Vandiver Brown to Union Asbestos & Rubber Enclosing Gardner's First Progress Report (1937)

A one-paragraph cover letter of May 11, 1937, from Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's general attorney, to L. J. Silverman, secretary-treasurer of Union Asbestos & Rubber Company in Chicago, enclosing Dr. Leroy Gardner's "First Progress Report on Asbestosis Experiments at the Saranac Laboratory," dated May 5, 1937. The four-page report says inhalation experiments began on March 22 with 80 guinea pigs, 20 rats, 8 rabbits and 3 cats in a dust room held at about 175 million particles per cubic foot, using chrysotile dust from a plant at Manville, New Jersey. Injection tests compared chrysotile with other types of asbestos and with fibrous minerals that are not asbestos. Gardner wrote that "None of these early results is regarded as significant" and that real results would take one to two years of exposure.

What it shows

Union Asbestos & Rubber was one of the companies that signed the November 1936 agreement to pay for Gardner's work at the Saranac Laboratory, under which the results belonged to the sponsors and any manuscript had to be approved by them before publication. Under that arrangement, reports went to Brown, who passed them on to the other sponsors, as this letter does. The report also says it was "not yet clear" whether rabbits dying after chrysotile injections was a problem of technique "or whether this substance is essentially toxic."

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

letter dated 5/11/1937 enclosing progress report dated 5/5/1937 - Vandiver Brown sent a copy of Dr. Gardner's "First Progress Report on Asbestosis Experiments in the Saranac Laboratory." The report states that it is too early to say more than the experiment has officially begun, but it does begin to detail the types of experiments, animals, and asbestos dusts and methods being used. The experiment included 80 guinea pigs, 20 rats, 8 rabbits, and 3 cats. 1-2 years will need to elapse for exposure to be significant enough to report on.
Brown shared this report with UNARCO

Related documents

• Memorandum of Agreement Funding Gardner's Asbestos Experiments at Saranac Laboratory (1936)