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Westinghouse

Westinghouse Electric Corporation of East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was one of the country's largest makers of electrical equipment, including turbines and generators used in ships and power plants. It sold asbestos insulating materials under its Tuffernell name and made Micarta laminates, some of them with asbestos, and it bought asbestos products from other makers. The company later became CBS Corporation, then ViacomCBS, and then Paramount Global, which has defended asbestos lawsuits as Westinghouse's successor.

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

Westinghouse was a very large company, founded by George Westinghouse in Pittsburgh in 1886, and only a small part of its story concerns asbestos. Until 1945 it was called the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company; Asbestos, the industry's trade journal, reported in June 1945 that its stockholders had voted to change the name to Westinghouse Electric Corporation.8 In January 1921 the journal reported that Westinghouse was buying a former glassworks at Rochester, Pennsylvania, to make "micarta materials of all kinds" and repair parts for electrical machinery.9

Several other companies carried the Westinghouse name. The Westinghouse Air Brake Company of Wilmerding, Pennsylvania, appears in Asbestos with its own asbestos brake-shoe patent, and in 1955 the journal reported that it and Johns-Manville had formed a company to make the Cobra composition brake shoe for railroad cars.1011 The library's only source for the Cobra product listed under Westinghouse gives no description of it, so it is not clear which Westinghouse company it belonged to.12

Asbestos products

Westinghouse catalog pages in the library, which are undated, list Tuffernell "Treated Asbestos Fabric" and asbestos tape "impregnated with varnish."4 An untreated-materials page lists asbestos tape "containing about 14% cotton," asbestos sleeving and asbestos yarn.5 Another page lists asbestos millboard and papers, "A white lumber of asbestos fiber and cement formed under high pressure into strong rigid flat sheets," and asbestos fabric "containing not over 20% cotton."13 A Micarta catalog page lists Micarta Asbestos among its combination paneling grades, and another Micarta page lists asbestos fabric as the base of one grade of Micarta round rod.614 The Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases describes Fosterite Asbestos and Micarta 8564 as phenolic-bonded asbestos paper laminates for electrical equipment, as of 1947.1516

Westinghouse engineers wrote about asbestos in electrical work. In May 1938 Asbestos opened with an article by E. L. Doty of Westinghouse's Service Department that began: "Asbestos is used extensively in the electrical industry for high temperature applications and where the fire hazard warrants the use of non-combustible material."17 The journal also listed asbestos patents assigned to Westinghouse, among them a 1932 patent for asbestos impregnated with an organic ester of phosphoric acid, a 1940 method of treating asbestos with silicates, and a 1957 method of making a hard, dense electrical insulating product from asbestos sheet.181920 In February 1973 it listed a British patent assigned to Westinghouse in August 1972 for an epoxy compound for transmission-line circuit breakers that used refined chrysotile asbestos fines as a thickening (thixotroping) agent.21

Other companies' records show Westinghouse as a customer, or possible customer, for asbestos materials. The Asbestos Textile Institute's technical committee reported in September 1953 that two committee members had been in contact with Westinghouse about changes the textile makers wanted in its "specification No. 2060-Q."22 A Union Carbide history of its Bakelite molding compounds says Union Carbide "possibly sold phenolic molding materials which contained asbestos to Westinghouse."7 Johns-Manville's employee magazine reported in 1967 that a Westinghouse-built desalting plant at Key West, Florida, used J-M Transite pipe and Thermobestos pipe insulation.23

What the documents show

On June 1, 1960, Dr. Kenneth W. Smith, Johns-Manville's medical director, answered H. W. Speicher, administrator of headquarters industrial hygiene at Westinghouse, who had asked about health and safety hazards in using J-M's insulating cement.1 Smith wrote that under normal conditions he did not believe Westinghouse should anticipate any particular hazard. He added that "continued inhalation of asbestos fibres over a long period of time and sufficient concentration can cause some pulmonary damage in certain individuals," but that the asbestos content of these products was very small, and "I do not believe that a pulmonary fibrosis could develop from normal usage of these cements."1

A Union Carbide salesman's call report of April 8, 1976, records that "Westinghouse has apparently placed a ban on the use of asbestos in their products," and that a Westinghouse Research Labs employee was looking for a replacement for RG-144, a Union Carbide asbestos thickener, in sealants he was working on.24 In 1989 a Union Carbide memo at the Texas City plant said a type of light fixture with an asbestos gasket was believed to be a Westinghouse Vaportight dome fixture, though the writer could not be absolutely sure of the catalog number because the fixtures' part numbers were missing or not legible.25

Barry Castleman's Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects has a section on Westinghouse in its chapter on company knowledge; our reading guide lists the sources he cites there, including a 1953 Westinghouse safe practice data sheet called "Asbestos," a 1973 memo titled "Asbestos Based Micarta," and a 1976 OSHA citation of the Westinghouse Micarta Division.26 The library does not hold those documents.27

Lawsuits

Westinghouse and its successors appear as defendants in 18 decisions in the library's case law.27 In Ruppel v. CBS Corporation (7th Cir. 2012), brought over Westinghouse turbines supplied to the Navy, the court held that CBS, as Westinghouse's successor, had properly moved the case to federal court because it had a colorable government contractor defense.2 In Faddish v. Buffalo Pumps (S.D. Fla. 2012), the court granted summary judgment to Westinghouse and other equipment makers over asbestos insulation, gaskets and packing that other companies had made.28 In Basil-Flippen v. General Electric Company (Md. App. 2024), the court described contracts signed in 1969 and 1970 under which Westinghouse sold a turbine to the Potomac Electric Power Company for its Morgantown Generating Station in Maryland and installed it; a subcontractor supplied and installed the insulation to Westinghouse's specifications, which called for block and pipe insulation and asbestos insulating cement. The court affirmed summary judgment for Westinghouse on the design defect claim.3 That opinion notes that the company was called Westinghouse Electric Corporation at the time of the exposure, was ViacomCBS when the suit was filed, and changed its name to Paramount Global during the case.3

The library's company page names no asbestos bankruptcy trust for Westinghouse.27

References

  1. Dr. Kenneth W. Smith to Westinghouse Electric Corporation on J-M 450 Insulating Cement (1960)
  2. Ruppel v. CBS Corporation (7th Cir. 2012)
  3. Basil-Flippen v. General Electric Company (Md. App. 2024)
  4. Catalog page: Westinghouse Tuffernell treated insulating materials and tapes (page 1160)
  5. Catalog page: Westinghouse Untreated Insulating Materials, Tuffernell tapes, sleeving and cordage (p. 1163)
  6. Catalog page: Westinghouse Micarta combination paneling and molded baseboard (page 1153)
  7. UC-162: Union Carbide, 'History of BAKELITE' (Asbestos-Filled Phenolic Molding Compounds, Bound Brook), p. 6
  8. Asbestos, June 1945, p. 5
  9. Asbestos, January 1921, p. 53
  10. Asbestos, January 1960, p. 60
  11. Asbestos, January 1955, p. 39
  12. Cobra (Westinghouse), product page
  13. Catalog page: Westinghouse Tufferness untreated fishpaper, asbestos papers, lumber and fabric (page 1162)
  14. Catalog page: Westinghouse Micarta round rod, suction box covers, doctor blades (page 1147)
  15. Fosterite Asbestos (Westinghouse), product page, citing the Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, Volume Two (1986), p. 80
  16. Micarta 8564 (Westinghouse), product page, citing the Sourcebook on Asbestos Diseases, Volume Two (1986), p. 92
  17. Asbestos, May 1938, p. 4
  18. Asbestos, October 1932, p. 45
  19. Asbestos, August 1940, p. 33
  20. Asbestos, October 1957, p. 66
  21. Asbestos, February 1973, p. 53
  22. ATI-136: Asbestos Textile Institute Technical Committee Report, September 11, 1953
  23. J-M News Pictorial, August 1967, p. 8
  24. UC-605: Gordon L. Dickson Call Report on Westinghouse Research Labs' Asbestos Ban and Thixotrope Replacement for RG-144 (1976)
  25. UC-4403: R. A. Johnson Memos and Recommendations on Asbestos Gaskets in Texas City Plant Light Fixtures (1989), p. 2
  26. Reading Castleman, Chapter 9: Company Knowledge
  27. Westinghouse, company page
  28. Faddish v. Buffalo Pumps (S.D. Fla. 2012)

Asbestos products

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

Court cases

18 court decisions in our case-law library name Westinghouse as a defendant, newest first.

In our library

5 documents in our library name Westinghouse, by collection.

Other library documents (5)

In the Union Carbide documents

Westinghouse is named in 5 Union Carbide documents dated 1973 to 2002 (5 mentioned), from asbestos lawsuits over Union Carbide's Calidria asbestos. All are published in our collection.

Where this comes from

This page brings together every document in our library that names Westinghouse, 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

“Westinghouse.” AsbestosClaims.Law Library. https://asbestosclaims.law/library/organizations/westinghouse.

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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.