Elliot Fairback and Vandiver Brown on Answering North American Aviation About Stonefelt (1940)

Two Johns-Manville headquarters memos. On August 21, 1940, Elliot Fairback asked Vandiver Brown in the Legal Department how to answer North American Aviation, whose men handling J-M's Stonefelt insulation "had complained of itching hands" and which wanted to know how the material would affect "the nasal passages and the lungs." On August 28 Brown supplied text for a reply: Stonefelt sometimes produced "a slight rash," and "the manufacture and handling of the material will not produce silicosis or any other lung disorder."

What it shows

Brown's text cited more than thirty years' experience with "this material" and similar materials, a Metropolitan Life Insurance Company survey of more than 400 workers at J-M's plants that found "Not a single case of silicosis," and tests by Dr. Lawrence T. Fairhall of the Harvard School of Public Health. He explained that Stonefelt's silica was combined as a silicate, while silicosis came only from free silica, the same answer he had given the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company in 1939. A week later Fairback revised two sentences before the letter went out.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Letter from Vandiver Brown dated 8/28/40 to Elliot Fairback responding to North American Aviation Inc.'s inquiry re potential health hazards of handling Stonefelt. Advises that handling the material will not produce silicosis or any other lung disorder.

Related documents

• Vandiver Brown to George Trautvetter of the Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company on Stonefelt Insulation (1939)