J. P. Woodard's Minutes of a Meeting with California Health Officials and the U.S. Public Health Service on Studying Diatomaceous Earth (1952)

A confidential three-page memorandum of May 12, 1952, by J. P. Woodard of Johns-Manville's headquarters, recording a meeting held in Los Angeles on May 7 "to develop plan for study of diatomaceous earth dust problems." Present were representatives of J-M, Dicalite, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the U.S. Public Health Service and the California State Department of Public Health. It was agreed that the Public Health Service would take primary responsibility for the study, partly because its findings "might probably be subject to less question as to the objectivity of the study." Attached is the draft study plan, whose first stated purpose was "to settle the discussion as to whether diatomaceous earth is or is not a pneumoconiosis producer."

What it shows

The meeting agreed that workers in the plants should be told a study was under way, so there would be "no question in their minds" about the visitors and medical checks, and that the companies would likely put out their own information to employees. The Public Health Service representative, Mr. Doyle, noted that the agency's practice was to give no publicity to its studies and not to identify individuals or companies, a point the minutes call "important to the industries." The draft plan called for chest X-rays and full examinations of all production workers, an X-ray survey of community residents, and dust and air pollution studies in the surrounding towns. Copies went to J-M's Lompoc plant and to Dr. A. J. Lanza.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Lompoc Strike; California State Authorities' and USPHS investigation of dust (diatomaceous earth silicosis) conditions on 5/12/52.