A/C Pipe Producers Association, A/C Pipe and Health (1977)

A booklet of the A/C Pipe Producers Association, the trade group of the asbestos-cement water pipe makers, whose members included Johns-Manville Sales Corporation, Canadian Johns-Manville, Certain-teed, Cement Asbestos Products Company and Atlas Asbestos Company. Its cover reads "Risk" and "Fact" around the title "A/C Pipe and Health." It treats risk as a matter of probability, says the asbestos in the pipe is "locked-in" the cement binder, and argues that with recommended work practices "the risk of working with A/C pipe is virtually non-existent" and that water carried in the pipe adds an "infinitesimal" amount of fiber. It concludes that A/C pipe "is not . . . and never will be a risk to the public."

What it shows

The booklet names asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma as diseases of "prolonged or heavy exposure to airborne asbestos," and says that "all identified occurrences of these diseases attributed to asbestos, have involved exposures in or related to occupational settings." It also says that non-smoking asbestos workers "show no more than the normally expected rate of lung cancer." Its own Appendix A lists fiber levels in field work on the pipe: with the recommended tools, operators' levels ran up to 1.99 fibers per cubic centimeter, and with an abrasive disc saw, which the booklet does not recommend, from 20.30 to 64.00, against an OSHA ceiling of 10. Most of the booklet is about drinking water: it cites water surveys and cancer figures from Duluth (see Duluth Water Supply), Switzerland, Nashville and Knoxville, and Connecticut, and closes with statements from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, Dr. Irving J. Selikoff, the National Cancer Institute and the American Water Works Association Research Foundation. Its bibliography cites "Johns-Manville Corporation, Personal Communications" as one source.

The text is nearly word for word the narration of the animated film Perception of Risk, which Johns-Manville's Corporate Marketing department made for the association. J-M had made the same case for its own pipe a few years earlier in an "Environmental Facts" paper.

About this copy

The scan holds the cover, the odd-numbered pages 3 to 23 and the back page listing the members; the even-numbered pages, which probably carried pictures, are not in the file. The cover is stamped "Produced in insurance litigation subject to protective order"; that order is no longer a bar to publication (owner's ruling, 2026-11-10).