Dr. T. H. Davison to Dr. Kenneth W. Smith on Waukegan's Pneumoconiosis Procedures and the T.B. Sanatorium (1962)

A two-page confidential memo of November 6, 1962, from Dr. T. H. Davison, the Waukegan plant physician, to Dr. Kenneth W. Smith, J-M's medical director, copied to Boyd Mulder and John Anderson, on whether to send workers with suspicious chest X-rays to a local hospital for tests instead of the county tuberculosis sanatorium. Davison described the existing procedure: "the employee with an occupational chest disease is notified by the company medical officer only after personnel, safety and supervision have been advised and a job in dust free environment has been arranged." Hospital tests, he wrote, could not be arranged "without the diagnosing physician giving the patient substantial reason for this work-up."

What it shows

Sending men to the Lake County T.B. Sanatorium with "a simple explanation of questionable X-ray shadows" would, Davison wrote, "allow continuation of our present procedures," and avoid the question of why a suspected T.B. case was not sent there. He noted that the main concern was lung biopsy showing asbestos fiber: if specialists treated that as a diagnosis, "we have only established the diagnosis before roentgenographic changes appeared." If J-M could not defend the position that fibers on biopsy did not mean disease, he thought "avoiding potential early diagnosis through biopsy will not serve our best interests in the long run" and would "only put off our potential liability." The memo shows that at Waukegan in 1962, workers found to have occupational lung disease were not told until a dust free job was ready (see the backlog reported in January 1963).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Letter from T.H. Davison (Waukegan) to K.W. Smith, dated 11/6/62, discusses J-M's pneumoconiosis problem and procedures to address it. Outlines options of sending possible pneumoconiosis cases to a) a tuberculosis Sanatorium or b) to a hospital for work-ups and diagnosis. Recommendation is based on alternative which would allow J-M to continue its current practice of non-disclosure of dust-related health problems to employees until worker could be placed in a dust free job. Davison states: "I see no way in arranging special studies to rule out tuberculosis through hospital appointments, etc. without the diagnosing physician giving the patient substantial reason for this work-up." Recommends J-M continue to send patient to the tuberculosis Sanatorium for work-ups and diagnosis.