X102RA / 10X204RD-30, 1961, ACL Doc 20770; product page
  2. W. P. & R. S. Mars Co. Industrial Supplies, Catalog 81 (excerpt), c. 1977, pp. 7, 12
  3. Advertisement: AO Safety Products asbestos heat gloves and mittens (American Optical Company), 1944, ACL Doc 20869; product page
  4. B. F. Stanton, Johns-Manville Corporation, to Asbestos Textile Institute on Respirator Tests at the Manville Plant, August 16, 1946 (ATI-128), pp. 1–2
  5. NIOSH Cumulative Supplement to July 1974 Edition of NIOSH Certified Personal Protective Equipment, September 1974 (UC-1316), p. 4
  6. Porter v. American Optical Corp. (5th Cir. 1981)
  7. MacLachlan v. AW Chesterton, Inc. (N.D. Ohio 2019)
  8. Cabot CSC Corporation v. Aearo Technologies LLC (Mass. App. Ct. 2017)
  9. Catalog page: 514 Plain Asbestos Glove, 1944, ACL Doc 20789; Catalog page: 1514 Leather Reinforced Asbestos Glove, 1944, ACL Doc 20787; product page
  10. Asbestos, November 1940, p. 18
  11. Users of Asbestos Fibers: Directory of Manufacturers by Product Category, 1973 (UC-935), p. 13
  12. Manville Fund's Answers to Interrogatories in Gunn v. Celotex, 1989, pp. 43–45
  13. Minutes of the Asbestos Textile Institute Air Hygiene and Manufacturing Committee, December 5, 1957, with attached paper on respirators (ATI-27), p. 5
  14. T. W. Nale to K. Lentz Transmitting P. W. McDaniel's Report on Dust Conditions at the King City Mine and Plant, 1963 (Union Carbide 61), p. 3
  15. R. E. Joyner to C. U. Dernehl Transmitting Consumer Products Division Memo on Asbestos Fibre Safety Precautions, 1969 (UC-5070), p. 2
  16. T. R. Madden (Reichhold Chemicals) to E. W. Jansen on OSHA Asbestos Requirements for Use of Asbestos in Polyesters, 1973 (UC-1552), p. 8
  17. R. G. Hanlon Forwarding Du Pont Respirator Study on Protection Against Asbestos, 1984 (UC-847), pp. 3, 15
  18. Deposition of James Henry Rapp, Union Carbide Texas City Insulation Supervisor, in Scott v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp., 1982 (UC-4895), p. 58
  19. Asbestos, February 1971, p. 17
  20. Petes v. Hayes (5th Cir. 1981)
  21. Macias v. Saberhagen Holdings, Inc. (Wash. 2012); Macias v. Mine Safety Appliances Co. (Wash. Ct. App. 2010)
  22. American Optical Corporation v. Spiewak (Fla. 2011)
  23. Union Carbide's Supplemental Responses in Levrier v. Owens Corning, 2001 (UC-1878), p. 49; Union Carbide's Responses in Moake v. Owens-Corning Fiberglas, 2000 (UC-1665), p. 37

Asbestos products

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

Court cases

10 court decisions in our case-law library name American Optical Co as a defendant, newest first.

In our library

5 documents in our library name American Optical Co, by collection.

Other library documents (5)

In the Union Carbide documents

American Optical Co is named in 9 Union Carbide documents dated 1963 to 1984 (9 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. 8 of them are published in our collection.

Names in the documents

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

Where this comes from

This page brings together every document in our library that names American Optical Co, 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

“American Optical Co.” AsbestosClaims.Law Library. https://asbestosclaims.law/library/organizations/american-optical-co.

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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.