Vandiver Brown to Ernest Muehleck of Keasbey & Mattison on Gardner's Dust Experiments (1945)

A one-page letter of June 5, 1945, from Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's secretary, to Ernest Muehleck, president of Keasbey & Mattison Company, about Dr. Leroy Gardner's asbestos dust experiments. Brown reports that at a meeting of the Industrial Hygiene Foundation trustees in May, Gardner told him the "correlation of dust counts and X-ray evidence in Canada and the United States had not yet been completed." They were still trying to learn why "the mines present a clinical picture so much better than the one found at the factories in the United States where most of the fibre is used."

What it shows

Brown writes that the slow progress "puts me in mind" of a line he attributes to Shakespeare about "a dusty answer," adding, "we have been getting dusty answers." The letter shows that by 1945 the sponsors and Gardner accepted that the American asbestos factories showed a worse picture of lung disease than the Canadian mines, and that the sponsors were still waiting on the report they had paid for. It follows Brown's December 1944 letter on the same delay.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Letter from Vandiver Brown to Muehleck (Keasby & Mattison) dated 6/5/45. Brown reports that Gardner has advised that the "correlation of dust counts and x-ray evidence in Canada and the United States had not yet been completed. They are still endeavoring to find out why it is the mines present a clinical picture so much better than the one found at the factories in the United States where most of the fiber is used."

Related documents

• Vandiver Brown to Ernest Muehleck of Keasbey & Mattison on Gardner's Delayed Asbestosis Monograph (1944)