Toronto Sun Articles on the Johns-Manville Toronto Plant, with Dr. Paul Kotin's Comments (1975)

Two Toronto Sun articles of February 12, 1975, about Johns-Manville's asbestos plant in Scarborough, Toronto, kept as a clipping in J-M's files. The first, "Workers wife: 'Job is killing him'," by Mark Bonokoski, quotes workers and their families, one of whom says young men coming to the plant "are never told by the company of asbestosis." The second, "Making plant safer," by Peter Clough, reports that plant officials admitted fiber levels had at times passed the plant's own "danger level" of two fibers per cubic centimeter, and quotes Dr. Paul Kotin, J-M's vice president for environmental safety: "You either market, mill or mine asbestos safely or you get out of the business."

What it shows

Kotin told the press that former employees then dying had been exposed 17 or 20 years earlier, when concentrations were higher, and that "there isn't a single standard that Johns-Manville does not" enforce more stringently. Asked about neighbors, he said cases were usually found in families of plant workers, since fibers were easily carried home into rugs and drapes. Within months J-M's own staff were reporting unlabeled fiber bags and a dust collector without enough suction at this plant (Reitze, May 1975; Swallow, July 1975).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

In an article in the Toronto Sun, 2/12/75, Dr. Kotin is quoted as saying that J-M enforces its asbestos standards more stringently than any other standard. "You either market, mill or mine asbestos safely or you get out of the business."