Dust diseases and the legacy of corporate manipulation of science and law

Our plain-English summary of Dust diseases and the legacy of corporate manipulation of science and law, by D. Egilman, T. Bird, C. Lee (International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 2014).

The study

• Authors: D. Egilman, T. Bird, C. Lee
• Journal: International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health
• Published: 2014;20(2):115-25
• Cited by: 19 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

Abstract

Background: The dust diseases silicosis and asbestosis were the first occupational diseases to have widespread impact on workers. Knowledge that asbestos and silica were hazardous to health became public several decades after the industry knew of the health concerns. This delay was largely influenced by the interests of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife) and other asbestos mining and product manufacturing companies.

Objectives: To understand the ongoing corporate influence on the science and politics of asbestos and silica exposure, including litigation defense strategies related to historical manipulation of science.

Methods: We examined previously secret corporate documents, depositions and trial testimony produced in litigation; as well as published literature.

Results: Our analysis indicates that companies that used and produced asbestos have continued and intensified their efforts to alter the asbestos-cancer literature and utilize dust-exposure standards to avoid liability and regulation. Organizations of asbestos product manufacturers delayed the reduction of permissible asbestos exposures by covering up the link between asbestos and cancer. Once the decline of the asbestos industry in the US became inevitable, the companies and their lawyers designed the state of the art (SOA) defense to protect themselves in litigation and to maintain sales to developing countries.

Conclusions: Asbestos product companies would like the public to believe that there was a legitimate debate surrounding the dangers of asbestos during the twentieth century, particularly regarding the link to cancer, which delayed adequate regulation. The asbestos-cancer link was not a legitimate contestation of science; rather the companies directly manipulated the scientific literature. There is evidence that industry manipulation of scientific literature remains a continuing problem today, resulting in inadequate regulation and compensation and perpetuating otherwise preventable worker and consumer injuries and deaths.

In plain English

In this historical analysis (not a medical study), the authors examined previously secret corporate documents, depositions and trial testimony from US litigation, plus published literature. They reported that a 1957 private report to the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association said a miner with asbestosis had a greater likelihood of lung cancer (though suspecting under-reporting made this fallacious), a passage deleted from the published Braun–Truan paper. They described a Johns Manville estimate that a two fibers per cc limit would cost $12 million in capital and an additional $5 million yearly in operating costs, covering only processes it believed could reach that level; it judged five plants economically infeasible at that limit. A Union Carbide memo expected a 31.5% sales loss at 0.2 f/cc. In 1976, they wrote, the Asbestos Information Association formed a program to improve companies' legal defenses. They wrote that companies withheld their own studies, including mouse experiments with 81.8% tumor incidence, from their hired reviewer. The authors concluded that the asbestos–cancer link was no legitimate scientific debate; companies manipulated the literature. They noted their search may have missed relevant documents.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Historical analysis of corporate documents, litigation records and published literature (not an epidemiological or clinical study)
• Who was studied: No people were studied. The sources were documents and depositions produced in US tort litigation. They concerned asbestos companies and industry organizations such as the Industrial Hygiene Foundation (IHF), the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH), the Asbestos Information Association (AIA), MetLife, Union Carbide and Johns Manville.
• Exposure: Asbestos in general (fiber types mostly not distinguished) and the exposure limits set for it: the ACGIH threshold limit value of 5 mppcf, and OSHA permissible exposure limits starting with 5 f/cc in 1971.
• Main results:
  • The 1957 private report to the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association, on Quebec asbestos miners, stated that a miner with asbestosis had a greater likelihood of developing lung cancer. The same report said its authors suspected that under-reporting of asbestosis had led to a fallacious finding.
  • According to the authors, Braun and Truan deleted these sentences from the final published paper.
  • In 1968 Pittsburgh Corning measured consumer exposures during product use. It found that exposures to its insulation product were as much as 80-fold higher than the 5 mppcf level.
  • A Johns Manville vice president estimated that a limit of two fibers per cc would require $12 million in capital expenditures and $5 million per year in additional operating costs. The estimate covered only the processes where the company believed it could develop the capability to meet that level.
  • The same Johns Manville executive said it would not be economically feasible to operate five manufacturing plants, involving approximately 1100 workers, at a standard of two fibers per cc.
  • A Union Carbide memo expected a 31.5% loss in sales if the 0.2 f/cc limit was adopted.
  • NIOSH had originally proposed label wording that included 'cancer' and 'danger'. After the companies lobbied against it, the label rule in the final OSHA standard did not include those words.
  • In 1976 the AIA formed a Legal/Medical Research Program whose stated purpose was to improve the defenses of asbestos companies in liability suits.
  • The companies withheld their own studies from Philip Enterline, the reviewer the AIA hired. These included Gardner's 1930s experiments at the Saranac Laboratories.
  • Gardner's experiments found an 81.8% tumor incidence in mice exposed to asbestos.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that the asbestos–cancer link was not a legitimate scientific dispute, and that the companies instead directly manipulated the scientific literature.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The authors' search may have missed relevant documents.
  • The people who wrote or produced the documents often had no opportunity to comment on them or explain their context.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Silicosis, Occupational Disease, Deposition, Asbestos Exposure, State-of-the-Art Defense.

Related studies

• MetLife and its corporate allies: dust diseases and the manipulation of science — D.S. Egilman, T. Bird, et al. (2013)
• Re: Comments on Egilman's response to Hessel regarding the health hazards of brake dust and his reflections on corporate behavior — D. Paustenbach (2019)
• Corporate corruption of science-Another asbestos example — D. Egilman, R. Monárrez (2017)
• The Production of Corporate Research to Manufacture Doubt About the Health Hazards of Products: An Overview of the Exponent Bakelite® Simulation Study — D. Egilman (2018)
• Assessing specific causation of mesothelioma following exposure to chrysotile asbestos-containing brake dust — M.D. Freeman, S.S. Kohles (2012)
• Environmental measurements of total dust and fiber concentration in manufacturer and user of man-made mineral fibers — J.H. Kim, H.S. Chang, et al. (1999)

Browse more research in International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, or return to medical research.