Ralph Zumwalde (NIOSH) to E. A. Piersall Transmitting Two NIOSH Papers on Asbestos Exposure in a South Dakota Gold Mine (1976)

A March 12, 1976 cover letter from NIOSH's Ralph Zumwalde to Union Carbide's Metals Division safety director E. A. Piersall, enclosing two NIOSH papers presented in March 1975 on a mortality study of Lead, South Dakota gold miners and on asbestos fiber exposures in that mine. The papers report excess respiratory cancer and nonmalignant respiratory disease among miners exposed to fibrous grunerite (amosite) at airborne concentrations below 2 fibers/cc, and call for reevaluating the OSHA asbestos standard.

What the document holds

• Page 1: Cover letter, R. Zumwalde (NIOSH) to E. A. Piersall (Union Carbide Metals Division), March 12, 1976, with handwritten/typed routing note to Larrison and Thurber
• Pages 2-15: Paper: 'Mortality Patterns Among Hard Rock Gold Miners Exposed to an Asbestiform Mineral' by Gillam, Dement, Lemen, Wagoner, Archer and Blejer (NIOSH), presented 24 March 1975, with references
• Pages 16-21: Tables 1-6 for the mortality paper (deaths by cause, respiratory deaths by interval, fiber identification, fiber concentrations, fiber size, comparison with Minnesota samples); text partly garbled in OCR
• Pages 22-28: Paper: 'Asbestos Fiber Exposures in a Hard Rock Gold Mine' by Dement, Zumwalde and Wallingford (NIOSH), presented 24 March 1975
• Pages 29-31: Figures 1-3: electron micrographs, diffraction patterns and x-ray spectra of grunerite (amosite) fibers
• Pages 32-35: Tables for the fiber exposure paper (fiber identification, concentrations, size distributions, comparison of fiber length distributions across operations); text garbled in OCR

People and organizations

From Ralph Zumwalde (Environmental Investigations Branch, NIOSH) to Mr. E.A. Piersall (Safety Director, Union Carbide Corporation, Metals Division, Grand Junction, Colorado).

• Ralph D. Zumwalde (author)
• E. A. Piersall (recipient)
• Center for Disease Control (named)
• Metals Division (named)
• New York Academy of Sciences (named)
• NIOSH (named)
• Social Security Administration (named)
• South Dakota School of Mines (named)
• U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (named)
• U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) (named)
• Union Carbide Corporation (named)

Related pages

Pages on our site about what this document covers: Amosite: Brown Asbestos and the US Navy · Minnesota Asbestos Exposure Sites: Worksites, Industries, and Trust Coverage · NIOSH · OSHA Asbestos Standard · South Dakota Asbestos Exposure Sites: Worksites, Industries, and Trust Coverage.

About this copy

This is document UC-3574 of the Union Carbide documents, documents produced and used as evidence in asbestos lawsuits against Union Carbide, 35 pages. Production numbers UCC 007940 to A:8018.