Asbestos Information Association Press Release on a Safe Level of Asbestos Exposure (1978)

A three-page press release of June 24, 1978, from the Asbestos Information Association/North America, issued by industry representatives attending the "International Conference on Health Hazards of Asbestos Exposure" at the New York Hilton. It quoted Thomas A. Dougherty, the association's president: "In other words, there is a safe level of exposure to asbestos, as there is to most other potentially toxic substances." He said disease cases came from past exposures "when little was known about the hazards," and that "The contention that very short exposures to asbestos can result in a health hazard are misleading."

What it shows

The release closed with Dougherty's statement that the industry believed the federal standard of 2 fibers per cubic centimeter was a safe level of exposure. Compare the private report of a Union Carbide hygienist three years earlier, that the only person he found at an international congress willing to call the two-fiber limit safe for mesothelioma was Alex Cross of Cape Asbestos (Motley document 672).

In Johns-Manville's index

Johns-Manville's legal department indexed the Motley 1,000 in 1984. Its index describes this document as follows:

3-page AIA press release, dated 6/24/78, regarding asbestos-related disease. "Asbestos represents no health risk to the general public ... Based on medical evidence to date, the asbestos industry believes that the present federal exposure standard of two fibers per cubic centimeter of workplace air is a safe level of exposure ..."

Related documents

• H. B. Rhodes to R. E. Byrne, Jr. and Others on the 1975 Brighton Occupational Health Congress (1975)

About this copy

This is document 679 of the Motley 1,000, from the set the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust's records facility certified as true copies, pages CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-002360 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-002362.