E. R. A. Merewether and C. W. Price, Report on Effects of Asbestos Dust on the Lungs (1930)

The British government report on asbestos workers, laid before Parliament on March 24, 1930. Dr. E. R. A. Merewether, a medical inspector of factories, examined 363 workers in asbestos textile and insulation plants, and C. W. Price, an engineering inspector, studied the dusty processes and how to control them. Merewether found that "95 of 363 workers, or 26.2 per cent., showed a definite fibrosis due to asbestos dust," and the rate rose steeply with years of work. The covering letter from the Chief Inspector of Factories says the inquiry established that "the inhalation of asbestos dust over a period of years results in the development of a serious type of fibrosis of the lungs."

What it shows

This is the study that put asbestos disease on the record as an occupational hazard of the whole industry, not a rare misfortune. It found that the disease grew with the length and intensity of exposure, that it could kill on its own without tuberculosis (it collects ten deaths up to the end of 1929), and that the remedy was to suppress the dust at its source. It warned that respirators gave only partial protection and that "there is a real danger that the use of them may give a sense of false security." On the types of fiber, it reported that "No evidence was found to indicate that any one of the three varieties is more, or less, potent than the others in producing fibrosis." Merewether published the medical part of the work in an American journal the same spring: The Occurrence of Pulmonary Fibrosis and Other Pulmonary Affections in Asbestos Workers. In the same months, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company was surveying the American plants of Raybestos-Manhattan for the same disease (for example Manheim).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Merewether Report re British asbestos textile factories of 3/24/30; disease development in proportion to length of exposure. Report was dismissed by U.S. industry as being based on amosite rather than chrysotile exposures, but Merewether claims disease resulted from chrysotile.

Editor's note: J-M's description says the report was dismissed by American industry because it rested on amosite rather than chrysotile exposure. The report says nothing about any American reaction, and it found no difference in effect among chrysotile, crocidolite and amosite.