Union Asbestos & Rubber Co. plant at Paterson, New Jersey

The Union Asbestos & Rubber Company's plant in Paterson, New Jersey, began with the Navy, according to a 1971 look back in Asbestos, the industry's trade journal: "In 1940 Navy demands for UNIBESTOS pipe insulation and INSUBESTOS woven Amosite felts necessitated opening a separate plant in Paterson, New Jersey, to augment the production of these products."¹ A 1943 Union Asbestos advertisement said an Army-Navy "E" award had already been made "to the Paterson, N. J. plant."³

The Navy's 1951 list of qualified products gives Paterson as the plant for Unibestos: "Plants: Paterson 4, N. J."⁶ Union's own advertising describes Unibestos as pipe covering and block insulation "made of Amosite fiber," and Unarco Industries later described it as "composed of amosite asbestos fiber bound with a silicious material (diatamaceous earth)"; these describe the product in general, not Paterson's output in particular.^7,8,9

In March 1949, Asbestos named Paterson among the company's plants where asbestos products were "already being manufactured," and in December 1950 it listed Paterson among UNARCO's plants alongside the new Bloomington, Illinois, plant.^2,4 In October 1954 the journal printed the company's announcement that the Paterson plant had been sold: Union "closed down its 110,000 square-foot plant" because it was no longer needed once a major portion of the company's fibrous products manufacturing was consolidated at Bloomington.⁵

Location

Pictures of products made here

Labels, packages, photographs and catalog pages from our library of products documents say were made at this plant. Each picture has its own page and library number.

• Product photograph: UNIBESTOS PIPE INSULATION (UNARCO)Unibestos (Union Asbestos & Rubber Co.)Product photograph · ACL Doc 15189

Asbestos products made here

The products documents say were made at this plant, with the years a document gives for the product here. Each product's page has what the documents say about it, including its asbestos content.

• Unibestos (Union Asbestos & Rubber Co.)⁶

What each document says

Every statement about this plant in the documents, in each document's own words.

Other names

Documents call this plant “Paterson 4, N. J.”, “Paterson, New Jersey”.

See also

• Union Asbestos & Rubber Co.: the company's history, documents, people, products and plants
• Asbestos exposure sites in New Jersey

References

1. Asbestos Magazine, 1971, September 1971 (September 1, 1971), p. 8.
2. Asbestos Magazine, 1949, March 1949 (March 1, 1949), p. 48.
3. Asbestos Magazine, 1943, March 1943 (March 1, 1943), p. 15.
4. Asbestos Magazine, 1950, December 1950 (December 1, 1950), p. 44.
5. Asbestos Magazine, 1954, October 1954 (October 1, 1954), p. 48.
6. Military Qualified Products List (1951–1995) (December 3, 1951), p. 2.
7. Asbestos Magazine, 1954, June 1954 (June 1, 1954), p. 31.
8. Asbestos Magazine, 1950, August 1950 (August 1, 1950), p. 39.
9. The Borel v. Fibreboard Case File (1969-1972), Answers to interrogatories (April 1, 1970), p. 1.