Lois Gaul to Dr. Paul Kotin Enclosing a Bibliography on Asbestos in Shipyards (1985)

A one-page Manville internal memo of November 22, 1985, from Lois Gaul to Dr. Paul Kotin, who headed the company's health and environmental work, with a copy to R. D. Batson, enclosing a 19-page bibliography dated November 21, 1985, "Asbestos in Shipyards in the Medical/Scientific Literature." Gaul compiled it "quickly" from Legal Department files, the company's health, safety and environment (HS&E) asbestos bibliography and National Library of Medicine databases, and warned that she had not checked the references. The list runs to 260 numbered papers in two parts, "Pre 1964" and "1964 to Present," from the 1930 Merewether and Price report to 1985 studies of shipyard workers and their families, each marked with its number in J-M's own literature file ("JMEA") or as a copy to be requested.

What it shows

The bibliography shows what the shipyard medical literature looked like to Manville in 1985, when it was arguing that the federal government, not J-M, was responsible for disease in Navy shipyards. Its pre-1964 section lists papers that Manville's files already held, such as the 1946 Fleischer-Drinker survey of pipe covering on naval vessels and 1950s European reports of asbestosis in insulation and port workers. Gaul noted that "very few of them will probably have a discussion of historical use of asbestos in shipyards."