Product Description
Farrel Corporation of Ansonia, Connecticut — later Farrel-Birmingham and then Farrel — was the U.S. licensee and dominant manufacturer of the Banbury internal mixer, the workhorse machine of the rubber compounding industry. Plaintiffs have alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Farrel Banbury mixers were assembled with braided asbestos rope and compression packing at the rotor shaft seals where the counter-rotating mixing rotors exit the mixing chamber, and that the hopper throat and drop-door zone were allegedly lagged with asbestos fabric to shield the operator platform from the heat generated by the shearing and mastication of rubber compound inside the chamber.
According to publicly filed asbestos litigation records, the asbestos pathway on Banbury mixers was allegedly the shaft-seal packing — subject to constant heat, pressure, and compound migration — and the hopper-throat lagging that operators allegedly brushed against dozens of times per shift while charging the mixer with rubber stock, carbon black, oil, and curing chemicals.
Workers Exposed
Plaintiffs allegedly identified as exposed to Farrel Banbury asbestos in publicly filed litigation include:
- Rubber plant Banbury mixer operators allegedly exposed while charging the mixer through the asbestos-lagged hopper throat, watching the drop door, and cleaning up spilled compound
- Rubber plant millwrights and mechanical maintenance allegedly exposed while repacking rotor shaft seals, cutting braided asbestos rope to length, and replacing worn hopper-throat lagging
- Two-roll mill operators and helpers working downstream of the Banbury allegedly cross-exposed when receiving hot batches directly from the mixer
- Tire curing press operators and other rubber plant workers allegedly exposed to asbestos dust circulating through shared plant ventilation