Johns-Manville Report on the Current Status of Asbestos/Health, Prepared for the Seaview Meeting (1970)

A 27-page Johns-Manville report titled "Report on Current Status of Asbestos/Health," headed "Seaview" and dated September 28, 1970. It reviews the adverse publicity over sprayed asbestos insulation in New York City and elsewhere, sets out the company's "facts" on asbestos and disease, and describes its health committees, dust control spending, research and public relations work before listing the problems ahead. It ends with a policy summary: the improper use of asbestos "can create health problems," but the conditions are "controllable or are being controlled," so it would be "totally unwarranted" to think of banning asbestos except for "gross abuses of elementary safety practices and standards."

What it shows

The report accepts that asbestos causes asbestosis and that studies had found more lung cancer and mesothelioma among heavily exposed workers, while calling asbestos "probably a co-carcinogen" rather than a carcinogen. It records J-M's workmen's compensation occupational disease cases rising from 94 in 1965 to 681 in 1969, with costs going from $500,000 to $2,043,200, and puts part of the rise down to "extensive 'mass' filing at the Manville location" (see the Manville plant managers' letter of March 1970). The public relations section says the department was able to "temper greatly" the stories of eight writers, but not Paul Brodeur's "totally damaging" New Yorker article, and it proposes an industry group modeled on Britain's Asbestos Information Committee, which became the Asbestos Information Association/North America that November. The closing policy, two years after C. B. Burnett's 1968 dust control orders, directs every division to list all asbestos dust emission points, set timetables for those that can be controlled, and "close down operations that are uncontrollable by April 1, 1971." The attached "History of Johns-Manville Health Research" is a separate entry.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

At a meeting of J-M Senior Officers in Absecon, New Jersey on 9/28/70, C.B. Burnett presents a statement of the company's policy with respect to asbestos and health. Burnett says that it is J-M's opinion that: (1) the improper use of asbestos can create health problems; (2) conditions creating these health hazards are controllable or are being controlled; and (3) it would be unwarranted to ban asbestos except when users are guilty of gross abuses of elementary safety practices and standards.

Since there is evidence that employees in mines, mills and processing plants exposed to heavy concentrations of asbestos for long periods of time are subject to health hazards, there should be a list of emission points for each plant classified into two categories: (a) controllable by known methods; and (b) satisfactory means of control not known is to be prepared. Burnett discusses items of information he wants included in this report.

Editor's note: J-M's description says C. B. Burnett presented this statement at a senior officers' meeting in Absecon, New Jersey. The document names no author or presenter; it is headed only "Seaview" (the Seaview resort is in Absecon), and Burnett's name appears at the head of its list of the Policy Committee.