Kenneth W. Smith, "Asbestos and Cancer," Talk to J-M's Industrial Relations Managers (1965)

Papers from Johns-Manville's Industrial Relations Managers' meeting at Edgewater Park, Mississippi, February 7-12, 1965: the table of contents and the five-page text of "Asbestos and Cancer," a talk by Dr. Kenneth W. Smith, J-M's medical director, preparing the managers for questions from labor groups after the "very adverse news publicity" of the fall of 1964. Smith said that after discussing it with C. W. (Chuck) Hite he had "prevailed upon the Asbestos Textile Institute to invite the federal government to make an industry-wide survey," believing "that no federal agency such as the U. S. Public Health Service is going to incriminate an entire industry." He attacked Dr. Irving J. Selikoff at length, and told the managers that "in Manville Plant we have records of over 25 cases of lung cancer in people working with asbestos fiber," none of whom, he said, had been exposed to chrysotile alone.

What it shows

Smith said it "would be foolish to deny that we had lung cancer in some of our J-M plants," but argued that the Canadian chrysotile mined at J-M's Jeffrey Mine could be cleared as a cause, and blamed high lung cancer rates reported from Africa on amosite, crocidolite and working conditions there. The company was correcting what it saw as wrong impressions "slowly and carefully," he said, because "we do not want the asbestos industry to be placed in the unfortunate position in which the tobacco industry finds itself today." He dismissed Selikoff's research as "absolutely erroneous" and described how news releases prepared for the October 1964 New York Academy of Sciences conference were withdrawn after protests. The Public Health Service survey he described grew out of the Asbestos Textile Institute's discussions of 1961 (see its Air Hygiene Committee minutes of September 1961).

The last two pages of the meeting file are a different talk by Smith, "Health Projects," which opens "internally in Johns-Manville we have numerous potential health hazards" and closes "Nowhere in Johns-Manville have I seen any concrete evidence that this association does exist."

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

In Industrial Relations Managers Minutes dated 2/12/65, K. Smith reports that at his insistence ATI has asked USPHS to survey industry since "no federal agency such as USPHS is going to incriminate an entire industry."

A five-page document which appears to be part of a presentation to the industrial relations managers or possibly to a manual, each page is labeled at the bottom "IH-l through 5" the first page bears the title Kenneth W. Smith, M.D. Based on the context it is clear the information was conveyed within the year following Selikoff's announcement.

Smith states that while it would be foolish to deny that J-M had any lung cancer in its plants, the incidence at Jeffrey mine is identical to that of the population as a whole. He notes that there have been 25 cases of lung cancer in individuals working with asbestos fiber at the Manville plant. However, not one of these cases was exposed to chrysotile fiber alone. Individuals were "exposed to mixtures of fiber. . . . exposed to other toxic materials."