W. C. Dreessen and W. E. Fleischer, Asbestosis from Amosite Pipe Covering at Bath Iron Works (1944)

A report of December 19, 1944, by Dr. W. C. Dreessen of the U.S. Public Health Service and Lt. Cmdr. W. E. Fleischer, health consultant to the U.S. Maritime Commission, made because pipe coverers at Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, feared that amosite was "causing some respiratory troubles." Of 38 men who had handled asbestos pipe covering for two years or more, 12 showed significant X-ray changes: the two oldest, with the longest exposure, had "well established asbestosis," and four more with two and a half to four years' exposure had X-rays consistent with it. The authors recommended yearly X-rays, better exhaust ventilation and respirators, and moving the most affected men to dust-free work unless the dust was controlled.

What it shows

The worst X-ray changes were in men exposed to the heaviest dust, such as the operators of the band saw and small rotary saws, and the amosite changes were found "indistinguishable from those induced by chrysotile asbestos." The report repeats a 1942 survey's warning that conditions in the shop presented "a very real asbestosis hazard." By the end of the war, the government's own shipyard health program had found asbestosis in Navy pipe coverers after only a few years' work, a year before the Fleischer-Drinker Study was published calling pipe covering safe.