Sumner Simpson to Vandiver Brown on His Surprise at Gardner's Second Progress Report (1938)

A one-page carbon copy of a letter of April 27, 1938, from Sumner Simpson, president of Raybestos-Manhattan, to Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's general attorney, about Dr. Leroy U. Gardner's report on the asbestos dust experiments. The results were "so surprising that I do not know what to say or think." Simpson could not "help thinking there is something we have missed in the way of actual conditions": he had thought the fineness of the ground asbestos "would produce considerably different results in one year's time." He was sending the report to the factory and would pass on any comments from "the doctors."

What it shows

Simpson had expected the very fine dust in Gardner's experiment to cause disease quickly, and he took the negative result as a sign the experiment might not reflect conditions in the plants. Brown's reply of April 28 read the same results differently.

In Johns-Manville's index

Johns-Manville's attorneys indexed the Sumner Simpson Papers. Their index describes this document as follows:

Informs that the results of Dr. Gardner's experiments are completely different than expected. It was thought that fine dust would cause considerable fibrosis in a year's time. Speculates on whether the experiments are missing some vital ingredient.

Related documents

• Leroy U. Gardner, Second Progress Report on Experimental Asbestosis (1938)
• Vandiver Brown to Sumner Simpson Enclosing Gardner's Second Progress Report (1938)
• Vandiver Brown to Sumner Simpson on Gardner's Findings and Claims of Progressive Fibrosis (1938)
• Sumner Simpson to E. H. Jeffords Sending Gardner's Second Progress Report (1938)

About this copy

This is document 03450-03451 of the Sumner Simpson Papers, as numbered in the collection's index.