Insul-Coustic Corporation

Insul-Coustic made coatings, mastics, adhesives and other accessories for thermal insulation, first at Maspeth, New York, and later at Sayreville, New Jersey, as a division of Birma Products Corporation. A 1962 Union Carbide insulation manual lists several of its products in classes the manual describes as made with asbestos fibers, and Union Carbide sold it Calidria asbestos. In May 1980 it was merged into the Industrial Products Division of Jim Walter Corporation's Celotex business.

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 evidence on the company itself is thin. In February 1960 Asbestos, the industry's trade journal, reported that Robert Klein of the Insul-Coustic Company had sat on a December 1959 panel of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Thermal Insulation Society on weatherproofing products for thermal insulation.⁷ Union Carbide's 1962 manual gives the address of Insul-Coustic Corporation in Maspeth, New York, and an errata sheet issued in November 1962 corrects its street address to 42-23 54th Road.¹ By 1971 Union Carbide wrote to it as the Insul-Coustic Division of Birma Products Corp., on Jernee Mill Road in Sayreville, New Jersey.³

In February 1981 Asbestos printed a summary of Jim Walter Corporation's annual report.⁵ It said that in May 1980 Insul-Coustic Corporation, which it called "a basic maker of glass fiber and molder of glass fiber products," was merged with the Industrial Products Division, the division that sold Celotemp pipe insulation and Thermax insulation.⁵ A 1979 birthday list in the same journal names Sam Brasher as president of the Industrial Products Division of The Celotex Corporation, part of Jim Walter Corporation.⁶

Asbestos products

Union Carbide's Thermal Insulation and Accessories Manual of 1962 lists Insul-Coustic products among the approved trade names in several classes of insulation accessories.¹ Each class has one description of its basic materials, written for the whole class rather than for any one maker's product:

• Weather-Sure 301 and Emulsion 330, Emulsion 331, weather-barrier coatings, are listed under asphalt emulsion (fibrated), described as "asphalt base clay emulsion and asbestos fibers."¹
• Vapo-Sure 320 and 321 is listed under asphalt cutback (fibrated mastic), described as "special asphalts, asbestos fibers, inert fillers and mineral spirit solvents."¹
• Temp-Sure I-C 250, an adhesive, is listed under sodium silicate (with fibrous asbestos), described as "sodium silicate with fibrous asbestos fillers."¹

Union Carbide's insulation specifications (pages dated November 1966, in a manual our library dates to 1968) name other Insul-Coustic products, such as a lap sealer and a fire-retardant duct adhesive, as acceptable choices "or approved equal."⁸

What the documents show

In December 1971 B. L. Ingalls, a Union Carbide sales manager, wrote to Grey F. Rolland, Insul-Coustic's director of research and development, after a phone conversation.³ He sent the address of the Asbestos Information Association and wrote that Union Carbide felt its Calidria products offered "significant advantages" from "an economic and safe handling point of view," adding that Calidria was "currently being used in a variety of mastics and other maintenance type coatings."³ Union Carbide's 1977 list of Calidria customers by grade names Insul-Coustic at Jernee Mill, apparently at Sayreville and for a trowelable mastic; the scan's columns do not line up well enough to say which grade.⁴ Insul-Coustic/Birma at Sayreville also appears on Union Carbide's 1980 list of Calidria ship-to locations.²

Our library holds no court case or trust record that names Insul-Coustic, and no document saying whether claims over its products go to any trust.

References

1. Union Carbide Chemicals Company: Thermal Insulation and Accessories Manual (1962), pp. 2, 67, 104, 126, 134
2. Union Carbide 538: Calidria Shipments to UCC Facilities and Customer Ship-To List (1980), p. 31
3. B. L. Ingalls to Grey F. Rolland (Insul-Coustic) on Calidria Asbestos and the Asbestos Information Association Address (1971), UC-1585, p. 1
4. Union Carbide 17: Union Carbide 1977 Customer/Application List by Product Grade (1977), p. 1
5. Asbestos, February 1981, p. 32
6. Asbestos, September 1979, p. 38
7. Asbestos, February 1960, pp. 8 and 10
8. Union Carbide Thermal Insulation Manual, Volume I (Specifications) (1968), UC-2010, pp. 60–61

Asbestos products

4 products our documents name Insul-Coustic Corporation as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

• Emulsion 330, Emulsion 331 (Insul-Coustic)
• Temp-Sure I-c 250 (Insul-Coustic)
• Vapo-Sure 320 and 321 (Insul-Coustic)
• Weather-Sure 301 (Insul-Coustic)

In the Union Carbide documents

Insul-Coustic Corporation is named in 3 Union Carbide documents dated 1962 to 1971 (3 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)
• B. L. Ingalls to Grey F. Rolland (Insul-Coustic) on Calidria Asbestos and the Asbestos Information Association Address (1971) UC-1585 (mentioned)

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for Insul-Coustic Corporation, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: Insul-Coustic.

Where this comes from

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