Product Description

According to publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation records, Central Scientific Company — universally referenced in the lab-supply catalogs of the mid-20th century as “Cenco” — allegedly distributed and sold woven chrysotile asbestos-fabric glove-box gloves and asbestos-fabric fume-hood arm-port gauntlets to universities, industrial R&D labs, national laboratories, and metallurgical testing facilities across the United States. Plaintiffs alleged that the gloves were selected because asbestos fabric would not melt, ignite, or transmit heat when the lab worker’s hands and forearms were required to reach inside a sealed enclosure containing an open flame, a molten sample, a hot crucible, a radiochemical source, or a reactive atmosphere.

Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed litigation that the Cenco asbestos gloves were used in three principal configurations: (1) full-length gauntlets clamped at glove-box arm-ports for radiochemistry and hot-lab work; (2) arm-hole gauntlets fitted at the sash-line of chemistry fume hoods for molten-metal, glass-blowing, and hot-crucible operations; and (3) stand-alone hot-work gloves worn while removing crucibles from muffle furnaces or handling hot Pyrex glassware fresh from a Bunsen flame. Plaintiffs alleged that abrasion of the fabric against port collars, tool handles, and the lab worker’s own forearm skin generated respirable chrysotile fibers each time the glove was donned, doffed, or used.

Workers Exposed

Plaintiffs alleged occupational asbestos exposure from Cenco asbestos glove-box gloves and fume-hood gauntlets among the following populations:

  • Radiochemistry and nuclear-medicine glove-box workers at university and national-lab facilities
  • Metallurgical lab technicians performing molten-metal handling, quench work, and hot-crucible removal
  • University and college laboratory technicians in inorganic and physical-chemistry teaching labs
  • Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in materials science, geology, and chemistry
  • Industrial R&D lab chemists doing hot-atmosphere and inert-atmosphere work
  • Pharmaceutical development lab chemists using glove-box isolators for sterile hot work
  • Materials-testing lab operators (foundry sand, cement, ceramic firing)
  • Lab-equipment stockroom and maintenance staff who unpacked, distributed, and disposed of the gloves