S. Wyatt McCallie Memo on Withholding the Crump Analysis from Blairsville Citizens Opposing Asbestos-Cement Pipe (1982)

A two-page Johns-Manville internal memo of June 28, 1982, from S. Wyatt McCallie to a distribution list that included G. E. Parker, R. B. Von Wald, D. H. Markusson, W. B. Reitze and Dr. Paul Kotin. Helen Pentrack of a citizens' group in Blairsville, Pennsylvania, which was trying to get a court to stop the town from using asbestos-cement pipe for its water, had asked Dr. Wister Meigs, head of the Connecticut Cancer Epidemiology Unit, for help. Meigs told her he had doubts about the Kanarek drinking-water study, and when she asked for the "Crump analysis" of it, which McCallie had given him, he called J-M to ask whether he could share it.

What it shows

McCallie checked with John Welch of the Association of Asbestos Cement Pipe Producers and with Ned Rahn, because litigation was pending in Blairsville. "Ned feels there will be some tactical advantage to postponing the time at which the opposition receives the Crump analysis," he writes, though the industry meant to use it in the end. J-M asked Meigs not to release it for now and to tell Mrs. Pentrack that, with a lawsuit pending, he did not feel free to give documents to either side. The memo shows J-M managing what an outside scientist gave to residents worried about asbestos in their water, with the timing set by litigation.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Memorandum to Olson, Cran, Fisher, Parker, VonWald, etc. from S. Wyatt McCallie, 6/28/82, re A/C pipe - Blairsville, PA, describes the tactical advantage of postponing the time at which the opposition receives the Crump analysis. Although ultimately the A/C pipe industry would intend to use the Crump analysis in Blairsville, Manville decided that they would ask Dr. Meigs not to release the Crump analysis to the concerned citizen's group in Blairsville, PA at the present time.