Irving J. Selikoff, E. Cuyler Hammond and Jacob Churg, Asbestos Exposure, Smoking, and Neoplasia (1968)

A seven-page article in the Journal of the American Medical Association of April 8, 1968, by Dr. Irving J. Selikoff and Dr. Jacob Churg of Mount Sinai School of Medicine and E. Cuyler Hammond of the American Cancer Society, on 370 members of the insulators' union in New York and Newark followed from 1963 to April 1967. Of 283 men with a history of regular cigarette smoking, 24 died of lung cancer; none of the 87 who did not smoke cigarettes did. The authors calculate that "asbestos workers who smoke have about 92 times the risk of dying of bronchogenic carcinoma as men who neither work with asbestos nor smoke cigarettes," and conclude that exposure "should be minimized" and that smokers "should stop immediately."

What it shows

The study added ten deaths from mesothelioma among the same men, a disease so rare that none would have been expected. The authors note that insulators' dust exposure was light compared with asbestos factory work, and that surveys of the trade had "generally been within the 5 million particles per cubic foot permissible limits" then accepted (see Threshold Limit Value (TLV)). This copy is stamped as held in the library of J-M's Health, Safety and Environment Department. The last three pages are a later typescript paper by Hammond and Selikoff following the same men through 1971. See also Selikoff Studies and Synergistic Effect.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

Johns-Manville's own chronology of what the company knew describes this document as follows:

Selikoff notes lung cancer based on exposures below 5 mppcf among insulators, focuses now on synergistic pathologic effect of asbestos plus smoking (smoker who also is asbestos worker has 92 times the risk of a non-exposed non-smoker).