Shawn T. Tilson on Jim Hatch's Report on the Market for Asbestos Removal (1980)

A Johns-Manville covering memo of September 26, 1980, from Shawn T. Tilson to four managers including M. Johnson in Montreal, with a four-page report of September 23 by Jim Hatch, who had just attended a four-day Ontario Research Foundation seminar on "the approved and recognized procedure for the safe removal of asbestos materials." Tilson said Hatch's report covered the seminar and "the immediate market potential for our Contract operations," called the field "a fantastic market opportunity," and said Hatch was already making school boards, governments, hospitals, institutions and major industrial companies aware of "J-M's expertise and competence to deal with this matter."

What it shows

Hatch wrote that "recent events and trends would point to a 'gold-mine' situation in dealing with the problems posed by Asbestos in buildings." He recalled that Turner Brothers Asbestos, a Turner & Newall subsidiary, had sold sprayed "Limpid" (Limpet) asbestos widely in Canada from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s, with a high proportion of amosite, "considered one of the more hazardous types," and that some 110,000 privately owned, leased buildings were put up in that period. Because of "public alarm," he said, "panic has set in" among those responsible for schools, leaving "vast potential" until the summer recess of 1981. He named industrial plants with old asbestos insulation and the demolition of sprayed buildings as markets still "virtually untapped"; in plants J-M could "sell a complete package" that "also opens the door to our insulation division." A reader's margin notes mark "opportunity," "more competition" and "demolition opportunity." Hatch's memo on removal methods, written the same day, is J. C. Hatch to F. Hartfield on Options and Procedures for Asbestos in Buildings (1980).