Vandiver Brown to C. George Krueger of New Jersey on Postponing an Asbestos Code (1948)

A one-page letter of August 16, 1948, from Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's secretary, to C. George Krueger, director of the Division of Engineering and Safety of the New Jersey Department of Labor, on the state's "Proposed Industrial Code - Asbestos." Krueger had asked about the Saranac report on Leroy Gardner's asbestos work. Brown replied that J-M still did not have it, although Saranac had promised it for more than a year. "We still believe that it would be unwise to draft a code for asbestos until we have the Saranac report," he wrote, and he asked Krueger to "postpone a little longer" the proposed "Asbestos Code."

What it shows

Brown repeated J-M's promise of "continued cooperation" in setting "accurate standards for the use of this material." The report he was waiting for reached the sponsors in October, and in November they agreed to delete its references to cancer and tumors before publication (Brown to Kelly, November 12, 1948). Brown had dealt with New Jersey's dust disease laws before (in 1939).

In Johns-Manville's chronology

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

On 8/16/48, Brown urges New Jersey Department of Labor to postpone establishing standards for asbestos exposure pending results of Gardner study.