Leroy U. Gardner to U. E. Bowes on First Tests of the Calcium Silicate Samples (1943)

A letter of February 23, 1943, from Dr. Leroy U. Gardner, director of the Saranac Laboratory, to U. E. Bowes of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, written the day the calcium silicate samples arrived. Gardner said he "would suspect that they might be a source of respiratory difficulty" but needed more information, and planned chemical and X-ray analysis and injections into guinea pigs. Meanwhile he advised Bowes to "regard it with suspicion" and protect pilot plant workers with respirators if there were "appreciable concentrations in the atmosphere."

What it shows

Gardner noted that the material's physical properties "suggest that it might act like asbestos," and wrote that it seemed "to behave more like asbestos than anything we have discovered." He did not yet know that chrysotile had been added to it; Bowes told him soon after (see Gardner's letter of March 12, 1943). The letter answers Bowes's letters of February 12.

In Johns-Manville's index

Johns-Manville's legal department indexed the Motley 1,000 in 1984. Its index describes this document as follows:

Dr. L.U. Gardner letter to U.E. Bowes, 5/23/43, regarding preliminary work done on the health hazards of the synthetic calcium silicate sample which Dr. Gardner just received from Bowes. Dr. Gardner suspects that the material might be "a source of respiratory difficulty." But that his suspicion cannot be confirmed until Saranac has obtained considerably more information. Dr. Gardner requests certain information from Bowes and indicates that preliminary animal work (injections of calcium silicate) should be far enough advanced after three or five months to determine whether it would be desirable to plan on an inhalation experiment.

Related documents

• U. E. Bowes to Leroy U. Gardner Asking Saranac to Test a Hydrous Calcium Silicate (1943)

About this copy

This is document 235 of the Motley 1,000, from the set the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust's records facility certified as true copies, pages CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001387 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001388.