Product Description

According to publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation records, Corning Glass Works allegedly distributed, marketed, and sold — under its Pyrex laboratory-glassware brand and companion lab-supply lines — the asbestos-centered wire-mesh Bunsen burner “center pad” that became the default flame-diffusing platform in North American chemistry laboratories for roughly six decades. Plaintiffs alleged that the standard configuration consisted of a woven wire gauze square with a solid center panel of compressed chrysotile asbestos fiber, sized to sit atop a lab ring stand and support a beaker, flask, crucible, or evaporating dish above the open flame of a Bunsen or Meker burner.

Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed litigation that the asbestos center panel was intended to diffuse heat evenly across the bottom of the glassware and to insulate the wire mesh from direct flame contact, preventing hot spots that would fracture Pyrex borosilicate glass. According to the pleadings, the pads were consumable — cracked, chipped, spilled on with reagents, scrubbed with brushes and solvents, dropped, and eventually replaced — and every one of those handling steps allegedly liberated respirable chrysotile fibers into the breathing zone of the student, teacher, technician, or graduate researcher at the bench.

Workers Exposed

Plaintiffs alleged occupational and educational asbestos exposure from Corning Pyrex asbestos-center wire-mesh pads among the following populations:

  • High school chemistry and physics teachers who set up, distributed, collected, and disposed of pads across dozens of lab sections per semester
  • University and college laboratory technicians and teaching assistants in undergraduate general-chemistry, organic-chemistry, and physical-chemistry teaching labs
  • Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in chemistry, biology, materials science, and geology departments
  • Industrial R&D lab chemists and technicians running bench-scale reactions, evaporations, and gravimetric analyses
  • Pharmaceutical development lab chemists performing small-batch synthesis and formulation work
  • Metallurgical and materials-testing lab operators using the pads under crucibles for ashing and gravimetric residue determinations
  • Hospital and clinical lab technicians performing bench-heat operations prior to widespread hot-plate adoption
  • Lab-equipment repair and stockroom personnel who unpacked, inventoried, and issued replacement pads