Minutes of a J-M Meeting with Dr. Lanza on a Waukegan Silicosis Case and the Gardner Asbestos Report (1947)

"Strictly confidential" minutes of a meeting held in J. P. Woodard's office at Johns-Manville on August 6, 1947, with Dr. Anthony Lanza of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and J-M's C. W. Hite, N. L. Jackson and J. E. Hamilton, copied to Vandiver Brown. Most of the three pages discuss the X-rays of Bishop McMillan, a rubber mill operator at J-M's Waukegan, Illinois, plant who had been off work since January 1947. Lanza could not see how the man got "that much silicosis in three years" and remarked that "people of this race didn't do too well on silica dust." He advised sending the films to Dr. Arthur Vorwald at Saranac.

What it shows

The minutes also report on the unfinished Saranac asbestos study after Leroy Gardner's death. Dr. Kenneth Lynch had written up a report from Gardner's notes, and Lanza thought it could be presented "as an entity, as a Saranac report." But Vorwald, the laboratory's new director, had written that he was reluctant to publish it because later results from Gardner's work might not agree with its conclusions. Lanza said he would take up the "Asbestos Report" with Vorwald himself and believed it would "stand by itself, if Dr. Vorwald will release it." J-M's officers were following closely when and in what form the industry-funded study would come out (see the January 1947 meeting with Lanza).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

Johns-Manville's own chronology of what the company knew describes this document as follows:

Lanza, Hite, Jackson and Hamilton meet on 8/6/47 to discuss disability of Bishop McMillan, Waukegan plantworker with silicosis in absence of known history of exposure. Lanza notes racial susceptibility. July memorandum, Jackson to Day calls for work history to seek second opinion. Also claim of Hubert Christian.

Editor's note: J-M's description mentions a July memorandum from Jackson to Day and a claim by Hubert Christian. Neither is in these three pages of minutes.