Linn J. Boyd of New York Medical College to Raybestos-Manhattan Asking for Data on Asbestosis (1943)

A one-page letter of June 2, 1943, from Dr. Linn J. Boyd, director of medicine at New York Medical College (Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospitals), to Raybestos-Manhattan in New York, for the attention of its "Safety Engineer or Toxicologist." The college was surveying the health facilities of the Hastings Mill of the Anaconda Wire and Cable Company, which Raybestos-Manhattan supplied with asbestos. Boyd asked for the company's specifications for the product and wrote that "it is probable that you have at your command published or unpublished data concerned with it as an industrial hazard. Who can we contact on this subject."

What it shows

An outside doctor studying the health of a customer's workers came straight to the supplier for what it knew about asbestosis. Sumner Simpson's secretary acknowledged the letter (June 8), and Simpson answered on June 22 with chemical analyses of two kinds of asbestos, referring Boyd to Metropolitan Life for information on asbestos dust. Boyd also wrote to Johns-Manville, where Vandiver Brown referred him to Dr. Lanza's book (Brown to Simpson, June 24, 1943).

In Johns-Manville's index

Johns-Manville's attorneys indexed the Sumner Simpson Papers. Their index describes this document as follows:

Informs that N.Y. Medical College is surveying the health facilities of a company that RM supplies with asbestos. Requests RM's specifications on asbestos and any published or unpublished data dealing with asbestosis as an industrial hazard that RM might have access to.

Related documents

• Sumner Simpson's Secretary to Linn J. Boyd Acknowledging His Letter (1943)
• Sumner Simpson to Linn J. Boyd Referring Him to Metropolitan Life on Asbestos Dust (1943)
• Vandiver Brown to Sumner Simpson on Elliott DeForest's Asbestosis Letter (1943)

About this copy

This is document 05306 of the Sumner Simpson Papers, as numbered in the collection's index.