Arne Westlin, Asbestos: On Research and Regulations in Sweden (1977)

A 16-page booklet by Arne Westlin, chief of the Division of Standards Development at Sweden's National Board of Occupational Safety and Health, published by the Swedish Work Environment Fund for an international symposium on air pollution in the workplace held in Stockholm in September 1977. It traces the Swedish response to asbestos, from Gunnar Ahlborg's reports of asbestosis among shipyard workers in Gothenburg in the early 1950s and the 1964 regulations, to a study at the Institute for Occupational Medicine that found 38 Swedish cases of asbestosis, 4 of lung cancer and 2 of mesothelioma. It then describes the 1975 regulations, whose "basic notion" was "that asbestos shall be replaced by less hazardous material as soon as this is possible," and later steps that banned crocidolite, asbestos spraying and asbestos-cement products.

What it shows

The booklet shows what one government had concluded and done by 1977: asbestos treated as "a carcinogen and co-carcinogen," a lowered exposure limit, required labeling and medical checks, and bans on several uses. This copy came from the files of J. H. Marsh of Raybestos-Manhattan, with the stamp of the Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health in Montreal.

In Johns-Manville's index

Johns-Manville's legal department indexed the Motley 1,000 in 1984. Its index describes this document as follows:

Booklet entitled Asbestos: On Research and Regulations in Sweden, prepared by the ASF (Swedish Work Environment Fund), dated 9/77.

About this copy

This is document 708 of the Motley 1,000, from the set the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust's records facility certified as true copies, pages CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-002573 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-002588.