Asbestos History: What the Industry Knew, and When

For most of the twentieth century, the companies that mined asbestos and made it into products knew more about its dangers than the people who worked with it. This part of the Library tells that history through the companies' own papers: their letters, memos, meeting minutes and reports, many of which came to light in the lawsuits that followed.

Much of it comes from Johns-Manville, for decades the largest asbestos company in the United States. J-M kept its own chronology of what the company knew and when, one entry for each document. We are publishing that chronology, with the documents themselves, a decade at a time. Every document named below has its own page, where you can read it online or download it. The full list, year by year, is in the Johns-Manville Knowledge Chronology.

Before 1930: the first warnings

The danger of asbestos dust was on the record long before the 1930s. In 1907, Dr. H. Montague Murray told a British government committee that an asbestos carding-room worker had died of lung fibrosis, and that the disease would occur "if there is dust." In 1918, a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report said that American and Canadian life insurers generally declined asbestos workers because of the industry's health hazards. In 1924, Dr. W. E. Cooke reported the death of a 33-year-old asbestos factory worker from lung fibrosis, and in 1927 he gave the disease its name, "pulmonary asbestosis." By 1929 a former Manville plant worker, Anna Pirskowski, had sued Johns-Manville in federal court, and Metropolitan Life had begun surveying the dust at J-M's Manville plant.

The 1930s: the industry learns, and decides what to say

The disease is found

By 1930 the danger was no longer in doubt. In Britain, a government study by Merewether and Price found lung fibrosis in about one in four asbestos workers examined, more often the longer they had worked. Britain made asbestosis compensable the next year, in the Asbestos Industry (Asbestosis) Scheme.

In the United States, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company surveyed the plants of Johns-Manville and Raybestos-Manhattan. At Raybestos-Manhattan's Manheim plant it X-rayed 20 workers and found dust injury in ten. In 1931, Metropolitan Life's Dr. Anthony Lanza urged J-M to examine all its workers and reported that masks were not effective. In 1932, X-rays of J-M's Manville, New Jersey, workers, read by a federal doctor, showed widespread lung disease. J-M asked that the results be kept confidential.

Dust control, plant by plant

J-M's vice president, S. A. Williams, told every plant in 1931 to plan dust collection and send budgets. When he asked for a report at the end of 1932, the answers varied widely. Los Angeles had done nothing to collect dust or protect workers from it. Waukegan had spent nothing and had issued no written respirator instructions. At Alexandria, respirators were optional and the plant made "no attempt at all to examine the heart or lungs."

Shaping the research

Metropolitan Life's study of the American plants was the first large one, and the companies saw it before it was published. In December 1934, J-M's attorney Vandiver Brown asked Lanza to restore passages "favorable to the industry", and J-M's outside counsel sought changes that would support the company's defense in court. The report, published in January 1935, still found asbestosis in more than half of the 126 workers X-rayed.

In 1936, eleven asbestos companies agreed to fund Dr. Leroy Gardner's experiments at the Saranac Laboratory, on terms that made the results theirs and any manuscript subject to their approval. In 1939, Brown reminded Raybestos-Manhattan that the companies decided whether and how Gardner's results were made public.

Publicity was managed too. In 1935, the editor of Asbestos, the industry's trade magazine, reminded Raybestos-Manhattan's president that at his request it had printed nothing about asbestosis.

What to tell the workers

When J-M's officers took up respirators in June 1935, the minutes record that they wanted a procedure that would also "afford the Company maximum protection against the legal hazard". Brown, drafting the rules that August, wrote that workers must be warned that dust was hazardous without being alarmed. A plant memo filed with the Lacho and Smutko lawsuits says it "was not the policy of the Company" to warn employees of the danger of dust.

Compensation laws instead of lawsuits

As workers began to sue, the industry turned to the legislatures. Brown reported in 1935 on an industry meeting at the Mellon Institute that agreed to act together on dust disease claims and compensation laws. When Illinois passed an occupational disease law in 1936, Brown advised that J-M could avoid liability by dropping workers with early dust disease from the payroll before the law took effect. In New Jersey, where no Manville employee had brought a claim in nearly ten years, he wrote in 1939: "I am keeping my fingers crossed."

The first exposure limit

In 1938 the U.S. Public Health Service published its study of asbestos textile workers, proposing 5 million particles per cubic foot of air as a tentative safe limit. The industry's hygienists adopted that figure as their guideline, and it stayed in use into the late 1960s.

The 1940s: cancer, and the report that left it out

Cancer in the Saranac mice

The experiments the industry paid for at Saranac turned up something no one had asked about. In February 1943, Dr. Leroy Gardner sent Vandiver Brown an outline of his findings that noted excess lung cancer, and proposed leaving the cancer question out of his report. A month later he told the National Cancer Institute he had been "startled" to find lung cancer in most of his asbestos-dusted mice, and asked for a grant to repeat the test.

In 1946, Gardner told J-M that over 80 percent of the asbestos-exposed mice had developed lung tumors, and urged an outside review of J-M workers' X-rays. Britain's Chief Inspector of Factories reported in 1949 that lung cancer appeared in 13.2 percent of asbestosis deaths, against 1.32 percent of silicosis deaths.

Taking cancer out of the report

The sponsors had the right to approve what Saranac published, and they used it. In 1944, Brown asked that a bibliography citing lung cancer in asbestos workers be cut from a report meant for Quebec's compensation authorities. In 1946, an asbestos textile maker urged Brown to see that Gardner's final report dropped any mention of cancer. At a 1947 meeting with Dr. Lanza, Brown said he hoped the finished report would leave out any relation between asbestos dust and cancer.

Gardner died in 1946, and his colleagues finished the report. In October 1948 Brown proposed removing the tumor findings, noting that 9 of 11 mice exposed to long-fiber dust had lung tumors. In November he wrote that the sponsors had unanimously agreed that references to cancer and tumors must be deleted. The revised report of March 1949, Brown told the sponsors, adopted all their suggestions. The mouse lung tumors no longer appeared in it.

What the men were told

Charles Roemer, a lawyer for Union Asbestos & Rubber, later swore that at a meeting in 1942 or 1943 Brown said J-M did not tell workers what their X-rays showed. In 1949, a survey by Canadian J-M's medical director, Dr. Kenneth Smith, of 708 mill workers at Asbestos, Quebec found 7 with asbestosis and 52 more with advanced fibrosis. The men with asbestosis, it noted, had not been told. When California proposed a warning label for asbestos and silica dust in 1944, Brown and Gardner agreed it was "absurd."

Doubts about the dust limit

In 1947, an Industrial Hygiene Foundation engineer told the asbestos textile industry that the five-million-particle limit might not prevent asbestosis, and urged X-rays of every exposed worker.

The 1950s: lung cancer, and what the men were not told

The lung cancer question

By 1950, J-M's own doctors were naming the risk. In February, Dr. Kenneth Smith, medical director of Canadian Johns-Manville, told headquarters that asbestos and silica were two hazards in J-M's operations that "may lead to pulmonary malignancy." At the 1952 Saranac Symposium, with Smith attending, Britain's Dr. Merewether reported that 16.2 percent of British asbestosis deaths involved lung cancer.

Research on the sponsors' terms

The Quebec asbestos producers planned a lung cancer study of their own. Saranac's proposal provided that any manuscript would go to the sponsor "for its review and approval" before publication. Smith noted that a contract offered by Dr. Lanza appeared "to leave little choice to the Donor if the results of the study are unfavorable to Company interests." Vandiver Brown wrote that J-M sought approval of Saranac's publications so it could delay their release until it made "defensive moves."

In 1951 Smith advised holding off publicity on the Saranac report in case the cancer research proved "not entirely favorable," and Canadian J-M decided to leave asbestosis and lung cancer out of its industrial hygiene minutes. When the Quebec study was condensed for publication in 1957, Smith accepted the deletion of every reference linking asbestosis and lung cancer.

The asbestos textile makers turned down research of their own. In 1955 the Asbestos Textile Institute rejected an autopsy study because it implied a link between asbestosis and cancer. In 1957 its members voted down a lung cancer study of their workers, some fearing it would "stir up a hornet's nest."

What the men were told

In 1953, Smith sorted several hundred Manville workers on the plant's no-dust list and decided that those with slight disease "will not be told of their condition." In 1955 he told the Nashua plant that men with signs of lung disease should not be told yet. Waukegan's managers agreed in 1956 that the plant doctor would tell men of possible lung disease only if they asked. And at a 1957 J-M medical meeting, Smith proposed that its doctors record no diagnosis of suspected occupational disease, and not tell the worker, until a conference had weighed the legal and compensation implications.

What the company said in public was different. In 1955 Smith published a survey of 708 mill workers reporting 91 percent with normal X-rays. (His unpublished 1949 survey of 708 workers is described in the 1940s section above.) In 1957 he told life insurance underwriters that asbestos workers' lives were not shortened by their work. In a 1958 lawsuit, J-M said under oath that it knew of no asbestosis in insulation applicators and saw no reason to warn others.

Labels considered and set aside

J-M's lawyers drafted a caution label for bags of asbestos fiber under Illinois rules in 1952. Canadian J-M's fiber division asked whether there was "no other way out." In 1954, a J-M lawyer warned a fiber salesman that calling asbestos non-toxic would amount to a warranty, since the grade in question "would be a bad offender" in causing asbestosis. In 1958 J-M drafted a caution label for Marinite board dust and decided against it, partly over competition.

The 1960s: mesothelioma, Selikoff, and what the plants found

The science goes public

In 1960, Dr. J. C. Wagner and his colleagues reported 33 cases of mesothelioma in South Africa's crocidolite district, many of them in people who had only lived near the mines. The next year, Dr. Kenneth Smith told J-M's division managers that a federal meeting had found "a problem exists" with asbestos and cancer. In 1964, Dr. Irving Selikoff and his colleagues reported that insulation workers were dying of lung cancer at nearly seven times the expected rate, and four of them of mesothelioma.

Answering Selikoff

The industry's first response was to manage the news. The Asbestos Textile Institute discussed answering Selikoff through a public relations man and had its lawyers draft a warning letter to him. Smith called Selikoff "unscrupulous," but advised J-M not to deny his findings too emphatically, lest the company be put "in an untenable position." In 1966, J-M's health task force found no written record behind the company's claims of low cancer rates among its workers and asked Smith to compile one to counter Selikoff. That October, J-M's public relations department issued a position paper calling the asbestos and lung cancer theory unproved. Two months later, J-M's insurer told the company it had nothing to contradict Selikoff's testimony. In 1968, J-M's public relations firm planned the announcement of Selikoff's research on insulators, steering questions away from mesothelioma, brake linings and risk to the public.

Inside the plants

In 1960, J-M's Manville plant decided against requiring respirators for 714 overexposed workers, partly because marking dusty areas would be "legally admitting evidence of exposure." The next year, J-M told its plant managers not to give unions dust counts or medical records. At Waukegan in 1963, a memo reported that 25 men diagnosed with occupational lung disease had never been told, and managers approved telling them gradually and destroying the records of the "pink slip" cases. In 1965 and 1966, J-M's industrial hygiene chief found dust over the limits at mines and plants and, at Manville, held back a respirator recommendation for fear of stimulating "mass claim filing." Before a 1968 compensation hearing, the Long Beach plant sent its dust records to headquarters so they "will not be available" there.

By 1969 the company's own numbers were in. Its board was told that plant doctors had found X-ray changes in 295 current workers, "potential claims over a number of future years." Its scientific subcommittee heard that X-rays showed asbestosis in 30 percent of Billerica workers and 24 percent at Manville. H. M. Jackson told J-M's president that plant doctors at most plants were under-reading workers' X-rays, and that past dust levels had caused "a substantial frequency of disease." In notes of a 1969 meeting, Cliff Sheckler is recorded as saying, "we have had a dirty house and now we have to pay for it."

Claims and labels

J-M's lawyers and doctors also shaped how claims were fought. In 1962, Smith advised an insurer to stress smoking in an insulator's cancer claim, and said J-M settled cancer claims quietly to keep them out of law journals. In 1964, facing a group of disease claims at Manville, Sheckler proposed trying most of them, quietly, to backlog the courts.

Warnings stayed small. In 1960, J-M ruled that bags of J-Spray fireproofing would carry no caution label. When caution wording for its insulations was fixed in 1964, it was to be "fully legible, but not conspicuous." In 1968 Canadian Johns-Manville dropped its plan to label fiber bags for overseas customers after British importers objected, and J-M's health policy committee decided to label bags only for U.S. and Canadian customers. In 1969, after the Dutch company Eternit complained, J-M's international arm said that no shipment to overseas customers should carry caution labels.

In October 1969, the insulator Clarence Borel sued Johns-Manville and ten other makers of insulation in federal court in Beaumont, Texas. His case, told in full on our Clarence Borel page, opened these files to the world.

The 1970s: the company counts the cost

What the company now admitted to itself

At the start of the decade J-M surveyed its own plants. Many workers with lung disease had never been told, and one plant reported that the philosophy had been "to withhold this info." A 1970 management report conceded that asbestos causes disease, counted a sharp rise in compensation claims, and ordered dust operations that could not be controlled closed by April 1971. That December, a company-wide X-ray review found severe lung disease problems at seven plants. A J-M-funded study of the company's retirees found lung cancer deaths at two and a half times the normal rate. In 1973, Dr. George Wright wrote that J-M had come out of the Second World War without an adequate health program, and that "pace was not kept with what was known." In 1974 a manager recalled that in 1947 the company's health research "was handled by our Legal Department on a hush-hush basis."

Litigation and labels

The Borel case was on appeal. In 1971, J-M's lawyers agreed not to revise the warning label on its asbestos products until the appeal was decided, so as not to suggest the old one had been inadequate. In 1973, defense counsel wrote that their "principal practical ambition" was to delay publication of the appeals court's opinion "before the deluge starts." The Pittsburg plant was told in 1971 not to inform former employees of hazards they had been exposed to before the new federal rules. J-M agreed in 1974 that it had "a definite liability" for leaving labels off products sold abroad: "We know of the hazards." In 1975, Wright told a British asbestos company that in hindsight warnings "probably should have" come earlier. J-M's former medical director, Dr. Kenneth Smith, recorded that non-medical officials in New York had decided whether workers were told their X-ray results.

The same choices abroad

W. B. Reitze, J-M's manager of industrial health, warned in 1975 that equipment planned for a Mexican venture would endanger the workers' lives, and wrote that after its experience in the United States, J-M could not morally keep making asbestos Thermobestos in Brazil. In 1977 he reported that staying in Asbestos de Mexico without a cleanup would be "immoral, if not criminal."

Regulators and the record

In 1977, J-M staff concluded it was in the company's interest to delay the federal asbestos hearings for years. That December, with Pittsburg plant medical files showing disease that had never been diagnosed, Reitze argued that J-M must tell former employees, though it could bring "an onslaught" of compensation cases. In 1979, J-M's medical director, Dr. Paul Kotin, warned that the Waukegan plant's failure to log occupational disease cases since 1972 appeared willful. Two days later, the company's associate general counsel recommended adding 23 unrecorded cases to the logs without telling OSHA. That September, managers concluded the company was "better off not labeling" Transite pipe.

Early in 1979, a J-M public relations executive told the chairman that the company's public positions on asbestos did not match the facts, and that it had to stop "playing semantic games."

The 1980s: the lawsuits and the end of the company

By 1980 Johns-Manville faced thousands of lawsuits. Its chairman told Dr. Selikoff that extreme scientists might leave J-M no choice but to "destroy the credibility of such scientists." Waukegan workers told the plant doctor they had never been told their examination results. When OSHA's new rule gave workers and their unions access to their medical records, a J-M executive directed that no union get retired employees' records, preferring to go to court. A J-M attorney later listed why the company's lawyers had fought discovery of workers' compensation files, including the fear that they showed disease from low or indirect exposure. In 1982, a J-M claims official asked that a doctor rewrite his report on a worker to remove all references to colon cancer.

Year after year, J-M's reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission told investors the lawsuits would have no material adverse effect: from 29 cases in its first disclosure in 1974 to 2,857 in 1980. Behind closed doors the legal department was showing the board projections of 32,500 plaintiffs and nearly $1.5 billion in costs. In 1981 the auditors qualified their report because of the litigation, and in August 1982 a special committee of the board, told that a reserve for the claims could no longer be avoided, recommended filing for Chapter 11. Manville's lawyers later set the whole sequence out in their own litigation chronology.

Manville filed for bankruptcy in August 1982. That October, a company draft letter asked the Secretary of Health and Human Services to investigate Dr. Selikoff's research. The bankruptcy led in time to the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust, the first of the asbestos trusts that still pay claims today.

The full timeline

Every document in these collections, year by year, is in the Asbestos Timeline: Johns-Manville's own chronology, its lawyers' litigation chronology, the Motley 1000 and the Sumner Simpson Papers together. For the lawsuit that finally brought this history into the open, read the story of Clarence Borel.