Edmund M. Fenner, Industrial Pneumoconiosis Prevention and Control (1969)

A talk by Edmund M. Fenner, director of Johns-Manville's Environmental Control Department, read on May 19, 1969, at Atlantic City before a joint session on chest diseases and clinical pathology of the Medical Society of New Jersey, printed as an illustrated seven-page booklet. Fenner reviewed J-M's dust control program and wrote that it was "not until the late 1920's that scientists first became concerned" about asbestosis, and that the company then sponsored animal and human research at the Saranac Laboratory. He described the dust limit adopted on that research, the lung cancer studies J-M sponsored after British doctors raised the link in the mid-1950s, and the Insulation Industry Hygiene Research Program under Dr. Irving J. Selikoff.

What it shows

This is the company's public account, in 1969, of its own history on asbestos disease. Fenner wrote that the Saranac research "established that prolonged and heavy exposure did indeed produce a unique and identifiable pulmonary fibrosis," and that J-M adopted the threshold limit the Saranac scientists suggested. He described the insulators' program as jointly paid for by Johns-Manville and the asbestos workers' union, for "the men who apply and remove pipe and equipment insulations" rather than J-M's own employees.

In Johns-Manville's index

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

Article entitled "Industrial Pneumoconiosis Prevention and Control," authored by Edmund M. Fenner (Director, J-M Environmental Control Dept.), presented before the Joint Session on Chest Diseases, Clinical Pathology, of the Medical Society of New Jersey, 5/19/69. Discusses J-M's dust control program throughout the years, the accepted threshold limit values throughout the years, the different means of determining asbestos fiber concentrations, J-M's practices re industrial hygiene surveys, and the insulation industry hygiene research program concerned with developing methods for improving the working conditions of insulation workers.

About this copy

This is document 326 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-001625 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001632.