J. E. Begert to Vandiver Brown on Dust Counts at the Manville Factory (1947)

A memo dictated January 31, 1947, and dated February 3, from J. E. Begert at J-M's Manville, New Jersey, factory to Vandiver Brown at headquarters, sending dust counts for one department. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company had just taken new counts in January, and Begert compared them with Metropolitan's 1934 counts and the New Jersey State Health Department's counts of 1944. "At no location in this department is the count below five million," he wrote. Metropolitan's figures were much higher than the state's, which he put down to different equipment, so the two sets were "not of much value for comparison purposes."

What it shows

Five million particles per cubic foot was the limit the U.S. Public Health Service had suggested in its 1938 study of the asbestos textile industry (see Threshold Limit Value (TLV)). The attachment is a copy of the state's November 1944 laboratory report for the textile department: carding, spinning, weaving and brake lining, with total counts from 0.9 to 7.2 million particles (see the state's 1944 inspection). Metropolitan's January 1947 table is not in this file. Someone has written "Slovak" on the memo and, on the 1944 report, a note that "Joe Slovak worked adjacent to but not at any machine" sampled. That suggests the counts were gathered for J-M's defense of Joseph Slovak's lawsuit, which it settled two weeks later.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

On 1/31/47, J.E. Begert writes to V. Brown regarding dust counts at the Manville factory taken by Metropolitan in 1/47 and in 1934 and by the NJ State Health Department in 1944. For the counts taken most recently by Metropolitan, no location in the department is below 5 mppcf. The counts are also higher in comparison with the counts taken by the State of NJ Health Department; however, this is explained in part because of the different equipment that Metropolitan uses which, Begert understands, gets much higher values than the equipment used by the state.

Editor's note: J-M's description reports Metropolitan's dust counts of January 1947 and 1934. Those figures are not in this file, which holds Begert's memo and the New Jersey laboratory report of 1944.

Related documents

• New Jersey Department of Health to J. E. Begert on Dust in the Manville Textile Department (1944)