Keene Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family worked with pipe insulation, insulating cement or sprayed insulation, in a shipyard, power plant, refinery or other industrial plant, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the Keene name may come up in your case. Keene's asbestos history came from Baldwin-Ehret-Hill, the insulation maker it bought in 1968, and from Baldwin-Ehret-Hill's own predecessors, the Ehret Magnesia Manufacturing Company and the Baldwin-Hill Company.

Keene went through bankruptcy and set up a bankruptcy trust to pay asbestos claims. You can file against it. But we want to be honest with you up front. The Keene trust pays only 1.05% of a claim's scheduled value, so a mesothelioma claim brings about $1,300. Its value is as one piece of a larger set of claims, because insulation work almost always involved other companies' asbestos too.

You don't need old receipts or brand names to start. Piecing together the work history is our job, not yours.

What Keene made, and who used it

Keene Corporation was a New York-based company. In 1968 it bought Baldwin-Ehret-Hill, a maker of acoustical ceilings, ventilation systems and thermal insulation. Keene's successor, Reinhold Industries, later told the SEC that its asbestos liability came "entirely" from that purchase. Baldwin-Ehret-Hill had grown out of two older companies: the Ehret Magnesia Manufacturing Company, whose plant was at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and the Baldwin-Hill Company of New Jersey. Through a subsidiary, Keene Building Products Corporation, Keene kept making the insulation until the early 1970s. You can read more in our history of Keene Corporation.

In 1990 Keene listed its asbestos products for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They included:

• Thermalite, 85% magnesia pipe covering and block, made from 1904 to 1964
• Thermasil, calcium silicate pipe covering and block, made from 1956 to 1972
• Enduro pipe covering and block cement, Number One Plus cement and Mono-Block
• Super Powerhouse insulating cement, in a version sold for U.S. military installations
• Pyrospray and Mono-Spray, sprayed mineral wool insulation
• Styltone acoustical ceiling tile

According to Keene's answers in asbestos lawsuits, as summarized in a 1980 Johns-Manville memo, its products from 1959 to 1970 carried a "B.E.H." logo and later ones "Keene"; before 1959, the cements and Mono-Block were marked "BH" and Thermalite and Thermasil "Ehret." Other companies also sold Keene insulation under their own names. See our pages on pipe insulation and insulating cement.

The people most likely to have worked with Keene products include:

• Insulators, who cut, fitted and mixed pipe covering, block and cement. See insulators.
• Pipefitters, steamfitters and boilermakers, who worked beside insulators. See pipefitters and plumbers and boilermakers.
• Shipyard workers and Navy veterans. Ehret and Baldwin-Ehret-Hill products were on the Navy's lists of approved insulation. See shipyards.
• Power plant, refinery and chemical plant workers. See power plants and utilities and refineries.

The trust keeps a list of approved job sites where Keene products were present, with dates for each. If a job site isn't on the list, the claim can still be made with other proof.

The Keene bankruptcy and the trust

By 1993 Keene had been named in about 190,000 asbestos injury claims, had paid more than $530 million on asbestos claims over some 20 years, and had used up substantially all of its insurance for them. In May 1993 it tried to settle all present and future claims through a class action limited to its available money. The federal appeals court in New York ordered that suit dismissed in December 1993. Two days later, on December 3, 1993, Keene filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (Case No. 93-46090).

The bankruptcy and district courts held a joint hearing on Keene's plan on June 12, 1996, and the district court entered the order confirming it on June 14, 1996. The plan took effect on July 31, 1996. It set up the Keene Creditors Trust, and the reorganized company was renamed Reinhold Industries. The trust received most of Reinhold's stock. Claims Processing Facility, Inc. (CPF) handles the claims.

What the Keene trust pays

The trust's rules are called the Claims Resolution and Distribution Procedures. They set disease categories, most with a fixed scheduled value.

Source: First Amended Keene Asbestos Related Personal Injury Claims Resolution and Distribution Procedures, §5.3 and §5.4, as amended through November 25, 2024, posted on CPF's website. The right-hand column is our arithmetic: scheduled value times the 1.05% payment percentage.

"Other cancer" covers colorectal, laryngeal, esophageal, pharyngeal and stomach cancer. Lung cancer with markers and other cancer require signs of asbestos disease on both sides of the chest, such as lung scarring or pleural plaques. Severe asbestosis requires advanced scarring on X-ray or in pathology, plus breathing tests showing serious impairment. Lung cancer without markers is valued case by case, and the procedures say such a claim is not expected to have significant value if the person also lacks five years of asbestos work, especially a smoker. The procedures also list two milder asbestosis and pleural disease categories, but the trust suspended them when it opened and its claim form does not offer them.

The payment percentage

A trust pays a set share of each claim's value so it can keep paying people diagnosed years from now. The Keene trust's share has always been small:

• 1.1% when the trust opened in 2006
• 0.8% from February 15, 2010
• 0.84% from August 6, 2021
• 0.90% from August 1, 2024
• 1.05% from October 24, 2024

1.05% is the rate in the trust's latest annual report, for 2025, filed in March 2026. The trust's notices are here.

The trust's finances

The trust had about $16.4 million in net claimants' equity at the end of 2025, compared with about $21 million at the end of 2020. In 2025 it received 2,071 claims and paid 1,560 claims, about $1.24 million in all. Since 2006 it has received more than 154,000 claims. Year-by-year detail is in the Keene trust's annual reports, each with our plain-English summary.

How a Keene claim works

Most claims go through Expedited Review. The trust checks the claim against fixed medical and exposure rules. If the claim meets them, the trust offers the scheduled value for that category times the payment percentage. Individual review is used only for lung cancer without asbestos markers. The procedures have no arbitration step: a claimant who disputes an offer can ask the trust to reevaluate it and, if still not satisfied, go to trial against the trust. Any judgment is also paid at the payment percentage. Claims are reviewed in the order they are received and paid in the order they are settled, using a first-in, first-out queue.

Exposure rules depend on the disease. For mesothelioma, the claimant needs a diagnosis and credible evidence of exposure to a Keene product. For lung cancer with markers, other cancer and severe asbestosis, the trust also requires:

• six months of work exposure to Keene asbestos products, and
• "Significant Occupational Exposure": at least five years in a job with regular asbestos exposure, such as handling or repairing asbestos products or working regularly beside people who did. See occupational exposure.

Proof can be ordinary evidence. The trust accepts a sworn statement from the claimant, a coworker or (if the worker has died) a family member. It also accepts invoices, construction records or other credible evidence. The claim form asks for each job site, employer, the dates and the Keene products used.

Family members can file for mesothelioma. The trust considers take-home exposure, from dust brought home on a worker's clothes, only for mesothelioma claims. See take-home exposure.

Filing deadlines. For anyone diagnosed after the December 3, 1993 bankruptcy filing, the procedures allow three years from diagnosis or three years after the trust opened, whichever is later, and longer if the state where the exposure happened allows it. The second deadline passed in 2009, so the practical rule today is three years from diagnosis or the state's longer period. See statute of limitations. Wrongful-death and state deadlines can be shorter, so call soon.

Why a Keene claim is one piece of a bigger case

At 1.05%, a Keene mesothelioma claim pays about $1,300. We file it when the facts support it, but it is not where the recovery comes from.

Insulation work almost never involved one company's products. Insulators, pipefitters and shipyard workers handled pipe covering, block, cements and cloth from many makers. Many of those companies also went bankrupt and left trusts, and several of those trusts pay a much larger share. Other makers and contractors can still be sued. The same diagnosis and work history may support claims against other trusts and companies, and each one that pays does so separately.

That's why our first step is a full work history, not a single brand name. To learn more, read our guide to how asbestos trust claims work and our page on mesothelioma lawsuits.