Raybestos-Manhattan's North Charleston Manager to Sumner Simpson on a State Health Board Dust Study (1936)

A two-page confidential letter of October 27, 1936, from E. H. Jefferds, general manager of Raybestos-Manhattan's General Asbestos & Rubber Division in North Charleston, South Carolina, to Sumner Simpson, the company's president. A Dr. Wilson of the South Carolina State Board of Health had asked permission for the Board, working with the U.S. Public Health Service, to study dust conditions at the plant: to inspect it, to "make dust counts in the various departments," and to "X-ray each and everyone of the employees." Jefferds recommended that Simpson agree: "I am not afraid of anyone coming in this plant at the present time and making an inspection."

What it shows

Jefferds writes that the plant had been suggested to the Public Health Service as a model plant after talks with Drs. Lanza and McConnell of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. He asked whether the company would get a copy of the report (it would) and whether, if the company were "bothered with damage suits," the investigators would testify for it; Wilson said they could testify about the conditions they found. The study was planned for the following spring. Jefferds also appears in the 1936 letters about Otto Binder, worried about suits pending against his division.

About this copy

This is a Raybestos-Manhattan letter, not a Johns-Manville one. The copy is very faint, and the writer's initials, read as E. H. Jefferds's, are uncertain.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

South Carolina State Board of Health establishes x-ray and physical examinations for asbestos workers on 10/27/36.

Editor's note: J-M's description says the South Carolina State Board of Health established X-ray and physical examinations for asbestos workers. The document is a Raybestos-Manhattan letter reporting the Board's request to study one plant; it does not set up any examination program.