Air Hygiene Foundation Begins the Industrial Hygiene Digest (1937)

The source for this entry is an eleven-page memorandum of February 6, 1984, from Martha M. Mangold to Kathryn R. Devincenzi, reviewing Industrial Health Foundation records to find out whether the insurance industry knew of the foundation's asbestos studies. It explains that the foundation began in 1935 as the Air Hygiene Foundation of America, became the Industrial Hygiene Foundation of America in 1941, and the Industrial Health Foundation in 1969. "In 1937 the IHF began publication of the monthly Industrial Hygiene Digest," which abstracted the current scientific literature on occupational health. The Digest was sent regularly to all member companies, in numbers set by the dues they paid.

What it shows

The memo says the asbestos articles abstracted in the Digest were written in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and that the foundation kept no record of who inside each member company read its copies. It lists the insurance members, beginning in 1937 with the Association of Casualty and Surety Executives and Metropolitan Life. J-M's attorney Vandiver Brown was closely involved with the foundation from its early years (see his letters on a foundation paper and urging other companies to support it, both 1936).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

Johns-Manville's own chronology of what the company knew describes this document as follows:

Industrial Hygiene Foundation commences publication of Industrial Health Digest. This periodical contained abstracts of the medical literature relating to occupational disease, including pneumoconiosis and chest cancer. Copies of these materials was provided to J-M as a member of the IHF.

Editor's note: J-M's description calls the periodical the Industrial Health Digest; the memo calls it the Industrial Hygiene Digest, begun in 1937 when the foundation was still the Air Hygiene Foundation. The memo does not mention chest cancer or say that J-M was a member.