Tabershaw-Cooper Associates to Business Agents and Insulation Contractors on Respirators Under the Emergency Asbestos Standard (1972)

A two-page memorandum of March 3, 1972, from Tabershaw-Cooper Associates of Berkeley, California (Dr. Irving R. Tabershaw and Dr. W. Clark Cooper), to union business agents and insulation contractors, on respirators "for those working with asbestos since new emergency standards for asbestos require masks under certain circumstances." The firm had "delayed making specific recommendations on respirators up to now because of the many uncertainties regarding government standards for asbestos." It wrote that, apart from some tear-out work, "most excessive exposure to asbestos in the insulating trade requires the use of either a reusable or single use respirator," listed approved single-use and reusable half-masks, and recommended the Welsh Model 7165 disposable as "the most acceptable."

What it shows

The memo shows outside industrial hygiene consultants advising the insulation trade, union and employers together, in the months after the federal emergency asbestos standard of December 1971. It stressed that ventilation, enclosure, wet methods and good housekeeping "are far more important in reducing exposures" than masks, and said the firm would survey installations in the area. Cheaper, unapproved throwaway masks were acceptable, it said, only where exposure was limited to fibrous glass. Tabershaw and Cooper also studied dust from construction materials (Tebbens, Balzer, Cooper and Tabershaw, 1970).