Air Hygiene Foundation Digest Abstract of Leroy U. Gardner's "Recent Developments in Relation to Silicosis" (1940)

A one-page typed copy of abstract No. 278 from the Air Hygiene Foundation's "Digest of Industrial Hygiene" for April 1940, summarizing Dr. Leroy U. Gardner's article "Recent Developments in Relation to Silicosis" (Industrial Medicine, February 1940). It reported that work at Saranac Laboratory suggested inhaled asbestos fibres irritate the lungs "not because they are silicates but because they are stiff fibres which mechanically irritate the lungs." Asbestos ground so fine that few fibres were more than a few microns long had produced no fibrosis in three years of inhalation, while a third of that concentration of long fibres had produced "well marked fibrosis in two years." The rest of the abstract concerns free silica. Vandiver Brown sent this excerpt to Sumner Simpson on May 10, 1940.

What it shows

This is the passage that led Vandiver Brown to complain that Gardner was publishing results of the industry-funded asbestos experiments without the sponsors' approval (Brown's letter of May 10, 1940). It shows that by early 1940 Gardner's finding that long asbestos fibres produced fibrosis in animals within two years had reached print in summary form.

In Johns-Manville's index

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

Abstract is from Air Hygiene Foundation's "Digest of Industrial Hygiene - Literature - News - Development" April, 1940. Abstract is of Dr. Gardner's article "Recent Developments in Relation to Silicosis." This discusses experimental work at Saranac lab which has led to conclusion that irritation from asbestos dust is mechanical not chemical in nature. States this is opposite of results from experiments dealing with free silica.

Related documents

• Vandiver Brown to Sumner Simpson on Gardner Publishing Without Approval (1940)

About this copy

This is document 04518 of the Sumner Simpson Papers, as numbered in the collection's index.