John H. Marsh to Guy Gabrielson on the History of Asbestos Exposure Limits (1977)

A letter of April 11, 1977, from John H. Marsh of Raybestos-Manhattan to Guy Gabrielson, chairman of the board of Nicolet, Inc., copied to Dr. H. C. Lewinsohn and I. H. Weaver. Marsh sent an excerpt from a paper he had prepared "in connection with some of our legal difficulties," a table of "Accepted and Proposed Exposure Limits for Asbestos" from 1930 to 1976, and copies of "the rather amusing correspondence I mentioned to you on the telephone the other day." He wrote: "It seems to me it is quite unfair to expect the industry to be more knowledgeable about the health effects of asbestos than the United States Public Health Service."

What it shows

The "amusing correspondence" is the 1943 exchange in which Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's attorney, told Sumner Simpson, president of Raybestos-Manhattan, that he was "inclined to let Mr. DeForest learn the facts of life and asbestosis" from the State of Washington rather than answer him (Motley #192, #193 and #194). Marsh's table starts with the Metropolitan Life reports on R-M's Charleston and Manheim plants in 1930 and the Public Health Service's 1938 Dreessen study, which said new cases of asbestosis "probably would not appear" below 5 million particles per cubic foot. His excerpt argued that a January 1971 survey of an R-M plant would have been acceptable under the rules of early 1970, though not under the December 1971 emergency standard.

In Johns-Manville's index

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

J. H. Marsh letter to Guy Gabrielson (Chairman of the Board, Nicolet), 4/11/77, attaching an excerpt from a paper Marsh prepared regarding "changes in the perception in the dust levels required to produce disease," a brief history of accepted and proposed exposure limits for asbestos, and copies of "rather amusing correspondence I mentioned to you on the telephone the other day." (Motley Document #'s 192, 193 and 194) Marsh states that it is quite unfair to expect the industry to be more knowledgeable about the health effects of asbestos than the United States Public Health Service, and states that he would like to discuss this with Gabrielson.

Related documents

• Vandiver Brown to Sumner Simpson on Elliott DeForest's Asbestosis Letter (1943)
• A. S. Rossiter of Asbestos Magazine to Sumner Simpson Forwarding Elliott DeForest's Letter (1943)
• Elliott DeForest of the Northwest Magnesia Association to Washington State on Deleting Its Asbestosis Rule (1943)
• Industrial Health Foundation to Isaac H. Weaver on Raybestos-Manhattan's Membership (1977)

About this copy

This is document 325 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-001618 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001624.