Industrial Hygiene Digest, 1968

The Industrial Hygiene Digest was the monthly abstract journal of the Industrial Hygiene Foundation of America, Mellon Institute, Pittsburgh, the research body that industry, including Johns-Manville, paid to follow the science of occupational disease. It went to the foundation's member companies. Of the May 1968 issue (Volume 32), Johns-Manville's file kept only the cover and the opening editorial, free to read online or download; the abstracts that followed are missing.

The editorial, "Progress in IHF Asbestos Bioeffects Research," signed by R. T. P. deTreville, tells the members how the foundation's laboratory saw the asbestos science in 1968. It prints a letter from Dr. J. Knox, who had studied the Rochdale asbestos textile workers for many years, disputing the 1968 paper of Selikoff, Hammond and Churg on asbestos, smoking and cancer. It reports that Dr. Paul Gross had produced lung cancer in 31% of rats exposed to chrysotile in the foundation's laboratory, and that the foundation was looking at trace metals from the mill hammers, rather than the fiber, as a possible cause. It quotes the British Ministry of Labour's advisory panel that crocidolite cannot be taken to be the only kind of asbestos behind mesothelioma, offers the foundation's hypothesis that "some impurity or associated substance," not the asbestos alone, may be the major factor, and says its research on fibrous dusts would cost over a million dollars by 1970.

In the Library

Pages on this site about the diseases and companies these issues name:

• Asbestos and Lung Cancer - Causes Compensation and Free Screening: Editorial: lung cancer in rats exposed to hammer-milled chrysotile in the IHF laboratory (P. Gross), and trace metals from the worn mill hammers (May 1968, p. 3)
• Asbestosis: Editorial: other fibrous dusts form ferruginous bodies like asbestos bodies (Gross et al., Archives of Pathology) (May 1968, p. 3)
• Mesothelioma: Editorial: J. M. G. Davis, "Asbestos Bodies and Bioeffects — A Detective Story," and whether only crocidolite causes mesothelioma (May 1968, p. 4)