Dr. Philip E. Enterline to J. C. Gilson and John H. Marsh on a Mortality Study at Raybestos-Manhattan's Stratford Plant (1975)

Eight pages: a letter of May 29, 1975, from Dr. Philip E. Enterline, professor of biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh, to Dr. J. C. Gilson of the Medical Research Council's Pneumoconiosis Unit in Wales; his letter of May 19 to John H. Marsh, director of corporate planning at Raybestos-Manhattan; and his revised proposal of April 7, 1975, with a draft research agreement and a two-year budget of $65,811. Enterline proposed to study the deaths of about 4,000 men who had worked a year or more at R-M's Stratford, Connecticut, plant between 1947 and 1964, following them through 1974. He told Gilson that personnel records on men employed before January 1947 had been destroyed.

What it shows

To keep the cost down, Enterline dropped the plan to relate deaths to the intensity of dust exposure, though he thought it "extremely important." He also reported that Joe Wagoner's study of R-M's Manheim plant had found 665 deaths where 526 were expected, 46 of them from respiratory cancer where 19 were expected. The draft agreement said individual records would be kept confidential "and only statistical summaries of such records will be published"; R-M's response to that paragraph is Motley document 665.

In Johns-Manville's index

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

Dr. P.E. Enterline letter to Dr. J.C. Gilson, 5/29/75, regarding Dr. Enterline's proposed study to determine the mortality experience of workers at a R-M manufacturing plant in Stratford, CT, to relate this to duration of asbestos exposure, and to make comparisons with the general population of the State of Ct. Workers employed a year or more in production or maintenance during the period 1/1/47 through 12/31/64 would be studied. The cohort would be followed through 1974. Dr. Enterline estimates that 4,000 workers would qualify, that the study would require about 2 years, and that the total cost of the study would be about $65,000. Dr. P.E. Enterline letter to J.H. Marsh, 5/19/75, regarding the proposed asbestos workers mortality study. Dr. Enterline encloses a revised proposal which among other things contains some assurances about the fate of the records at the completion of the project and what would happen in the unlikely event that Dr. Enterline should leave the university.

Related documents

• Joseph F. Glennon to J. H. Marsh on Requiring Prior Approval to Publish Dr. Enterline's Data (1975)

About this copy

This is document 666 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-002316 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-002323. The proposal's cover page (CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-002319) is left out of the copy here because it shows a number in Social Security format.