Johns-Manville, Environmental Facts: Asbestos and Health, Update 1975 (1975)

"Environmental Facts," a six-page Johns-Manville question-and-answer statement headed "Update 1975: Asbestos and Health." It answers questions such as "Does the use of asbestos present a health risk to the general public?" ("No"), whether water from asbestos-cement pipe is hazardous ("The available evidence does not indicate any risk"), and whether OSHA rules had affected J-M's sales and earnings ("No"). It says J-M had spent more than $20 million over the past decade on dust control in its U.S. plants and $75 million expanding the Jeffrey Mine in Quebec, and that it had not sought to curtail its asbestos business.

What it shows

The statement presents disease among long-time asbestos workers as "not an indication of present-day conditions" but the result of past conditions and a general "lack of knowledge" shared by medicine, government, labor and industry, and says that "much of what has been said and written" about asbestos and health "has been inaccurate and distorted." It reports that more than 75 percent of J-M's U.S. asbestos operations were already within the 2-fiber limit due in July 1976, that J-M's people had talked with some 800 asbestos customers in the past year, and that J-M had formed a Department of Health, Safety and Environment in 1974. It closes: "all of us at J-M can proudly state that we have nothing to hide."