Buffalo Forge Asbestos Exposure and Mesothelioma Claims

By David Meldofsky, California-licensed attorney · Founder, Lawsuit Informer

Last updated: August 17, 2026

Buffalo Forge Company built forges, fans, blowers, heating coils, and air handling equipment in Buffalo, New York for more than a century, and owned the pump business that became Buffalo Pumps. There is no Buffalo Forge asbestos trust. The harder question in these claims is not whether a case exists but which corporate successor answers for it, because the business was divided across three separate transactions between 1981 and 1993.

People searching for Buffalo Forge are usually sent to pages about Buffalo Pumps instead. The two are related but they are not the same claim, and treating them as interchangeable can put the wrong defendant on a complaint. This page separates them, sets out the corporate chain as recited in later federal litigation, and describes how the exposure allegations actually arise.

Buffalo Forge Is Not Buffalo Pumps

Buffalo Forge Company was founded in 1878. Buffalo Steam Pump Company began separately in 1887 and was acquired by Buffalo Forge in the first half of the twentieth century, operating afterward as the Buffalo Pumps division. In 1985 that division was moved into its own corporation. From that point forward, a pump claim and a fan claim travelled different corporate paths.

The distinction is practical, not academic. A Navy machinist's mate who serviced condensate and fire main pumps aboard ship has a Buffalo Pumps claim, and the reported decisions on that equipment, including the 2019 Supreme Court decision on the bare-metal defense, arose from that line. Our page on Buffalo Pumps asbestos claims covers it. A boilermaker who tore down an industrial exhaust fan in a foundry, or a plant worker who spent thirty years inside the Broadway works, has a Buffalo Forge claim, and it belongs on this page.

Company Background

Brothers William and Henry Wendt founded Buffalo Forge in Buffalo, New York in 1878. The original product was a blacksmith forge that used a mechanically driven blower rather than a hand bellows, and the blower, rather than the forge, turned out to be the company's future. Over the following decades the company expanded into industrial fans, blowers, dust collection equipment, steam coil heating, air handling, machine tools, and pumps.

Buffalo Forge occupies a specific place in industrial history because of an engineer it hired in 1901. Willis Carrier worked there when he designed the humidity control system for a Brooklyn printing plant that is generally credited as the beginning of modern air conditioning. The air handling line that grew out of that work is the reason the company's successor operations still include a custom air handling business today.

The company acquired the George L. Squier Manufacturing Company and the Buffalo Steam Pump Company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1941, and ran a manufacturing complex on Broadway in Buffalo that covered roughly fourteen acres. It operated independently until the Ampco-Pittsburgh acquisition in 1981.

How Asbestos Exposure Happened Around Buffalo Forge Equipment

Buffalo Forge equipment ran hot, ran continuously, and was maintained in place. That is the profile that produces asbestos claims, and the pathways follow the equipment:

Fans, blowers, and dust collectors. Industrial fan housings were sealed at access doors and split lines with gasket material, shafts were sealed with packing, and the ductwork and housings on high-temperature service were lagged with insulation. Rebuilding a fan meant breaking those seals, scraping the faces, and cutting replacements from sheet stock.

Heating coils and air handling equipment. Steam and hot water coils were connected into piping systems whose flanges, valves, and fittings carried asbestos gaskets, and the units themselves were frequently insulated. Maintenance crews in hospitals, universities, and industrial buildings worked on this equipment for decades.

Forges and blacksmith equipment. Forge and furnace work involved asbestos-containing refractory materials, rope, cloth, gloves, and blankets used around heat.

Pumps. The pump division's equipment was sealed with gaskets and packing in the same way, and it is the pathway with the largest body of reported litigation, though it now proceeds against the pump successor.

The plant. Asbestos-containing materials were used in construction and maintenance at the Broadway works before the late 1970s, which puts plant employees and the outside contractors who worked there in a different category from product users.

In most of these cases the asbestos-containing part was made by someone else and installed in or applied to the equipment. That fact drives a recurring legal question about how far an equipment manufacturer's duty to warn extends, addressed in the maritime context by the Supreme Court in 2019. Background is on our page covering asbestos exposure from industrial valves, pumps, and gaskets.

Which Company Answers a Buffalo Forge Claim Today

This is the part that is genuinely difficult, and it is why so few pages attempt it. The sequence below is recited in a federal insurance coverage decision from the Western District of Pennsylvania, litigated between the successor entities and their insurers over who owed coverage for these very asbestos claims.

• 1981. Ampco-Pittsburgh Corporation acquired the original Buffalo Forge Company, referred to in the coverage litigation as Buffalo Forge I.
• 1982. Aerofin Corporation merged with Buffalo Forge I. Two days later a Delaware corporation took the Buffalo Forge Company name, referred to as Buffalo Forge II, and assumed Buffalo Forge I's pre-merger assets and liabilities. The original entity became known as Aerofin Corporation.
• 1985. Buffalo Pumps, Inc., a Delaware subsidiary of Ampco-Pittsburgh, acquired from Buffalo Forge II the assets and liabilities of the Buffalo Pumps division.
• 1993. The Howden group acquired all of Buffalo Forge II's outstanding stock along with the factory in Buffalo. The entity was renamed Howden Fan Company in 1994, Howden Buffalo in 1999, and Howden North America in 2010.
• 2009. Aerofin, the renamed original Buffalo Forge I, merged into Air and Liquid Systems Corporation, which is the successor by merger to the original company.

Two practical points follow. First, the Buffalo plant and the fan business went one direction in 1993 while the pump business had already gone another in 1985, so the correct defendant depends on which product line and which years the exposure involves. Second, Air and Liquid Systems Corporation is the entity that appears in most litigation traceable to the original company. It is a subsidiary of Ampco-Pittsburgh, whose public filings describe its Air and Liquid Processing segment as comprising Aerofin, Buffalo Air Handling, and Buffalo Pumps, and which reports pending asbestos claims in its annual disclosures.

None of that decides a particular case. Successor liability for asbestos claims turns on the terms of the transactions and on the law of the forum state, and it is regularly contested. What it does mean is that a Buffalo Forge claim should not be abandoned on the assumption that the company disappeared when the plant closed in 1994.

There Is No Buffalo Forge Asbestos Trust

Buffalo Forge did not reorganize in bankruptcy over its asbestos liabilities, and no section 524(g) trust bears its name. That places it in the same category as Goulds Pumps, Crane Co., and Jenkins Bros.: solvent defendants, or solvent successors to defendants, litigated in tort rather than paid administratively.

The practical consequences are the same across that group. The governing deadline is the statute of limitations in the state where suit is brought rather than a trust filing rule. The case involves discovery, depositions, and expert proof. And the tort case usually sits alongside trust claims against the bankrupt insulation and gasket manufacturers whose products were present at the same job sites, which our guide to asbestos trust funds and claims explains.

Jobs and Sites Often Involved

Two distinct groups appear in Buffalo Forge claims. The first worked at the Broadway plant:

• Foundry workers, molders, and core makers
• Machinists, grinders, welders, and assemblers
• Plant maintenance, millwrights, and pipefitters
• Outside contractors and building trades who worked in the complex

The second group worked around the equipment elsewhere:

• Boilermakers and industrial mechanics who rebuilt fans and blowers
• Steamfitters and pipefitters who worked on coil and air handling systems
• Building engineers and stationary engineers in hospitals, universities, and office buildings
• Steel mill, foundry, paper mill, and chemical plant maintenance crews
• Power plant workers, covered in more depth in our guide to asbestos exposure in power plants and refineries
• Shipyard and marine workers, on the pump side of the business, covered in asbestos exposure in shipyards and naval service

Illnesses Discussed in These Cases

The diagnoses are the same ones that appear across asbestos equipment and premises litigation:

• Pleural mesothelioma, the cancer of the lining of the lung most closely associated with asbestos exposure
• Peritoneal mesothelioma, which arises in the lining of the abdomen
• Asbestos-related lung cancer, frequently litigated and frequently contested on causation where there is a smoking history
• Asbestosis and pleural disease, which are scarring conditions rather than cancers

Because these diseases take decades to appear, a diagnosis today can rest on work performed at a plant that has been closed since 1994 and on equipment that left production long before that.

Records That Help Support a Buffalo Forge Claim

Plant employment and product exposure call for slightly different records, and most cases end up using both:

• Social Security earnings statements, which establish employer names and date ranges when nothing else survives
• Employment and personnel records from Buffalo Forge or from the contractors and plants where the equipment ran
• Union records for boilermaker, steamfitter, machinist, and building trades locals
• Equipment schedules, specifications, and purchase orders naming Buffalo Forge fans, coils, or air handling units
• Maintenance and repair logs from the facilities where the equipment was serviced
• Co-worker names and contact information, which often matter more than documents in plant cases
• Medical records establishing the diagnosis, including pathology

Our guide to asbestos records that help support a claim covers how to request each of these, including the ones held by agencies rather than employers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Buffalo Forge the same company as Buffalo Pumps?

No. Buffalo Forge Company was founded in 1878 as a maker of blacksmith forges and grew into fans, blowers, heating coils, air handling equipment, and machine tools. Buffalo Steam Pump Company was a separate business that Buffalo Forge acquired and operated as its pump division, and it later became a separate corporation. They share a city and a corporate history, but they are different products, different exposure histories, and in most cases different defendants.

Is there a Buffalo Forge asbestos trust fund?

No. Buffalo Forge did not reorganize in bankruptcy over asbestos and there is no section 524(g) trust bearing its name. Claims involving Buffalo Forge equipment are brought as lawsuits against the corporate successors and resolved through settlement or verdict rather than through a trust claim form.

Who is the defendant in a Buffalo Forge asbestos case today?

It depends on the product and the dates, because the business was split apart across three transactions. Ampco-Pittsburgh acquired Buffalo Forge in 1981, a 1982 merger moved the original company's pre-merger liabilities to a new Delaware entity while the original became Aerofin, the pump division's assets and liabilities went to Buffalo Pumps, Inc. in 1985, and the fan and air handling business and the Buffalo factory were sold to the Howden group in 1993. Air and Liquid Systems Corporation is the successor by merger to the original Buffalo Forge entity. Which one belongs in a given case is a question for counsel.

What Buffalo Forge products are involved in asbestos claims?

Fans, blowers, and dust collection equipment, steam and hot water heating coils, air handling units, forges and blacksmith equipment, and the centrifugal pumps built by the pump division. The allegations generally involve asbestos gaskets, packing, rope, cloth, and insulation used in or applied to that equipment, much of it disturbed during maintenance rather than installation.

Did the Buffalo plant itself expose workers?

Claims have been brought by people who worked inside the Broadway plant in Buffalo, which covered roughly fourteen acres and included foundry and machining operations. Asbestos-containing materials were used in plant construction and maintenance before the late 1970s, and plant workers describe exposure from the building and its equipment as well as from the products themselves. The plant closed in 1994.

Can I still bring a claim if the exposure happened decades ago?

Often yes. In most states the filing clock for an asbestos claim runs from diagnosis rather than from the date of exposure, because mesothelioma and other asbestos diseases take decades to appear. The exact deadline depends on the state, the disease, and whether the claim is brought by the injured person or by surviving family.

What if I worked around Buffalo Forge equipment and other equipment too?

That is the normal pattern rather than a problem. Asbestos cases routinely name many manufacturers, because a maintenance worker was rarely exposed to one company's product alone. Identifying every source usually increases rather than complicates the available recovery, and some of those sources are bankrupt companies with trusts that pay separately.

Can family members bring a claim after a loved one has died?

Often yes. Wrongful death claims can be brought by the estate or surviving family members, and filing deadlines for those claims generally run from the date of death rather than the date of diagnosis. The rules vary by state, which is one reason timing matters in these cases.

Related Asbestos Guides

About the Author

David Meldofsky is a California-licensed attorney and the founder of Lawsuit Informer, an educational platform focused on helping people understand lawsuits, consumer safety issues, and legal rights related to defective products and toxic exposures.

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Last Updated: August 17, 2026

Educational information only. Not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is formed.