Saranac Laboratory Report on the Autopsy of Vernon Hall, a Waukegan Plant Worker, Finding Asbestosis and Lung Cancer (1950)

A cover letter of September 27, 1950, from Dr. Arthur J. Vorwald of the Saranac Laboratory to H. M. Jackson, Johns-Manville's safety engineer, with Saranac's eight-page report on Vernon Hall, a worker at J-M's Waukegan, Illinois, plant who died on April 28, 1950. Hall had worked for J-M since 1928, including 18 years in the Transite pipe department. Saranac's review of his chest X-rays and tissue found asbestosis ("The presence of asbestosis in this case cannot be denied") and a primary lung cancer that had spread to the liver.

What it shows

On the "possible causal relationship between the asbestosis and the pulmonary malignancy," Vorwald noted that asbestos fibers and bodies were far less common in the tumor than in the scarred lung, and concluded that whether asbestos "has the capacity to incite cancer remains for further epidemiological, clinical, and experimental studies," which "have not been made." The case reached Saranac in the same months the industry was planning its lung cancer study (the Saranac proposal). Earlier cases of asbestosis with lung cancer among J-M workers are in the Saranac autopsy index.

About this copy

Only Vorwald's cover letter is published here. Saranac's eight-page autopsy and case report on Vernon Hall is held back: the Library does not publish autopsy reports on named people.

Vorwald's cover letter is also filed with J-M's 1950 correspondence on the Lompoc "special list".

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

J-M factory worker Vernon Hall dies of asbestosis and lung cancer.