Sumner Simpson's Secretary to Vandiver Brown Acknowledging Gardner's Outline of a Monograph on Asbestosis (1943)

A one-page letter of March 16, 1943, from the secretary to Sumner Simpson, president of Raybestos-Manhattan, to Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's secretary, acknowledging Brown's letter of March 2 "enclosing a photostat of a letter from Dr. Gardner, together with an 'Outline of Proposed Monograph on Asbestosis.'" Simpson had been out of the city for some weeks and would write on his return. With the letter is Raybestos-Manhattan's copy of the outline and of Dr. Leroy Gardner's "Asbestosis - Annotated Outline Indicating Results," which reported "10 cases of lung cancer in asbestos workers" on record, an incidence it called "excessive."

What it shows

The annotated outline set out what Saranac Laboratory's asbestos experiments had found. Among mice that inhaled long-fiber asbestos for 15 to 24 months the rate of malignant lung tumors was 81.8 percent, over 16 times the average for mice inhaling other dusts; Gardner called the observations "suggestive but not conclusive evidence of a cancer stimulating action by asbestos dust" and hoped the experiment could be repeated under properly controlled conditions. He also wrote that the tentative dust limit of 4 or 5 million particles per cubic foot "is probably unreliable" because the standard impinger did not collect most of the fibers (see Threshold Limit Value (TLV)). This copy shows that the findings reached Raybestos-Manhattan's president through Brown in March 1943. Gardner's covering letter of February 24 and the full outline are published as Leroy Gardner to Vandiver Brown Enclosing an Outline of His Monograph on Asbestosis (1943).

In Johns-Manville's index

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

Acknowledges receipt of letter dated 3/2/43. Letter enclosed Gardner's "Outline of Proposed Monograph on Asbestosis."

Related documents

• Vandiver Brown to Sumner Simpson on the Sponsors' Impatience for Gardner's Final Report (1942)
• Leroy Gardner to Vandiver Brown Enclosing an Outline of His Monograph on Asbestosis (1943)
• Ernest Muehleck of Keasbey & Mattison to W. W. F. Shepherd of Turner & Newall Enclosing Gardner's Monograph Outline (1943)

About this copy

This is document 05266 of the Sumner Simpson Papers, as numbered in the collection's index.