Isaac H. Weaver of Raybestos-Manhattan, Testimony at the Labor Department Asbestos Hearing (1972)

The transcript of Isaac H. Weaver's statement at the U.S. Department of Labor's 1972 hearing on a permanent asbestos standard (8 pages, with the Department's 1978 certificate of a true copy). Weaver, corporate director of environmental control for Raybestos-Manhattan, said that before he joined the company in 1946 "the occupational hazard of asbestos dust exposure had been recognized" and dust controls installed at its Manheim, Pennsylvania, and Charleston, South Carolina, textile plants. He said a two-fiber level was not technically feasible in all of the company's operations "either now or within the foreseeable future," questioned the membrane filter method below five fibers, and supported the five-fiber standard.

What it shows

Weaver pointed to Britain, where a goal of two fibers had been set, but said that many British operations were not meeting it. The last page begins the remarks of John H. Marsh, Raybestos-Manhattan's director of planning, who said the company employed 6,500 people, about 80% of them in making and selling asbestos products, and that even five fibers would take up to two years and millions of dollars to reach. Marsh's 1977 letter on the history of exposure limits is Motley #325.

In Johns-Manville's index

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

Statement of Isaac H. Weaver (Corporate Director of Environmental Control, R-M) at the Goldberg Hearings on 3/16/72. Weaver recommends the adoption of the present OSHA emergency standard of five fibers per cubic centimeter because of "the difficulty or impossibility of maintaining reliable controls at levels lower than five fibers per cubic centimeter, coupled with the lack of scientific facts to justify the need for a lower standard."

Related documents

• Matthew M. Swetonic of Johns-Manville and the Asbestos Information Association, Testimony Against the Two-Fiber Standard and Warning Labels (1972)
• John H. Marsh to Guy Gabrielson on the History of Asbestos Exposure Limits (1977)

About this copy

This is document 315 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-001587 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001594.