F. Homburger, "The Co-Incidence of Primary Carcinoma of the Lungs and Pulmonary Asbestosis" (1943)

An 11-page article by Dr. F. Homburger of the pathology laboratory at Yale University School of Medicine, published in The American Journal of Pathology in September 1943. Homburger gathered 16 reported cases of lung cancer in people with asbestosis from the medical literature since 1935, added three autopsy cases of his own, and brought "the total number to 19." He concluded that neither statistics nor tissue studies yet gave "any reliable answer" to whether asbestosis was a cause of lung cancer.

What it shows

The article's table lists the work of the people in the reported cases, among them weavers, spinners and two pipe insulators. Within weeks Dr. Leroy Gardner cited it to the National Advisory Cancer Council as "a total of 19" cases in which the two conditions were found together (his letter of September 29, 1943). The article does not concern Johns-Manville directly; it shows what was in the American medical literature by 1943.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Homburger; Medical Literature contains nineteen cases of asbestosis and lung cancer.