Lois Gaul's Manville Memo on J. B. Ficklen's Manual of Industrial Health Hazards (1987)

A one-page Manville internal memo to file of January 5, 1987, from Lois Gaul, on the Manual of Industrial Health Hazards by J. B. Ficklen, a chemical engineer with the Travelers Insurance Company (Service to Industry, West Hartford, Connecticut, 1940). She reports that the main text, covering "over ninety noxious vapors, gases and dusts," does not discuss silica or asbestosis, but that a separate chart of hazards in 108 manufacturing classifications lists asbestos dust as a hazard "in asbestos goods manufacturing and in cable and wire insulating." It is "not listed as a hazard in ship building."

What it shows

This is one of a series of short memos written at Manville in the mid-1980s, while the company was defending asbestos lawsuits, recording what early books said about asbestos, and in particular which trades were then listed as exposed.