Leroy Gardner to Vandiver Brown on the X-Ray Review at Asbestos, Quebec (1944)

A two-page letter of July 15, 1944, from Dr. Leroy Gardner, director of the Saranac Laboratory, to Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's attorney, reporting on a trip to Asbestos, Quebec, with Saranac's X-ray specialist Dr. Robert and Dr. Vestal of North Carolina, who "has seen a great deal of real asbestosis." With Dr. Stevenson, the company physician, they read between two and three hundred X-ray films and found "only two cases" that could be called "questionable first degree asbestosis." Gardner was "greatly relieved" that the experts confirmed asbestosis was "a rarity in the Asbestos-Thetford area."

What it shows

Gardner admits he was "still at a loss to explain the situation" because conditions in the Quebec textile mill "certainly should be capable of causing characteristic disease in exposed workmen"; the only difference he could see from similar U.S. plants was "the absence of African fibre." He reports that William Fehnel of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company would sample the dust there in August for comparison with Manville, and proposes adding a survey of North American clinical and X-ray experience to his report, with Vestal and Robert as collaborators. The rosy Quebec reading should be set beside the individual X-ray readings from the same visit, which note lung changes in many workers, and the Quebec government's dust survey of the textile plant that October.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Letter from Leroy Gardner to Vandiver Brown dated 7/15/44. Gardner reports on his recent trip to Asbestos, Quebec in company with the Saranac roentgenologist (Dr. Robert) and Dr. Vestal of the North Carolina State Industrial Commission who had "seen a great deal of real asbestosis." The three visiting doctors reviewed and read between 200 and 300 x-rays along with the J-M plant doctor (Stevenson). They found only two cases which could be diagnosed as questionable first degree asbestosis.

Gardner was excited that the experts corroborated his observation that asbestosis was a rarity in the Asbestos-Thetford area. X-rays included those of workers at the Asbestos textile mill which Gardner could differentiate from U.S. mills only by "the absence of African fiber." He doubted whether this was the relevant factor. Fehnel of Metropolitan planned to survey Asbestos during August.

A plan was conceived whereby Fehnel would provide duplicate samples to Saranac so that the laboratory would be able to compare dust samples from the textile mill in Asbestos with those from the mill at Manville. Gardner proposed that the studies be expanded to encompass an analysis of the clinical and x-ray experience on the North American continent. He invited the participation of Drs. Vestal and Robert.

Brown thereafter sought the approval of other sponsors of the research and advised that Gardner did not contemplate additional expenses for this aspect of the study.

Editor's note: The letter says Gardner was "greatly relieved," not excited, that the visiting doctors confirmed his view. The last paragraph of J-M's description, on Brown seeking the other sponsors' approval, is not in this letter; it comes from later correspondence such as Thomas Gatke's reply to Brown.