Mine Safety Appliances Company to Vandiver Brown on Respirator Notices (1935)

A two-page letter of August 23, 1935, from J. B. Davies, manager of the industrial department of Mine Safety Appliances Company, a Pittsburgh respirator maker, to Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's attorney, answering Brown's letter of August 21. Davies writes that posting notices in the factory "should be very carefully worded," and suggests notices "merely informing employees" that respirators are available from the storekeeper and that management asks for their cooperation in wearing them where it is dusty. The rest of the letter covers numbering, issuing, sterilizing and inspecting the respirators, and keeping records of each.

What it shows

The letter is one of the answers Brown gathered that August while drafting respirator rules for J-M's factories; three days earlier he had put the same kind of question to the Portland Cement Association, writing that workers had to be warned of the dust hazard without being alarmed (Brown to the Portland Cement Association). Davies adds that talks by the safety director or foreman at safety meetings would apply "more pressure" than a printed notice, and that this was the first time his company had been asked for such advice.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Letter from J.B. Davies (Mine Safety Appliances) to Vandiver Brown dated 8/23/35 states: "as you can appreciate, the matter of posting notices throughout the factory is one which should be very carefully worded, and our suggestion would be to post notices merely informing employees respirators are available."

Related documents

• O. B. Westmont to Mill Foremen on the Use of Respirators (1932)