B. C. Machin to the Ontario Ministry of Labour Opposing a Lower Limit for Crocidolite (1975)

A four-page letter of June 2, 1975, from B. C. Machin, manager of Canadian Johns-Manville's Toronto plant, to Donald Hushion of the Ontario Ministry of Labour, on proposed changes to Ontario's asbestos rules (blind copy to W. B. Reitze at J-M's Denver headquarters). Machin agrees with banning smoking where asbestos is used, but opposes Ontario's plan to cut the limit for blue asbestos (crocidolite) from 2.0 to 0.2 fibers per cubic centimeter, citing Dr. Selikoff and others as making no distinction between fiber types and the difficulty of telling fibers apart by electron microscope. If a separate limit had to come, he proposes 0.5, "despite the lack of scientific and medical evidence in North America and Europe to warrant a reduced TLV for blue."

What it shows

Machin writes that J-M's corporate policy was to reduce fiber levels "to the minimum which are technically possible and financially feasible." An immediate cut to 0.2 could mean respirators for all Pipe Department workers, "a possible unnecessary restrictive discomfort to them based on a theoretical TLV," and a total ban on blue fiber would halve the plant's output and make asbestos-cement pipe "economically unviable" in Canada. Four months earlier J-M's medical consultant had told Dr. Kotin the evidence against crocidolite was "provocative" (Wright to Kotin, February 1975). The smoking notice he enclosed is J. R. D. Wilson's notice of May 29.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Machin writes a letter to the Ontario Government, 6/2/75, regarding its proposed change in the TLV. Ontario proposes to have a separate TLV for blue fiber (.2 f/cc). (The present TLV for all asbestos is 2.0 f/cc, which is lower than the TLV in the U.S.) Machin writes to persuade Ontario not to set this new standard and asks for the reasoning behind this proposed change. Machin states that there is a lack of medical and scientific evidence to warrant a reduced TLV and that a lowered TLV would create a tremendous burden upon J-M to lower its counts to these levels.