P. F. Coggins Telex on Hopeman Brothers and the Marinite Caution Labels (1970)

A J-M telex from P. F. Coggins to D. B. Wingerter and others about the "health hazard caution" labels on marine Marinite sheets. Hopeman Brothers, a marine customer, was taking about 10 minutes a sheet to remove the labels, including final sanding, and asked for no more labels on its sheets or it would cancel its orders. Coggins said the problem had to be solved by December 15. Below it, a December 17 telex from J. F. Mell at the Billerica plant tells Wingerter to "make up your mind" because "all changes cost money."

What it shows

The second page is a handwritten note by Coggins, dated February 1, 1971, to M. W. Burleson. It says Hopeman removed the labels with a putty knife and hand sanding, and that J-M's lawyers then approved putting the same caution wording on the sheets with a red-ink rubber stamp, which was being done on marine panels from Billerica. Another customer, AVM Corp., heard of the problem, asked for the same treatment and threatened to cancel an order for about 4,000 sheets. The complaint was about the work of taking a stick-on label off finished panels; J-M answered it by changing how the warning was applied, as Wingerter's memo of December 10 shows, and kept the wording. The file shows how slowly labels reached Marinite: see Burleson's 1969 memo noting that Marinite carried no warning label at all.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

Johns-Manville's own chronology of what the company knew describes this document as follows:

Telex from Coggins to Bartlett, Lane, Wingerter and Swiacky, dated 12/8/70, regarding warning labels on Marinite sheets. A customer (Hopeman Bros.) complained that it was taking approximately ten minutes per sheet to remove the J-M health hazard caution label by sanding. The customer requested either no more labels or cancellation of its order.