Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Annual Report of the Industrial Health Section (1945)

An eleven-page internal annual report for 1945 of the Industrial Health Section of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, signed by Dr. Anthony J. Lanza and Dr. W. J. McConnell. Among examples of how its plant surveys were "accepted by management, employees and the Divisions of Industrial Hygiene of the State Departments of Health," it reports that W. G. Hazard of the New Jersey Department of Health had been ordered by the War Production Board to investigate Johns-Manville's Manville plant "on the basis that there were a number of unhealthy working conditions in the plant accounting for a large labor turnover." Because Metropolitan had been surveying the plant periodically, Hazard asked it to make the survey; Metropolitan found "the asbestosis hazard was adequately controlled and had been for a number of years," Hazard accepted the findings, and "The case was closed."

What it shows

Metropolitan was J-M's group insurer, and the report describes its plant surveys as a service to policyholders, who paid its field men's travel costs. In the Manville case a federal wartime inquiry into unhealthy conditions at J-M's largest plant was answered by a survey from the company's own insurer. The same report records Lanza attending a conference on asbestosis and tuberculosis in Montreal and notes that the Thetford Mines operators had set up a clinic "to reduce the morbidity and mortality due to Asbestosis and Tuberculosis." Compare the New Jersey health department's November 1944 letter, which found dust problems in the Manville textile department.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Annual Report of the Metropolitan Life Industrial Health Section indicates that the War Production Board ordered W.G. Hazard of the NJ Dept. of Health to investigate the health conditions of J-M's Manville plant "on the basis that there were a number of unhealthy working conditions in the plant accounting for a large labor turnover." Because Metropolitan had been periodically surveying the plant, Hazard asked Metropolitan to conduct the survey. Metropolitan found "that the asbestosis hazard was adequately controlled and had been for a number of years". Hazard accepted these findings and informed the War Production Board accordingly. "The case was closed."