U.S. Steel

U.S. Steel, long the country's largest steelmaker, appears in our library mainly as a place where asbestos was used: its mills used asbestos protective clothing and insulation, and its plants and research laboratory appear in Union Carbide's sales records for its asbestos. Union officials' complaints about asbestos garments and a 2008 Ohio court decision concern asbestos at its mills. Our library has no record of an asbestos bankruptcy or trust for U.S. Steel.

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

Ties to Johns-Manville

In February 1937 Asbestos reported that Enders M. Voorhees, a vice president and director of Johns-Manville, would leave to become vice chairman of the finance committee of U.S. Steel on April 1.⁶ In 1948 and 1949 the journal listed Voorhees, then chairman of U.S. Steel's finance committee, among the directors re-elected by Johns-Manville's stockholders.⁷ A 1970 Johns-Manville paper on its health research lists Daniel C. Braun of U.S. Steel Corp., Pittsburgh, among the seven members of the scientific advisory committee of the Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health, the research arm of the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association; the paper says the institute plays a vital role in Johns-Manville's health research.⁸

Asbestos products and suppliers

A 1962 Union Carbide engineering study of asbestos-cement pipe says some of its information came from M. V. Friedlander "of the Consolidated Atlas Cement Division of the United States Steel Company," who had worked in the asbestos-cement field for twenty-three years and chaired the ASTM standards committee for asbestos-cement pipe.⁹ A U.S. patent for a chimney coating, filed in 1961 and issued in 1966, was assigned to United States Steel Corporation; it describes a protective mastic containing asbestos among other ingredients.¹⁰ The unreviewed trade-name index in the Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases lists an asbestos-insulated wire and cable called Amerbestos under U.S. Steel.¹¹

Its plants also appear in asbestos suppliers' papers. Unarco's 1954 brochure for Unibestos pipe insulation lists U.S. Steel among the steel companies where, it says, Unibestos "provides durable protection."¹² A 1980 Union Carbide list of customer ship-to locations for its Calidria asbestos includes U.S. Steel Corp. at Clairton, Pennsylvania; Linden, New Jersey; and Tampa, Florida.³ In February 1978 a Union Carbide salesman called on U.S. Steel's research laboratory in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, about RG-244, a Calidria asbestos product for polyester resins. He reported that the laboratory had concluded RG-244 was "technically a very efficient thixotrope," but that "the problem that they are continually encountering is that it is asbestos."¹

Asbestos at the mills

In 1974 Raybestos-Manhattan was weighing the results of a study by Dr. Gibbs of McGill University on whether asbestos safety garments could expose their wearers to asbestos dust. A March 1974 memo by John H. Marsh of Raybestos-Manhattan says the study was begun in part at the request of safety garment makers, and adds: "In addition a specific problem was encountered at U.S. Steel where union officials complained to management that the use of asbestos containing garments might cause lung cancer."² Marsh wrote that the study "showed there are some problems we had not anticipated," but that they could be solved by special treatment of conventional fabrics, by the use of Novatex, or both.² A research memo enclosed with his, by John J. Magenheimer, says conversations with people at U.S. Steel gave no leads as to the cloth used in the used coats.² A June 1974 memo by Magenheimer says the company must notify its customers in the safety garment industry "of the McGill results at U.S. Steel and Irco."¹³

In 1951 the insulators' union journal, The Asbestos Worker, reported that ground had been broken for U.S. Steel's new Fairless Works at Morrisville, Pennsylvania, a job expected to need 3,000 building tradesmen at its height, and later that insulation work there was due to begin.¹⁴ The Union Carbide exhibits include a March 1979 Bucks County Courier Times article, "Fairless plant tested for cancer," about asbestos at the Fairless Works; our library describes that article but does not host it.¹⁵

A 1977 Union Carbide call report on Kentile Floors relays a remark by someone at Kentile that the OSHA office in Chicago was then spending most of its time on U.S. Steel.¹⁶

In the courts

Gomcsak v. US Steel Corp. (Ohio Court of Appeals, 2008) was a workers' compensation death-benefit case about an electrician who worked at U.S. Steel's mill in Lorain, Ohio, from 1942 to 1984. The court's opinion says his work put him in close contact with asbestos pipe covering, brake shoes, tape, protective clothing and hot tops systems. A jury found that his asbestos exposure did not cause his death, and the court of appeals affirmed the verdict for U.S. Steel.⁴

Barry Castleman's Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects cites a 1984 Johannesburg newspaper article titled "U.S. Steel Holds Interest in Asbestos Dumps"; our library has not seen the article.¹⁷

References

1. G. L. Dickson Call Report on United States Steel Research Laboratory, Monroeville, Review of RG-244 Status, 1978 (UC-602), p. 1
2. John H. Marsh to John Hawkins on the McGill Study of Asbestos Safety Garments, March 12 and 15, 1974, ACL Doc 13064, pp. 1–2
3. Calidria Shipments to UCC Facilities and Customer Ship-To List, 1980 (UC-245), p. 65
4. Gomcsak v. US Steel Corp. (Ohio Ct. App. 2008)
5. Asbestos, November 1921, p. 22
6. Asbestos, February 1937, p. 34
7. Asbestos, June 1948, p. 46; Asbestos, June 1949, p. 46
8. Johns-Manville, "History of Johns-Manville Health Research," 1970, p. 18
9. K. W. Lentz, General Engineering Study, UCNC Pipe Project, Part III: Asbestos-Cement Pipe, 1962 (UC-3565), p. 13
10. Coated chimney, US Patent 3,281,308, 1966, p. 2
11. Amerbestos (U.S. Steel), product page
12. Unarco: Unibestos Brochure, 1954, p. 21
13. John J. Magenheimer to J. T. Trainor on the Size Distribution of Novatex Fibers, June 17, 1974
14. The Asbestos Worker, April 1951, p. 15, and July 1951, p. 16
15. Bill Reed, "Fairless plant tested for cancer," Bucks County Courier Times, March 23, 1979 (UC-1952)
16. G. L. Dickson Customer Call Report on Kentile Floors, Brooklyn, 1977 (UC-4947), p. 2
17. Reading Castleman, Chapter 11: The Legacy and the Challenge, note 162

Asbestos products

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

• Amerbestos (U.S. Steel)

Court cases

1 court decision in our case-law library name U.S. Steel as a defendant.

• Gomcsak v. US Steel Corp. (2008)

In the Union Carbide documents

U.S. Steel is named in 3 Union Carbide documents dated 1975 to 1979 (3 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

• H. B. Rhodes Report of Call on NPCA Occupational Health Task Force Meeting on the Marks Bill, CPSC and Selikoff (1975) UC-43 (mentioned)
• G. L. Dickson Customer Call Report on Kentile Floors, Brooklyn, Discussing SG-103-57 Bags of Calidria (1977) UC-4947 (mentioned)
• Bill Reed, 'Fairless plant tested for cancer,' Bucks County Courier Times, on Asbestos at U.S. Steel's Fairless Works (1979) UC-1952 (mentioned)

Names in the documents

The spellings documents use for U.S. Steel, OCR misreadings included, so a search for any of them finds this page: U.S. Steel Corporation.

Where this comes from

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