J. P. Woodard and Arthur J. Vorwald on the Delayed Saranac Asbestosis Monograph (1948)

Two letters of June 1948 between J. P. Woodard of Johns-Manville's New York headquarters and Dr. Arthur J. Vorwald, director of the Saranac Laboratory. Woodard found word that the monograph on asbestosis would be late "disturbing," because there was "a real ferment under way in Quebec" over industrial health: laymen were writing in magazines and newspapers, organized workers were concerned, and the government had taken steps. He hoped Saranac's work would help in "getting at some matters that are facts and not conjectures." Vorwald replied on June 14 that the delay was "no less disturbing to us than it is to you," called the work "a monumental task," and reported that the first group of men from Canada had arrived for study.

What it shows

Woodard sent blind copies to Dr. A. J. Lanza of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and to J-M's A. R. Fisher. Both letters show J-M pressing Saranac for the industry-funded asbestos study as a source of facts for the debate in Quebec (see also Woodard's letter of March 1948). Vorwald agreed the monograph "must be factual and not conjectural." When the report came that fall, the sponsors' first concern was what to remove from it (Vandiver Brown's October memorandum).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Letter from Vorwald to J.P. Woodard dated 6/14/48. Responds to J-M's complaints concerning delays in completing the monograph on asbestosis and also refers to initiation of Saranac studies of Canadian workers. A Woodard letter dated 6/1/48 to Vorwald urged that everything possible be done to complete the monograph because of the need for facts and certainty to rebut the proliferation of information from "laymen with little knowledge of occupational disease problems."