Dr. Kenneth W. Smith to J. O. Eby and Dr. Robert T. P. deTreville on the Public Health Service Asbestos Worker Survey (1965)

Two letters of April 29, 1965, from Dr. Kenneth W. Smith, Johns-Manville's medical director. The first, to J. O. Eby at the Jeffrey Mine, explains that the U.S. Public Health Service had begun "a long range program to study the health of asbestos workers in this country" and had given the Industrial Hygiene Foundation a grant to review the statistics it compiled when it studied "our records under the sponsorship of Q.A.M.A. in 1951-52." Smith favors letting the Foundation use the Canadian Johns-Manville records but cannot speak for the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association, and asks Eby to put the request to it: "I definitely recommend that this should be given because the previous survey had several loopholes. If existing data can be built into the present U.S.P.H.S. nation-wide survey, it could be very beneficial to our industry." The second, to Dr. Robert T. P. deTreville of the Foundation, confirms by letter that the Foundation can use the Canadian J-M records "as part of the restudy of Dan Braun's survey."

What it shows

"Dan Braun's survey" was the Industrial Hygiene Foundation's study of Quebec asbestos workers for the mining association, directed by Dr. Daniel C. Braun; it is probably the work published in 1958 as Braun and Truan's study of lung cancer in asbestos miners. In 1965 J-M's medical director supported reopening those records for the Public Health Service, while acknowledging that the earlier survey "had several loopholes."