Vandiver Brown to Sumner Simpson on Asbestos Fiber Dust for Dr. Gardner (1937)

A one-page letter of January 22, 1937, from Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's general attorney, to Sumner Simpson, president of Raybestos-Manhattan, answering his note on the Memorandum of Agreement. Brown wrote that he had been "doing everything possible to assist Dr. Gardner in getting the experiments under way" and believed J-M had finally supplied asbestos fiber dust "of a sufficient degree of fineness to meet his requirements." Gardner estimated he would need about 1,200 pounds of the dust a year, which Brown expected J-M could provide "of uniform quality."

What it shows

Johns-Manville did more than help pay for Dr. Leroy Gardner's animal experiments at Saranac Laboratory: it ground and supplied the asbestos dust the animals breathed. Gardner's later interim report described the finely ground Canadian chrysotile used (Brown's letters of 1937 to 1940, in the Motley 1,000).

In Johns-Manville's index

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

Acknowledges receipt of letter dated 1/21/37. Informs that type of asbestos fiber dust has been deemed satisfactory by Dr. Gardner. Estimates about 1200 pounds of dust per year will be needed for experiments

Related documents

• Sumner Simpson to Vandiver Brown on the Last Signatures to the Saranac Agreement (1937)
• Vandiver Brown to F. E. Schluter of Thermoid Rubber on the Progress of the Saranac Dust Experiments (1936)

About this copy

This is document 03178 of the Sumner Simpson Papers, as numbered in the collection's index.