Johns-Manville, Environmental Facts: Asbestos-Cement Water Pipe and Health (1973)

A four-page Johns-Manville "Environmental Facts" paper from its Environmental Affairs Department in Denver, "Asbestos-Cement Water Pipe and Health," answering questions about whether drinking water carried in asbestos-cement pipe could cause gastrointestinal cancer. It cites the U.S. Public Health Service's position that there was "a low probability of any health hazard," statements by Dr. George W. Wright and Dr. Irving J. Selikoff, and a 1972 report of the International Agency for Research on Cancer's advisory committee. It argues from four kinds of evidence (animal inhalation and feeding experiments, tests of municipal water, and falling gastrointestinal cancer death rates) that A/C pipe "poses no hazard."

What it shows

The paper reports a study of water in nine cities in which fibers were found only by electron microscope and "all samples contained some asbestos fiber before passing through A/C pipe," and compares cancer deaths in Nashville (no A/C pipe) and Knoxville (A/C pipe since 1938). It closes that to give up these products "simply on the basis of suspicions that are unsupported by medical proof, would be unwarranted." J-M's 1975 update made the same claim (Johns-Manville, Environmental Facts: Asbestos and Health, Update 1975 (1975)).