Product Description
Garlock Inc. (Palmyra, New York) distributed through the mid- to late twentieth century a line of compressed sheet gasketing under the Klingersil brand — a chrysotile-asbestos-fiber sheet stock manufactured to standardized thicknesses and rolled or die-cut for gasket fabrication. Klingersil sheet was one of the most commonly stocked asbestos gasket materials in industrial storerooms across the United States, supplied in sheet or roll form and cut to shape on the job by the mechanics who installed it.
Klingersil compressed sheet gasketing was specified across refinery flanged-piping service, chemical-plant reactor and heat-exchanger service, power-plant boiler-feedwater and steam-line flanges, U.S. Navy shipboard piping and equipment flanges, and general industrial pump and valve casing joints.
Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Garlock Klingersil compressed sheet gasket stock was manufactured with chrysotile asbestos fiber as the reinforcing filler, compressed with an elastomeric binder into a resilient sheet that could be cut with a knife, punched with a hollow-die, or stamped with a gasket cutter to produce a custom-shaped gasket for any specific flange geometry on site.
Workers Exposed
Pipefitters, millwrights, boilermakers, and industrial maintenance mechanics who fabricated and installed Klingersil gaskets allegedly generated asbestos-fiber release at each maintenance cycle. The mechanic laid the Klingersil sheet across the flange face, traced or punched the bolt-circle and inside diameter, and cut the outline with a knife — an activity plaintiffs alleged released chrysotile fibers into the immediate breathing zone. Removing spent Klingersil gaskets from a flange face required scraping with a knife or chisel to detach the heat-bonded, chemically deteriorated gasket residue from the metal face; plaintiffs alleged this scrape-out step generated the highest fiber release in the maintenance cycle. Refinery operators, chemical-plant maintenance workers, and Navy pipefitters performed these cut-and-scrape tasks on scheduled turnaround maintenance and unscheduled leak repairs across careers that spanned decades, on hundreds of flange joints per shift.