J. P. Woodard to Dr. A. J. Lanza on Aluminum Therapy for Lompoc Workers (1951)

A three-page letter of April 1951 from J. P. Woodard of Johns-Manville to Dr. A. J. Lanza, chairman of the Institute of Industrial Medicine at New York University-Bellevue Medical Center, with Woodard's notes of their March trip to California. The purpose, Woodard writes, was to review with state officials, legal and medical advisers and local managers whether aluminum therapy should be used for workers exposed to diatomaceous earth at J-M and at Great Lakes Carbon, and if so when, how and on whom. At Lompoc, he notes, the plant's Dr. Anderson "shied away" from the therapy, and doctors in Los Angeles also thought more proof was needed.

What it shows

Woodard proposes four steps: search the literature on aluminum therapy; push the Saranac Laboratory for results of its animal work; plan how aluminum would be given "and how we expect to handle the personnel matter of telling the men about it"; and "Continue to carry out our dust abatement program with all the energy we can command, realizing that elimination of dust is the sure way of preventing illnesses caused by dust." The idea was to inhale aluminum powder to protect the lungs from silica, as Canadian gold mines had done; Saranac's own tests had found aluminum hydroxide did not stop asbestos fibrosis (Experimental Studies of Asbestosis). The thread continues in Woodard to Elsenbast, April 16, 1951.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Woodard writes to Dr. Lanza on 4/10/51 concerning the proposed aluminum therapy program at Lompoc. Woodard thinks that a literature search on aluminum therapy should be conducted, Saranac should be pushed on its studies with animals exposed to diatomaceous earth and aluminum, and J-M should start formulating plans on how the program is to be administered and how J-M expects to tell the men about it. Woodard urges that J-M continue to carry out its dust abatement program with all the energy it can command, "realizing that elimination of dust is the sure way of preventing illnesses caused by dust."

Related documents

• J. P. Woodard to A. S. Elsenbast on the Saranac Program and Aluminum Therapy at Lompoc (1951)
• Arthur Elsenbast to O. B. Westmont on Aluminum Therapy Research and Moving Men from Dust at Lompoc (1951)