Dr. Paul Gross to H. M. Jackson Sending the Report on the Postmortem Examination of Michael Diagula's Lungs (1968)

A one-page letter of November 25, 1968, from Dr. Paul Gross, director of the research laboratory of the Industrial Hygiene Foundation of America, now at 5231 Centre Avenue, Pittsburgh, to Hugh M. Jackson, Johns-Manville's director of industrial relations. Gross encloses three copies of his report on the "Postmortem Examination of the Lungs of Michael Diagula," with an invoice for that work and for the four reports sent on March 8, 1968.

What it shows

Diagula had worked at J-M's Waukegan, Illinois, plant and died of lung cancer; his compensation claim is one of the two cases that a J-M memo of July 30, 1968 recommended settling quietly. In March 1968 Gross had told J-M that if asbestosis were present it would be "very difficult to defend" the cancer as non-occupational (his opinion of March 8, 1968). The enclosed report, written after he examined the lungs, found a primary lung cancer with mixed asbestos and silica dust disease and concluded: "In my opinion, it is not possible to prepare a reasonable defense against the thesis that exposure to asbestos dust was a (or the) cause of Mr. Diagula's lung cancer." That report, an autopsy examination of a named worker, is not published in the Library.