Fred L. Pundsack's Testimony Against OSHA's Proposed Asbestos Warning Labels, with His Letter to Arthur Goldberg (1972)

The six-page written testimony that Dr. Fred L. Pundsack, Johns-Manville's vice president for research and development, gave on March 16, 1972, at the U.S. Department of Labor's hearing on a permanent asbestos standard under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). He argued that the proposed warning labels would "destroy large segments of the industry and eliminate thousands of jobs," and objected most to the Advisory Committee's label reading "May Cause Asbestosis and Cancer," which he called "unnecessarily frightening and alarming." He proposed that products with asbestos "locked-in-place" by cement, resins or plastics carry no label at all, and offered a milder caution label for loose fiber and friable insulation that "alerts and instructs, but it does not terrify." In a follow-up letter of March 24 to hearing examiner Arthur Goldberg he sent lists of "locked-in" and "non-locked-in" products for the record.

What it shows

Pundsack's main example was asbestos-cement pipe. He told the hearing that J-M knew "of not one single case of asbestos-related disease" from installing or using it, that a cancer label would make the industry "cease to exist within 2 to 4 years," and that labeling the pipe would be "analagous to sentencing to death an innocent victim." His own proposed labels said only that inhaling asbestos "in excessive quantities over long periods of time may be harmful," with no mention of cancer. In July the Asbestos Information Association told its members that OSHA planned to use Pundsack's "non-locked-in" list as its labeling criteria (Swetonic's letter on borderline products).

The third file is 103 pages of the official March 16 transcript, certified by the Labor Department in 1978. It begins as Pundsack introduces Dr. George W. Wright as "our next testifier" and carries on through Wright's statement and questioning, Henry B. Moreno's testimony and the insulation industry witnesses (their written statements).

About this copy

Parts of the same transcript are also published as separate Library pages: Dr. Wright's testimony, Moreno's testimony and the insulation industry witnesses' testimony.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Pundsack testifies on 3/16/72 against the wording of the proposed OSHA label on the ground that it is unnecessarily frightening and alarming.