Seventh Saranac Symposium, Session on Pneumoconiosis and Pulmonary Cancer, with the Gregoire and Wright Paper (1952)

A typed transcript of the session on "Pneumoconiosis and Pulmonary Cancer" held on September 24, 1952, at the Seventh Saranac Symposium of the Saranac Laboratory, with pages of the attendance register, plus an unpublished paper given there. Dr. Paul Cartier of the Thetford Mines clinic in Quebec reported on lung cancer in a survey of 3,957 asbestos miners and said that "it seems that the fiber is the only pathological agent." Dr. E. R. A. Merewether of Britain's factory inspectorate reported that of 296 recorded deaths from asbestosis in the United Kingdom, 48, or 16.2 percent, were associated with cancer of the lung, a share that was "rising rather than falling." The second file is the paper by Drs. Fernand Gregoire and George W. Wright on lung function in 74 men, 57 of them exposed to asbestos fiber.

What it shows

Merewether asked whether his figures were enough "to indicate a causal relationship" between asbestos dust in the lungs and lung cancer, and concluded that data must be gathered from other asbestos communities to "settle the question." Dr. Anthony J. Lanza, who said he had spent several days with Dr. Kenneth Smith reading his films, found it "difficult to believe that our cancer incidence among asbestos workers could be anything like as large as it seems to be in England," and wondered whether the type of fiber mattered. The register lists Smith at J-M's New York address and representatives of insurers including the Travelers Insurance Company. Gregoire and Wright found the main abnormality to be "a 'tight' lung that is expanded with difficulty," with poor transfer of oxygen to the blood. The fact's account of this paper matches its summary pages; a note on its first page says it was never published.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

At the Seventh Saranac Symposium held 9/24/52, Merewether reported on asbestos and lung cancer, as did Cartier of Thetford. Adoption of 1 mfpcf TLV was recommended by Saranac (Vorwald). Travelers, Metropolitan, Liberty Mutual, J-M and others attended. Fiber length as cause of disease was discussed. Merewether stated major British raw material was chrysotile.

Drs. Fernand Gregoire and George W. Wright presented a paper entitled "Pulmonary Function Studies in Men Exposed for Ten or More Years to Inhalation of Asbestos Fiber". They studied 74 men of whom 57 had been exposed for many years to different concentrations of asbestos dust. They found that there was some but not a good correlation between the duration and intensity of exposure and the development of x-ray patterns characteristic of asbestosis and abnormal physiological data. They found that there is a better correlation between asbestotic x-ray patterns and abnormal physiological data. The most frequent abnormalities found were a diminution of the arterial "pO2" and an increase of the "A.A. difference" (alveolar-arterial oxygen exchange) during exercise; a diminution of the vital capacity; and a diminution of the percentage of saturation of the arterial blood during exercise. There is no true correlation, however, between these findings and the diminution of the capacity of a subject to work on a treadmill. The study showed that the chief physiologic abnormality is that of a "tight" lung that is expanded with difficulty and impairment of gas transfer between the gas and blood phases of the lung.