J-M Today, Special Asbestos Update, Volume 2, Number 3 (1980)

An eight-page "Special Asbestos Update" issue of J-M Today (Volume 2, Number 3, 1980), the magazine Johns-Manville's Corporate Relations Department published every other month for its employees. It opens with J-M's seven-point asbestos policy ("We will continue to market asbestos and asbestos products which can be manufactured and used safely"), followed by the company's positions on 18 issues, an interview with John A. McKinney, J-M's chairman, and Dr. Paul Kotin, its senior vice president for health, safety and environment, and articles on the company's lawsuits against the Navy and its insurers.

What it shows

The issue gave employees the company's case at the height of the litigation. Under "Cover-up" (circled by a reader on this copy), J-M said the evidence "clearly shows J-M to have acted wholly consistent with available medical knowledge," that when "the so-called 'conspiracy papers'" (the Sumner Simpson Papers) came to trial judges had found no basis for cover-up charges, and that its record was "hardly the actions of a company trying to cover-up." The hairdryer entry called the "great hairdryer scare" "a media fraud aided and abetted by the Consumer Products Safety Commission." McKinney said lung cancer "would not be a significant health problem" were it not for smoking, that J-M's 1979 legal costs on asbestos were "about $2 million," and that he did not think J-M would lose most of its lawsuits. Dr. William Paul, the medical director, said the evidence "indicates that under properly controlled conditions, working with asbestos is not hazardous to health." Other pages argue that the government "must share responsibility" for wartime shipyard exposure, profile a veteran Jeffrey Mine worker who would "encourage people to work in this industry," and repeat Fred Pundsack's "three diseases, two time frames, three classes of workers." Page 3 reprints an October 1979 Science editorial by Philip H. Abelson, "Cancer: Opportunism and opportunity."

About this copy

The file holds two copies of the issue; only the first (pages 1 to 8) is published.