Robert W. Whitt to C. B. Allen on Waukegan Transite Pipe Dust Stations Over the TLV (1973)

A confidential two-page memo of January 26, 1973, from Robert W. Whitt of Waukegan Environmental Control to C. B. Allen, copied to G. L. Swallow, reporting new dust samples at stations of the Transite pipe plant in Waukegan, Illinois, that had been flagged for "special priority." Most now read below the threshold limit value of 5 fibers per cubic centimeter. The exceptions were three samples taken while unloading a boxcar of "African Blue Fiber" (crocidolite): 114.3, 169.6 and 107.4 fibers per cubic centimeter, more than twenty times the limit.

What it shows

The Waukegan Transite pipe department had a long history of dust problems (the 1949 engineering report on its dust system, Vorwald's 1951 letter on asbestosis there). By 1973 the regular machine stations were mostly within the federal limit, but the men unloading crocidolite from boxcars were breathing many times that amount. A handwritten note sends the memo on to Bob Campbell in Denver on February 6, 1973, and another, in the margin beside the boxcar figures, appears to ask whether these were government shipments too.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Memorandum from Robert Whitt to C.B. Allen, dated 1/26/73, regarding "Waukegan Transite Pipe-Dust Stations Over TLV - Request for Special Priority." The list does not state the hazard measured but based on the cited TLV of 5 f/cc, some of the stations used asbestos. The three worst samples were taken during the unloading of a box car of African Blue Fiber, i.e., crocidolite. The counts were 114.3, 169.6, and 107.4. A hand drawn check mark has been made next to these counts and the marginalia (possibly George Swallow) reads: "God! are these government shipments, too?"

Related documents

• J-M General Engineering Report on the Waukegan Transite Pipe Dust System (1949)
• L. Seppala to Boyd Mulder on the Waukegan Medical Schedule (1960)
• Arthur J. Vorwald to J. P. Woodard on Asbestosis at the Waukegan Plant (1951)