S. A. Williams to A. R. Fisher with Dr. Lanza's Answers on Waukegan Dust Questions (1933)

A five-page file: a "Personal & Confidential" memo of August 29, 1933, from S. A. Williams, J-M vice president, to A. R. Fisher, manager of the Manville factory, enclosing questions that J-M's local physician at Waukegan put to Dr. A. J. Lanza of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, with Lanza's answers "verbatim" and his comments on the plant physician's recommendations. Asked whether workers should be told that asbestos dust was hazardous and a warning poster put up, Lanza replied: "I doubt if the hazard is sufficient to justify warning posters as might be used where lead, benzol or carbon monoxide are concerned. This is especially true in view of the extraordinary legal situation." If anything was said, he advised, it should be "a general statement that the Company is taking steps to control the amount of dust in the air for general health purposes."

What it shows

The physician had diagnosed asbestosis in a man who had worked six years in the "extremely dusty" card room and wanted to move him out of the dust. Lanza answered that "If he is well along in years and shows no disability, it may be just as well to leave him alone," adding that "economic as well as production factors must be balanced against the medical factors." To the physician's recommendation that textile workers be "tactfully but definitely" told that work in asbestos dust was hazardous to their health, urged to wear respirators and taught to wash, Lanza commented, "I think this is out, at least for the present." He also said respirators were "not satisfactory" for a full shift, and that to learn the extent of disease "the only thing to do is to x-ray all of them." Compare Lanza's 1931 recommendations for J-M.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Memorandum from S.A. Williams to A.R. Fisher (Manville) dated 8/29/33 attaches list of questions asked of Lanza by Waukegan physician, as well as Lanza's responses. " . . . doubt if hazard is sufficient to justify warning posters. . . this is especially true in view of the extraordinary legal situation. If anything is said at all, it would be better to make a general statement that the Company is taking steps to control the amount of dust in the air for general health purposes." Concerning whether an employee in the asbestos textile card room at Waukegan who was suffering from asbestosis, but was not disabled, should be removed from dust, Lanza replied "if he is well along in years, and shows no disability, it may be just as well to leave him alone." Lanza's view was that economic as well as production factors, should be balanced against medical factors.

Related documents

• Minutes of a Johns-Manville Meeting with Dr. Anthony Lanza on Physical Examinations (1931)