Sumner Simpson to Leroy Gardner Requesting the 1938 Saranac Report (1939)

A short letter from Sumner Simpson, president of Raybestos-Manhattan, written from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Dr. Leroy Gardner of the Saranac Laboratory. Simpson asks for a copy of the laboratory's 1938 report and of the paper Gardner read before the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers in February 1939.

What it shows

The letter is the follow-through on an exchange of the two days before. On May 3, 1939, Vandiver Brown had urged Simpson to get the 1938 report from Gardner and read its references to asbestosis (Brown's letter); on May 4 Simpson replied that he had not seen the papers and would "send for them at once" (Simpson's reply). This is that request.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

A letter dated 5/5/1938 to Dr. LeRoy Gardner requests a copy of his paper and recent report of the Saranac Laboratory in advance of a meeting scheduled for February 1939 of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers

Editor's note: J-M's description dates the letter May 5, 1938, and says the AIME meeting was scheduled for February 1939. The letter asks for a paper Gardner had already read at that meeting, and the surrounding correspondence places it in May 1939.

Related documents

• Memorandum of Agreement Funding Gardner's Asbestos Experiments at Saranac Laboratory (1936)