Vandiver Brown and Leroy Gardner on the Status of the Asbestos Dust Experiments (1941)

On November 3, 1941, Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's attorney and secretary, wrote to Dr. Leroy Gardner, director of the Saranac Laboratory, that he had not heard from him for some time about the asbestos dust experiments Gardner had been conducting "with the support of a group of asbestos textile manufacturers," and that after the fifth year of the work "we may expect to receive your final report." Gardner answered on November 5 that it would take time to summarize five years of data, but he would bring the matter up to date "for your own information and that of the contributing companies," with a fuller report after the first of the year.

What it shows

Gardner gave Brown his findings in brief. The "tentative conclusion as to the inactivity of short fibre asbestos" still stood, "probably the most important conclusion we have to offer," and he expected to show "quite definitely that asbestosis does not progress after cessation of exposure." He asked Brown's permission to continue part of the dust exposures a few months longer. Brown sent a copy of his letter to Sumner Simpson of Raybestos-Manhattan, who had asked him days earlier whether he had heard from Gardner (Simpson's letter of October 31). The exchange follows the arrangement under which the sponsors received the results first (the 1936 agreement).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

Vandiver Brown writes to Dr. L.U. Gardner, 11/3/41, and asks when the contributing asbestos textile manufacturers can expect a written report of his experiments. Brown points out that they have now passed the 5-year mark on what was to be a 3-year study. (By 1946 Dr. Gardner still had not written his report, notwithstanding constant prodding by the textile manufacturers to complete it.) Dr. Gardner responds to Brown in letter dated 11/5/1941.