H. M. Jackson to Dr. Paul Gross Sending Michael F. Diagula's Autopsy Protocol and Medical Records (1968)

A letter of February 6, 1968, from H. M. Jackson, Johns-Manville's director of industrial relations, to Dr. Paul Gross of the Industrial Hygiene Foundation of America in Pittsburgh, sending the autopsy protocol of Michael F. Diagula, a former worker at J-M's Waukegan, Illinois, plant, and asking for his comments "particularly related to the possible relationship of asbestos exposure to the pulmonary cancer." Jackson wrote that Diagula began work at Waukegan in 1935 and spent most of his more than 30 years in the Asbestos Cement Products Department, "in which he would have had substantial potential exposure to both chrysotile asbestos and silicate," and that tissue would be made available "if the matter becomes an active Workmen's Compensation claim." With it are an autopsy authorization, Diagula's death certificate (carcinoma of the lung, June 3, 1967), a 1954 X-ray report and a J-M medical report of October 1967.

What it shows

The 1954 report, by the roentgenologist Dr. Eugene Pitts, found changes that "suggest but are not unequivocally the result of pneumonoconiosis," adding that "this classification is of sufficient danger, legally, to indicate that the patient not be under heavy dust exposure." Later handwritten readings classed his films as "PM II." In the October 1967 report, J-M's Dr. T. H. Davison wrote that "Pneumoconiosis was not at anytime diagnosed" and that Diagula's own doctor did not consider his illness occupational. Gross answered in March (covering letter of March 8, 1968) that if significant asbestosis were present the cancer would be very hard to defend as non-occupational; he later examined the lungs (November 25, 1968). Diagula's claim is one of the two that a J-M memo of July 30, 1968 recommended settling quietly.

About this copy

The file continues with the hospital pathologist's autopsy report (pages 6–13), which is left out: the Library does not publish autopsy reports. The Social Security number on the death certificate is blacked out. The pages are marked as an exhibit to a deposition of Dr. Braun taken April 28, 1981.