J. W. Szcygielski to Dr. C. U. Culmer on Waukegan Employees Not Consulted After Their Examinations (1980)

A two-page confidential memo of March 14, 1980, from J. W. Szcygielski at the Waukegan, Illinois, plant to Dr. C. U. Culmer of the plant's medical department, copied to four others. Each employee was supposed to have a consultation about the findings after a physical examination, but at the recent meetings about "the newspaper interpretation of the NIOSH study" a number said they never had; he lists nine. He passes on other workers' comments: a son-in-law said a change on a worker's X-rays 19 years earlier had never been reported, one man said a medical problem that began in 1957 had only now been disclosed to him, and another said J-M "did not see asbestos on his lung but the Monroe Clinic did."

What it shows

Szcygielski asked the medical department to give follow-up consultations to everyone on the list, to clear up the other questions, and to tell him what came of the talks. The memo came out of the meetings Dr. Paul described to Dr. Kotin (Paul to Kotin, March 1980), and it records a complaint J-M had heard before: workers learning late, or from outside doctors, what their own examinations showed (Zelienople, 1977).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Szcygielski writes to Dr. Culmer (Waukegan), 3/14/80, that a number of employees have indicated that they had not been consulted regarding their exam findings. Szcygielski lists the names of these employees and asks Dr. Culmer to meet with them. One employee indicated that a change occurred on his lungs 19 years ago, but he had not been told about it.

Editor's note: J-M's description says one employee reported a change on his own lungs 19 years earlier that he had not been told about. The memo says a son-in-law reported that a change on a worker's X-rays 19 years earlier had never been reported.