Collier's, "Dust Fights Dust" by Hannah Lees (1939)

A popular article in Collier's magazine of June 3, 1939, by Hannah Lees, with illustrations by George de Zayas, kept in Sumner Simpson's files. It told how a metallurgical engineer named Denny and Drs. Robson and Irwin, working at the McIntyre gold mine in Ontario and the Banting Institute in Toronto, found that rabbits breathing silica dust mixed with fine aluminum dust did not develop silicosis, apparently because the aluminum coated the silica particles. The article claimed silicosis had been "robbed forever of its lethal power" and said the mine planned to spray aluminum dust underground.

What it shows

The article is about silica, not asbestos, but it shows the kind of dust-disease news reaching the asbestos industry's executives in 1939, written for a mass readership in confident terms that the scientists themselves, as the article admits, would not yet commit to. Aluminum powder treatment for workers exposed to dust was taken up in later years, including at Johns-Manville (J. P. Woodard to A. S. Elsenbast on Planning Aluminum Therapy at Lompoc (1951)).

In Johns-Manville's index

Johns-Manville's attorneys indexed the Sumner Simpson Papers. Their index describes this document as follows:

"Dust Fights Dust." Gives history of experiments on test animals being exposed to silica dust. Experiments resulted in conclusion that aluminum dust particles mixed in with silica dust will not only coat the silica particles and prevent fibrosis but will actually help the lungs cast off silica.

About this copy

This is document 04031-04036 of the Sumner Simpson Papers, as numbered in the collection's index.