PPG Industries

PPG Industries, earlier the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, is a Pittsburgh glass, paint and chemical company. Its asbestos story runs mainly through Pittsburgh Corning, the company it co-owned with Corning, which made Unibestos pipe insulation; PPG also sold Pyrocal insulation made for it by Fibreboard and held patents on asbestos diaphragms for brine electrolysis cells. PPG was sued by many thousands of Unibestos claimants and helped fund the Pittsburgh Corning asbestos trust, which took effect in 2016.

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

Corporate history

According to the 1986 Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, a compilation by plaintiffs' attorneys, the company was incorporated as the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. on August 24, 1883, and was reincorporated on November 3, 1920, and merged with the Patton-Pitcairn Co. and the Columbia Chemical Co.^23,24 In May 1962 it acquired the assets and properties of the Rubber and Asbestos Corp. of Bloomfield, New Jersey.²⁴ In July 1973 it sold its fiber glass assets to CertainTeed Products Corp.²⁴

Pittsburgh Corning and Unibestos

According to the bankruptcy court's 2013 findings, Pittsburgh Corning was formed in 1937 by the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company (now PPG Industries) and Corning Glass Works, each owning half of its stock, to develop, make and sell glass building products.¹ From 1962 to 1972 Pittsburgh Corning made and sold Unibestos, a molded pipe insulation of amosite asbestos, at plants in Tyler, Texas, and Port Allegany, Pennsylvania.¹ The court found that neither PPG nor Corning made, distributed or sold Unibestos, "with the exception of two sales of Unibestos by PPG's fiberglass division in August and October 1969."¹

PPG's medical director also served Pittsburgh Corning. In August 1968, answering discovery in Tomplait v. Combustion Engineering, Pittsburgh Corning named Dr. Lee B. Grant, "Medical Director of PPG Industries, Inc.," as the person with technical knowledge of the materials it made and their ingredients, saying he was not directly employed by Pittsburgh Corning but rendered "certain staff services" to it.⁶ It named Dr. Grant in the same terms in Potter v. Fibreboard in December 1969.⁷ In 1974 former workers at the Tyler plant sued PPG, Dr. Grant, Corning, Pittsburgh Corning and others in what became known as the Yandle/Kay cases.¹ As the court later quoted it, the complaint in Yandle v. PPG Industries alleged that PPG and Corning, "because of their beneficial ownership and right to control and manage Pittsburgh Corning Corporation," could have corrected conditions at the plant, and that Dr. Grant had visited the plant and examined workers.¹ Those are the plaintiffs' allegations. The bankruptcy court found that before 2000 "PPG had never been found liable for any claims arising out of an alleged exposure to Unibestos," and that its only adverse asbestos verdict before the April 2000 stay came in Sonnier v. Pittsburgh Corning, a Texas case in which PPG was found ten percent at fault.¹ The court also found that the Yandle/Kay cases, which ultimately took in around 2,000 individual claims, were settled for a total of about $20 million, and that a later group, the Tyler II cases, was also settled by Pittsburgh Corning, PPG and Corning.¹ In 1981 Asbestos reported another suit, filed in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, on behalf of 56 Pittsburgh Corning employees and their spouses, with PPG among the defendants.⁸

Pyrocal and other asbestos products

PPG's own asbestos product in the library's records is Pyrocal, a block and pipe-covering insulation. A 1990 EPA notice publishing what Fibreboard reported says Fibreboard made Pyrocal from 1968 to 1971 "under rebrand agreements and specifications for ... PPG Industries."⁹ An insurer's list of asbestos products, The Travelers Insurance Company's seminar booklet, gives Pyrocal pipe cover and block as made from 1968 to 1971 with 12 in its asbestos-percentage column, but its note reads "REBRAND FIBREBOARD 1965-71."¹⁰ The two sources differ on when the rebrand began. The bankruptcy court found that PPG's Pyrocal sales totaled less than $625,000, that Pyrocal was the only asbestos-containing product that had ever led PPG to pay a settlement, and that those settlements came to about $2 million.¹

PPG also used asbestos in its chemical business. Asbestos reported patents assigned to PPG Industries in 1976 and 1977 for asbestos diaphragms, one of them described as a diaphragm for brine electrolysis cells.⁴ Glass fiber from Pittsburgh Plate Glass met asbestos in textiles too: in 1955 the Asbestos Textile Institute's technical committee considered substituting a glass yarn supplied by Pittsburgh Plate Glass in asbestos-glass combination cloth, and did not recommend the substitution.¹¹

Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos

Union Carbide's 1969 business plan listed PPG Industries among its key polyester accounts for Calidria, its short-fiber asbestos thickener.¹² In September 1971 a Union Carbide salesman visited PPG's plant in Torrance, California, and wrote that the plant engineer wanted all the information he could get on respirators, ventilation and dust arrestors needed when using asbestos or silica, and that the production area had no adequate ventilation.¹³ The salesman wrote that they had discussed asbestosis and silicosis and how, as he put it, they were not related to cancer in proper use (the supplier's statement, not PPG's), and that PPG needed the go-ahead from its own laboratory before making Calidria polyesters at the plant.¹³

On October 12, 1971, B. L. Ingalls of Union Carbide wrote to Dennis P. Bridge, PPG's manager of environmental control, enclosing a National Research Council report on airborne asbestos.¹⁴ Ingalls wrote that he understood "the decision to use CALIDRIA RG-244 in your polyester products may be negated due to the potential health hazards associated with asbestos," and added Union Carbide's view that "our asbestos products may be used safely."¹⁴ That is the supplier's claim; the documents in the library do not record PPG's final decision.

Industry groups

Pittsburgh Plate Glass was active in the insulation makers' trade group. When a new association of industrial insulation manufacturers was formed, Asbestos reported in February 1959 that R. A. McLaughlin of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. was its vice president.¹⁵ P. D. Kaley of Pittsburgh Plate Glass was elected president of the National Insulation Manufacturers Association in October 1964.¹⁶ Kaley attended the April 1964 board meeting at which it was reported that Johns-Manville was printing a caution on cartons of its asbestos products saying that inhaling asbestos "in excessive quantities over long periods of time may be harmful."¹⁷ PPG Industries was among the sponsors of the Industrial Health Foundation's Fibrous Dust Study, with Johns-Manville, Raybestos-Manhattan and, in the 1971 letter, Pittsburgh Corning, to whom the foundation wrote in 1969 and 1971.¹⁸

Lawsuits, bankruptcy and trust

Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company was a defendant in Tomplait v. Combustion Engineering (E.D. Tex.). In its 1968 interrogatory answers PPG said that, of the products named in the complaint, it had made fiber glass insulation, and it denied that its materials were dangerous.¹⁹ It moved for summary judgment on the Texas two-year statute of limitations and on the ground that it had no duty to warn of a danger the plaintiff already knew, and on July 17, 1968 the court granted the motion and dismissed the claims and cross-actions against it.¹⁹

Pittsburgh Corning filed for Chapter 11 on April 16, 2000, with about 235,000 Unibestos claims pending; at that time PPG was a defendant to about 116,000 Unibestos claimants.¹ The plan created an asbestos trust funded by Pittsburgh Corning, PPG, Corning and insurers, with a channeling injunction protecting PPG and Corning from claims that derive from Pittsburgh Corning.¹ The court refused an earlier version in 2011, partly because the plan's definitions could be read to channel claims over PPG's Pyrocal that did not involve Pittsburgh Corning; the court held that such independent Pyrocal claims cannot be channeled to the trust.^1,20 The court confirmed the plan in May 2013, and the district court affirmed in 2014.^1,21 Our trust page says the plan took effect in 2016 and the trust began paying claims in 2017.⁵

PPG has also been sued as an employer. In McCloskey v. Cemline Corporation (Pa. Super. 2015), the court vacated a judgment for PPG and sent the case back, because under Tooey the workers' compensation law does not bar a suit over a disease that is not compensable under it, such as one diagnosed more than 300 weeks after the last exposure.²²

References

1. In re Pittsburgh Corning Corporation (Bankr. W.D. Pa., May 24, 2013)
2. The J-M Circle, February 1930, p. 6
3. Pyrocal (PPG Industries), product record
4. Asbestos, June 1976, p. 51; Asbestos, April 1978, p. 54
5. Pittsburgh Corning asbestos trust claims
6. The Tomplait v. Combustion Engineering Case File, Answer of Pittsburgh Corning Corporation to interrogatory and motion for discovery (August 27, 1968)
7. The Potter v. Fibreboard Case File, Pittsburgh Corning's objections to plaintiff's motion for discovery (December 24, 1969), p. 7
8. Asbestos, June 1981, p. 12
9. Asbestos; Publication of Identifying Information, Federal Register (1990), p. 7
10. The Travelers Insurance Company's Product Information Booklet for Its Asbestos Seminar, p. 7
11. ATI-195: Asbestos Textile Institute Technical Committee Minutes, September 7, 1955, p. 2
12. UC-811: F. D. Dexter to J. Clayton Stephenson Transmitting Calidria Asbestos Discussion Outline and 1969 Business Plan (1969), p. 14
13. UC-697: Jeff Rittenberg's Reports of Calls on Customers Using Calidria RG-244 (September 1971), p. 2
14. UC-5381: B. L. Ingalls to Dennis P. Bridge (PPG Industries) Enclosing NRC Report 'Airborne Asbestos' (1971), pp. 1–2
15. Asbestos, February 1959, p. 8
16. Asbestos, February 1965, p. 9
17. National Insulation Manufacturers Association Board Minutes on J-M's Caution Statement (1964)
18. Robert T. P. deTreville to Fibrous Dust Study Sponsors (1969); Sally Carlysle to Fibrous Dust Study Sponsors (1971)
19. Tomplait v. Combustion Engineering case file: Answers of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company to interrogatories (1968); Motion for summary judgment (1968); Order granting Pittsburgh Plate Glass's motion for summary judgment (1968)
20. In re Pittsburgh Corning Corporation (Bankr. W.D. Pa., June 16, 2011)
21. Mt. McKinley Ins. Co. v. Pittsburgh Corning Corp. (W.D. Pa. 2014)
22. McCloskey v. Cemline Corporation (Pa. Super. 2015)
23. 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. 170.
24. 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. 171.

People

People the documents tie to PPG Industries, most often named first, with the titles the documents give them.

• Dennis P. Bridge: Manager Environmental Control unreviewed

Asbestos products

1 product our documents name PPG Industries as making or selling. Each product's page says what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

• Pyrocal (PPG Industries)

Court cases

7 court decisions in our case-law library name PPG Industries as a defendant, newest first.

• McCloskey v. Cemline Corporation (2015)
• Mt. McKinley Ins. Co. v. Pittsburgh Corning Corp. (2014)
• In re Pittsburgh Corning Corporation (2013)
• In re Pittsburgh Corning Corporation (2013)
• In re Pittsburgh Corning Corporation (2011)
• Holmes v. ACandS, Inc. (1999)
• Nolan v. Johns-Manville Asbestos & Magnesia Materials Co. (1979)

In the Union Carbide documents

PPG Industries is named in 11 Union Carbide documents dated 1971 to 1982 (11 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

• Reprints from Rubber World (1971): M. P. Wagner, 'Non-black reinforcers and fillers for rubber,' and G. C. Derringer, 'Compounding with fibers for high performance elastomer compounds' UC-3966 (mentioned)
• Jeff Rittenberg and Tom Fletcher Call Reports on Calidria RG-244 Customer Visits in California (1971) Union Carbide 174 (mentioned)
• Jeff Rittenberg's Reports of Calls on Customers Using Calidria RG-244, with Safety and Asbestosis Discussions (September 1971) UC-697 (mentioned)
• Jeff Rittenberg and Tom Fletcher Calidria RG-244 Call Reports on California Customers, Including Respirator and Asbestosis Discussions (1971) UC-4592 (mentioned)
• B. L. Ingalls to Dennis P. Bridge (PPG Industries) on Asbestos Health Hazards and Calidria RG-244 in Polyester Products (1971) UC-178 (mentioned)
• B. L. Ingalls to Dennis P. Bridge (PPG Industries) Enclosing NRC Report 'Airborne Asbestos' and Discussing Calidria RG-244 in Polyester (1971) UC-5381 (mentioned)
• J. L. Myers Call Report on Glidden-Durkee Meetings in Cleveland about Calidria Asbestos Toxicology (1971) Union Carbide 183 (mentioned)
• Union Carbide Call Reports on Glidden-Durkee Questions About Asbestos Toxicity and RG-244 (1971-1973) UC-689 (mentioned)
• J. L. Myers Call Report on Glidden-Durkee Meetings About Calidria Asbestos Toxicology (1971) UC-5060 (mentioned)
• Buffalo Courier-Express Photo and Caption on PPG's Zetex Fiber Glass Yarn Designed to Replace Asbestos (1982) UC-4854 (mentioned)
• Associated Press Newspaper Clippings: Government Settles Tyler, Texas Asbestos Suit and HEW Estimates 20% of Cancer Deaths Tied to Jobs UC-1941 (mentioned)

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for PPG Industries, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: PPG Industries, Inc.

Where this comes from

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