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FILE NAME Cape Asbestos CAPE DATE 0000 DOC CAPE001 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION Barry Castleman Expert Report - Cape Asbestos Public Health & Corporate History Cape Asbestos Public Health and Corporate History Cape's Workers with Asbestosis in the Medical Literature and the Press Cape's asbestos came from its crocidolite mines in South Africa starting in the early 1890s The mines were started by a group organized by Francis Oats a director of De Beers who then organized Cape Asbestos Company in London to manufacture asbestos products In 1925 the company acquired amosite asbestos mines in the Transvaal in South Africa Asbestos the Raw Material Cape brochure 1961 Following case reports of asbestosis in workers in South Africa and in Britain in the 1920s the International Labor Office held an international conference on silicosis and asbestosis in Johannesburg in 1930. In the opening address the generous financial assistance of the Chamber of Mines in South Africa was acknowledged in making the gathering possible ILO Introduction Records of the International Conference Held at Johannesburg 13-27 August 1930 p 11 As the Factory Inspectorate in Britain moved to develop regulations for the asbestos industry following the issuance of the first survey of the prevalence of asbestosis in asbestos factory workers government engineers met with representatives of the three largest UK asbestos companies including Cape Report on Conferences Between Employers and Inspectors Concerning Methods for Suppressing Dust in Asbestos Textile Factories 1931 The Asbestos Industry Regulations took effect in 1933 Many of Cape's workers at the Barking plant in East London were reported in the local press as having died from asbestosis in 1929-1938 Concerns were raised in the House of Commons about a Cape worker who died with asbestosis and lung cancer Barking Man's Death The Recorder July 10 1931 In medical exams of 80 Cape workers at the Barking plant WB Wood found nearly all had definite evidence of asbestosis Br J. Radiol 7 277-280,1934 G Tweedale Magic Mineral to Killer Turner& Newall and the Asbestos Hazard Oxford Univ Press 2000 p 20 Most about 89 of Wood and Gloyne's 100 cases of asbestosis were from Cape's Barking plant Pulmonary Asbestosis A Review of One Hundred Cases Lancet 1383-1385 1934 Magic Mineral p 39 This was the largest reported number of cases of asbestosis the world medical literature at that time more than the Factory Inspectorate had found in its medical survey of the asbestos industry published in 1930. At least one worker took Cape to court and was awarded 80 disability for asbestosis in 1934 Magic Mineral p 78 The annual reports of the Medical Officer of Health in Barking raised concern about asbestosis in 1929-1931 in his report in 1945 Dr. Williams wrote of continuing deaths from asbestos at Barking He concluded that asbestos was so dangerous that unless those charged with the responsibility of safeguarding the health of the people the industry can give positive assurances that they have now after all these years removed every possible danger the processing of asbestos except in so far as its products are essential to our national economy should be barred G. Leonard Williams Annual Report of the Medical Officer of Health for the Year 1945 Borough of Barking Amosite Cape employed Dr. Hubert Wyers in the 1940s and Wyers Doctor of Medicine thesis University of Glasgow 1946 was based entirely on the medical evaluation and records of Cape's asbestos factory workers Wyers commented on amosite the variety of asbestos sold almost exclusively worldwide by Cape Asbestos from its mine in Penge South Africa mosite is friable dusty difficult to work ... and its reputation as regards health is utterly pernicious is seldom now used He also wrote It is the most pernicious of all in its fibrosing effects pp 93 The other giant UK asbestos company Turner & Newall & had a policy ordered by Sir Samuel Turner of no dry processing of amosite Magic Mineral p 235 footnote 117 A quarter of Cape's 1625 South African amosite mine employees in Penge were under 16 in 1940. In many cases parents also worked at the same mine and it was the low rates of pay for adults that made such employment necessary for family survival J. McCulloch Asbestos Labour Capital Physicians & the State in South Africa Indiana Univ Press 2002 pp 126-127 Perhaps the most horrifying passage in the entire literature on asbestos was recorded by doctor visiting the Cape Asbestos mines in Penge Dr. Gerrit Schepers made the first governmental medical survey there in 1949 and recorded his recollections at the major conference on asbestos in New York in 1964 I found young children completely included within large shipping bags trampling down fluffy amosite asbestos which all day long came cascading down over their heads They were kept stepping lively by a burly supervisor with a hefty whip I believe these children to have had the ultimate of asbestos dust exposure ray revealed several to have radiological asbestosis with cor pulmonale right heart failure before the age of 12 Biological Effects of Asbestos Ann N.Y. Acad Sci 132 246 1965 In his discussion at the conference Dr. Schepers said it was a foreign company and when I met him in 1978 and asked if that was Cape he confirmed that it was I have named Cape in recounting this in my own writings about corporations running processes in less developed countries much more hazardously than would be permitted in their home countries e.g. The Double Standard in Industrial Hazards Int J. Health Serv 5-14 1983 By 1966 a confidenti& al memorandum recorded the dismay of Defense Ministry officials at British naval shipyards Amosite was extremely dusty and brittle It's worst in confined spaces on ships particularly when old lagging insulation is being removed Some of this old lagging contains a high percentage of Amosite fibre and the areas become very dusty indeed Dust extraction in ships would simply exhaust the dust into nearby areas with the possibility of spreading what risk there is EA Edmonds Asbestos and Mesothelioma Feb. 25 1966 The use of amosite insulation in US Naval ships predated World War II and rose dramatically during and after the war The US manufacture of Unibestos amosite thermal insulation started in 1926 and by 1951 there were three plants making it for shipyards and industry Other major insulation manufacturers used amosite in combination with chrysotile asbestos making insulation the market for most of the amosite asbestos the US consumed High Rate of Pulmonary Cancer as Cape Expands Dr. Wyers who worked for Cape until his death in 1956 published a report of his findings in 115 fatal cases He noted that an excess mortality from cancer of the lung and pleura in cases of asbestosis had been reported by the UK Factory Inspectorate 13.2 compared with 1.32 in silicotics and that German authors had written about asbestos causing pulmonary cancer too In his series 17 out of 115 14.8 died from cancers of the lung and pleura Asbestosis Postgrad Med J. Dec. 1949 The rate of pulmonary cancer at autopsy in the general population was about % Cape had five factories in England and others in France Italy and South Africa in 1950 The Penge amosite mine achieved an output of 50,000 tons in 1953 and employed 5000 African workers Mineral rights were owned by an American subsidiary to which Cape paid a substantial royalty Virtually all the crocidolite exported to the US was used to make asbestos water pipes The major share of Cape's profits came from the mining and sale of asbestos By 1974 Cape added subsidiaries in Belgium Germany and the US and associated companies in India Sweden and New Zealand Cape Asbestos Asbestos Blues pp 42-58 Cape mines produced 95 of the amosite and 60 percent of the crocidolite in South Africa Memorandum to File Nov. 26 1962 Cape_Receiver_00133187 Aside from a small crocidolite mine in Australia that ran from 1946-1966 South Africa was the only source of these minerals in the world By 1950 most authors writing on the subject agreed that asbestos caused lung cancer An epidemiological study published by Doll in 1955 found that deaths from pulmonary cancer were over 10 times as frequent in men who worked in an asbestos product manufacturing plant as in the general population in Britain Like Wyers Doll included at least one case of endothelioma of the pleura in with the lung cancers Br J. Ind Med 1955 Doll had previously approached Dr. Wyers to do a study of Cape's workers mortality experience without success ( McCulloch and G Tweedale Defending the Indefensible Global Asbestos Industry and Its Fight for Survival Oxford Univ Press 2008 p.73 . Mesothelioma at Cape Crocidolite Mines in the 1950s Mesothelioma of the pleura had been reported in workers dying with asbestosis starting in 1943 but as of 1955 there had been no more than 2 cases of this extremely rare disease reported by any of the authors Then in 1956 Dr. Christopher Wagner working in South Africa started to notice cases By 1958 the pathologist had seen an alarming number of cases from the Cape Province where blue crocidolite asbestos was mined Upon his visit to Britain that year Wagner reported this to directors of Cape Asbestos and Turner & Newall the two biggest UK asbestos corporations The directors showed some interest but assured me that I was following a line of research which seemed to them of little value and that I would be advised to follow other lines of investigation JC Wagner letter to solicitors in Sydney in the case of Vivian Olson v CSR Nov. 25 1994 In 1959 Wagner presented his findings at an international pneumoconiosis conference in South Africa noting that some of the victims had never worked with asbestos but simply lived in the area where the mining was done Cape had an asbestos mill in town in Prieska where some of these people lived In 1960 Wagner Sleggs and Marchand published a report of 33 cases of pleural mesothelioma in the Cape Province 32 of whom had a history of exposure to asbestos About half the victims had had only environmental exposure to crocidolite they had never worked with asbestos themselves Mesothelioma and Asbestos Exposure in the North Western Cape Province Br J. Ind Med 17 260-271 1960 Cover of Mesothelioma at the South African Crocidolite Mines At this time Dr. Wagner worked at the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit PRU in South Africa On October 15 1958 PRU Director AJ Orenstein wrote to the Managing Director of Cape Asbestos in South Africa proposing a meeting of Dr. Wagner himself and officials of Cape to discuss the scope and financing of a new investigation He noted that Dr. Wagner had discussed the preliminary investigations on the incidence of asbestosis and cancer of the lungs with the Managing Director and other Cape officials It was decided to have a survey done in the Cape Province where crocidolite was mined and Penge where Cape Asbestos mined amosite This was begun with thirds funding by the Asbestos Mining Industry and the rest from the South African National Cancer Association between 1960-1962 Facilities and equipment were provided byfederal government agencies The research was done by the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit The findings were appalling People living near the mines and mills were getting asbestosis almost exclusively an occupational disease just from the air pollution all around them PRU found Over 100 cases of mesothelioma have been recorded The PRU also determined A but three have either lived in or had some association with the North West Cape Asbestos Areas The summary noted that An alarmingly high number of cases with mesothelioma of the pleura have been discovered among people who live or who have lived in the North Western Cape area and that there is evidence to suggest that this condition is associated with exposure to asbestos dust inhalation which need not be industrial Field Survey of the North Western Cape and at Penge in the Transvaal In other words people were contracting mesothelioma from merely living near the crocidolite mines Dr. Walter Smither Cape's senior medical officer flew to South Africa soon after the PRU survey was completed in 1962. He visited Prieska where quite a cloud of dust was being produced and blown away by a fairly strong wind toward the town The crusher was outside the plant Inside he saw a covered platform and men working below in rain of dust Doctors at the local hospital told Smither they'd seen numerous cases of mesothelioma and had 10 such patients at the time Smither insisted that the patients be moved immediately to Johannesburg and that Cape would pay the cost His confidential report revealed in litigation in Britain in 1999 explained The advantage from the standpoint of the company is that these cases will be treated as a group will be removed from the area of conflict if one may call it that and taken some hundreds of miles away Smither was concerned that discovery or documentation of so many cases in the Prieska hospital could further establish the lethality of crocidolite The removal of the 10 Prieska patients was contrary to their best interests They would endure a painful and frightening trip be removed from their families who could not afford to go to Johannesburg and there was no treatmenfotr mesothelioma Smither also met the PRU director The businessman with a medical education concluded My recommendation would be that the company should not support any future ranging survey of the industry with a view to discovering either asbestosis or mesothelioma The reason for this is that the company is well aware of the problem and has already some idea of its extent WJ Smither Visit to South Africa Barking August 1962 Business historian Jock McCulloch who authored 3 books on the history of the asbestos industry noted that the timing of the PRU survey findings was opportune Levels of production were still modest and the heaviest investment in new mines and mills by Gefco and Casap lay in the future If the mines had to close the industry's losses could have been minimized While production was still low the numbers exposed in mining processing transport and manufacture were relatively small The future disease burden could thereby have been greatly reduced Asbestos Blues p 183 McCulloch described the murderous choice faced by Cape's executives There was a great deal at stake for owned companies If a comprehensive survey of the Northern Cape had been completed in the 1960s the mining of crocidolite could well have ended sending the global asbestos industry into a decline from which it may never have recovered ... South Africa continued to mine and export crocidolite until 1996. That suppression bought the asbestos mines 30 years grace It may well have done the same for the gold mines J. McCulloch and P. Miller Mining Gold and Manufacturing Occupational Lung Disease and the Buying and Selling of Labour in South Africa 2023 esp pp 393-394 McCulloch reasoned that it was probable that the Department of Mines feared the incidence of silicosis on the gold mines would become an issue if asbestos disease entered public debate Studies of migrant workers returned from the gold mines would later show well over a third had undiagnosed disability J McCulloch Asbestos Lies and the State Occupational Disease and South African Science African Studies 64 202216 2005 Dr. Selikoff's Insulator Mortality Study and the Big Asbestos Conference in 1964 The news that a rare and fatal cancer was caused by asbestos and not just crocidolite was a shock to the asbestos industry This was borne out by reports of mesothelioma in Belfast shipyard workers in numerous trades McCaughey 1962 and members of the insulators union in New York and New Jersey The insulators sustained deaths from asbestosis and massive numbers of excess deaths from lung cancer pleural and peritoneal mesothelioma The asbestos used in insulation was chrysotile and amosite no crocidolite was reported by the US Bureau of Mines when such tabulation first appeared in Minerals Yearbook in 1972. Selikoff Hammond and Churg warned that all the construction trades that worked alongside the insulators shared their risk even the supervising architect Asbestos Exposure and Neoplasia JAMA 188 22-26 1964 Months after publishitnhge insulators study Dr. Irving Selikoff organized a day international conference on asbestos at the Waldorf Astoria in New York in October of 1964 Dr. Muriel Newhouse presented the first report of her research at the New York conference Biological Effects of Asbestos Ann N.Y. Acad Sci 132 579-588 1965 Dr. Newhouse and Hilda Thompson identified records of 76 deaths in which pleural and peritoneal mesothelioma could be confirmed at London Hospital A control group of 76 hospital patients was used to see the comparative number of people exposed to asbestos the general population Surviving relatives were interviewed about the mesothelioma decedents The study found statistically significant excesses of the mesothelioma patients versus controls for occupational exposure a family member living in the household with an asbestos exposed worker and people without workplace or household exposure -- living near an asbestos factory Most of the occupational exposure cases came from the Cape Asbestos factory in Barking Some household and most of the neighborhood cases also came from Cape Magic Mineral pp 185-186 Anthony Mendele former Barking plant manager testimony in Smith v Pittsburgh Corning Court of Common Pleas of Allegany County PA Nov. 13 1984 Dr. Wagner reported having seen 89 cases of mesothelioma in South Africa only one of whom had no definite exposure to crocidolite One woman born on the Cape asbestos fields left the area at age 5 and developed mesothelioma at 55. She went to an infants school near an asbestos dump two of her playmates had also died from mesothelioma Biological Effects of Asbestos Ann N.Y. Acad Sci 132 575-578 1965 Another speaker at the conference was Richard Gaze from Cape Asbestos in London He was chemist and executive director of Cape Gaze took issue with Dr. Arthur Purdy Stout who said the relationship between asbestos and mesothelioma had been so convincingly demonstrated Gaze questioned that crocidolite caused mesothelioma saying chemical pollution might be responsible He said there were other pollutants in the blue asbestos mountains that manganese and other minerals were also mined there He said nothing about the PRU survey in Prieska whose funding had been cut off by Cape and whose findings were suppressed the contrary he said Another thing that puzzles me and I say this quite frankly because Chris Wagner is a great friend of mine and he is a very fine investigator as I'm sure you will all agree But it does puzzle me that since he has left South Africa 1962 there have been almost no new cases of mesothelioma Biological Effects of Asbestos Ann N.Y. Acad Sci 132 682 1965 Dr. Smither also spoke at the conference presenting some figures on the deaths of workers at Cape's Barking plant in East London Of 71 deaths in the preceding years 41 were caused by cancers of the lung pleura and peritoneum He concluded Perhaps this is an industry which should be engaged in only by older men Ibid pp 166-181 Mesothelioma Epidemiology Leads to Crocidolite Abandonment in UK but Not US Newhouse and Thompson's more detailed report of their findings was published a year later in the UK Brit J. Indust Med 22 261-269 1965 Reports in The Sunday Times The Guardian and other media created a crisis for the asbestos companies raising fear among employees customers and the public The mesothelioma threat to asbestos workers their family members and neighbors of asbestos plants would soon be confirmed in the US by Pennsylvania authorities ( Lieben and H Pistawka Arch Env Health 14 559-563 1967 This marked the death knell for the asbestos industry it can be seen retrospect Asbestos consumption continued rising because workers and the public didn't know how deadly asbestos was and there was virtually no regulation or compensation That would begin to change in the US with media publicity led by Dr. Selikoff environmental groups and unions the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1970-1972 and the precedent Borel decision of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1973 the year US asbestos consumption peaked In Britain new asbestos regulations were being finalized in 1968. On the subject of labelling asbestos building boards Cape's Dr. Smither suggested this label text to N's Stephen Holmes In the interest of fire prevention this board contains 20 asbestos Handle with care 30 1968 The final regulations did not include any warning label requirements British manufacturers stopped importing crocidolite in 1970 J McCulloch and G Tweedale Defending the Indefensible Global Asbestos Industry and Its Fight for Survival Oxford Univ Press 2008 p 227 Smither said no blue asbestos was still being used by his company at a 1967 conference on asbestos hazards in UK Naval shipyards An account of his remarks seemed to accept that crocidolite caused mesothelioma resulting in Cape's elimination of it in their asbestos product manufacturing plants at that time Unhappily cases of mesothelioma were still arising It was hoped that in the future those cases would be fewer because no blue asbestos was now being used by his company Ann Occ Hyg 1968 Britain set the workplace exposure limit for crocidolite at 0.2 fibers of air in 1971 one tenth the limit for chrysotile Some other countries like Britain set stricter permissible worker exposure limits for crocidolite and amosite than the most widely used white asbestos chrysotile US regulatory agencies never set different limits for different forms of asbestos Many experts on asbestos today believe that crocidolite is the most dangerous type of asbestos with respect to mesothelioma US imports of crocidolite all from South Africa remained high through the 1970s and into the 1980s In 1973 the Center for Science in the Public Interest pressed the EPA to ban the additional installation of asbestos pipes for water supply based on erosion of asbestos in test loops of water flow and worker hazards in maintaining such pipes At that time there were 200,000 miles of asbestos water pipe in service the US EPA Administrator Russell Train replied that there was not evidence that the small amount of asbestos contributed by the pipes was harmful letter to B Castleman CSPI Jan. 21 1974 US manufacture of C pipes using a combination of both crocidolite and chrysotile asbestos continued until 1992 Cape Amosite Widely Used in US as Cancer Dangers are Covered Up Cape's amosite asbestos was used in the US starting in 1926 when Union Asbestos and Rubber Company later Unarco used it to make Unibestos thermal insulation at a plant Cicero Illinois Another Unibestos plant opened in Patterson New Jersey in 1941 which would be moved to Tyler Texas in 1954. Another Unibestos plant was started in Bloomington Illinois in 1951. Unarco Vice President and former Patterson plant manager was involved in dealing with workers compensation cases involving Unarco workers with asbestosis in the 1940s B Castleman Asbestos Medical and Legal Aspects 5th Ed Aspen 2005 pp 554-555 P Brodeur Outrageous Misconduct The Asbestos Industry on Trial Pantheon 1985 p 276 Unarco was also one of the 10 asbestos companies that sponsored experimental animal research on inhaled asbestos conducted by the Saranac Laboratory in Saranac Lake NY The agreement gave the sponsors complete control of any findings made public After receiving a draft report on asbestosis and noting an excessive rate of lung cancer in mice the sponsoring company executives met and ordered the laboratory director to omit all references to cancer or tumors The report was published with the cancer data removed in 1951 Asbestos Medical and Legal Aspects 5th Ed Aspen 2005 pp 49-59 In 1962 Pittsburgh Corning purchased the amosite asbestos insulation Unibestos manufacturing plants from Unarco Prior to acquiring the business corporate officials met with Cape's Richard Gaze who described the manufacturing process and precautions to protect workers from asbestos dust They flew to Canada to observe a plant there making insulation with Cape amosite Pittsburgh Corning officials secured articles about asbestos disease visited the company physician at the Cape Asbestos plant in Britain and had a consulting industrial hygienist examine conditions in their plants between 1962-1965 Asbestos Medical and Legal Aspects 5th Ed pp 555-556 Cape sold crocidolite and amosite asbestos into the US through North American Asbestos Corporation NAAC NAAC was essentially a man sales office for Cape Asbestos starting in 1953 in Chicago Robert Cryor was the President of NAAC when it was first organized NAAC joined the Asbestos Textile Institute ATI and Cryor was present when it was proposed on October 7 1954 to conduct a study on asbestosis and lung cancer using rats Cryor was also there when the ATI decided against doing an autopsy study on June 9 1955. The ATI minutes reflect active discussions about lung cancer in 1955-56 and voting in 1957 to reject supportitnhge animal study There is a feeling among certain members that such an investigation would stir up a hornet's nest ATI minutes show that Cryor and a Manville official protested and held up the issuance of a press release at the New York asbestos conference in 1964 titled High Incidence of Cancer Deaths Found in Asbestos Workers Asbestos in Environment Also Threatens City Dwellers ATI minutes also recorded funding research at McGill University so that authoritative background publicity can be had in 1965 and putting pressure on the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine to restrain Dr. Selikoff " dangerous man in 1971 Asbestos Medical and Legal Aspects 5th Ed pp 682-684 In 1966 Robert Cryor wrote to Richard Gaze at Cape Asbestos reportitnhge reaction to New York Times article about Selikoff's research The article had been reprinted in newspapers around the country provoking quite a lot of anxiety in the industry Bob Buckley of Pittsburgh Corning was openly critical that we and Cape had not in any way informed them of these difficulties relatintgo exposure of the public to asbestos He said that they were naturally aware of the dust problem in their factories but quite recently one of their technical people visited Barking and had returned to Pittsburgh reporting very disturbing news he had heard on the subject there He had evidently picked up the story about the woman washing her husband's overalls etc. etc. Buckley was urgently requesting something to combat the bad publicity Cryor related that The whole subject seems to be boiling up rather intensively here at present Mar. 15 1966 Cape would assert for years that there were no mesotheliomas specifically attributable to amosite This is what Gaze told Cryor to tell Bob Buckley It is a fact that not one authenticated case of mesothelioma has been associated with exposure to amosite anywhere in the world Mar. 22 1966 In confidential memo to salesmen copied to Gaze and Smither Cape's Sales Director wrote Aug. 19 1966 The asbestos content of our Caposite and Caposil moulded insulation materials which are now our principal asbestos based products is entirely amosite asbestos The same careful research to which I have referred has so far revealed not one case of mesothelioma associated with amosite asbestos This was contradicted by Cape's own experience recorded in the testimony of Anthony Mendele who worked at Cape's plant in Barking starting in 1956 and was the plant manager from 1960-1968 He testified in a trial in Pennsylvania in 1984 10 Q. Mr. Mendele with respect to the Caposite department where I think you testified amosite was used exclusively were there any mesothelioma cases that came out of that department A. Yes many Smith v Pittsburgh Corning Court of Common Pleas of Allegany County PA Nov. 13 1984 p 66 Mendele also testified that Richard Gaze was also at the Barking plant for the first 7 years that he worked there and that both Gaze and Dr. Smither were very close colleagues of his Mendele learned about mesothelioma between 1950 and 1960. He frequently discussed asbestos disease in the workers with Gaze He also discussed asbestos health hazards with Dr. Smither who reported to the Barking plant manager between 1956-1960 Ibid pp 10-13 Cape Leads in Developing Scheme for Global Asbestos Industry's Defensive Research Government Lobbying and Public Disinformation in UK and US In Britain Cape Asbestos Turner & Newall and British Belting and Asbestos set up the Asbestosis Research Council ARC in 1957. By 1968 and onwards it was ARC's policy to require approval by all member companies for any publication on funded research Researchers includiJnMgG Davis regularly submitted publication manuscripts for review and changes were directed before approvals were granted The payer review process involved approval by the ARC Research Committee and subsequent approval by the ARC Management Committee before publication was authorized ARC arranged to send industry representatives and pay expenses of favored scientists to attend scientific conferences ARC withheld measurements of somewhat higher than expected airborne asbestos concentrations near members factories in 1972. ARC sponsored a scientific report in 1974 to counter adverse publicity against asbestos in foods beverages and drugs ARC support was not acknowledged in putting this forth to oppose a petition by the Environmental Defense Fund to have the US Food and Drug Administration ban asbestos filtration of foods and drugs In 1973 JMG Davis submitted an supported paper about mesothelioma in experimental animals to Smither who passed it on to Richard Gaze Gaze objected to an introductory sentence saying that the supposition that crocidolite caused mesothelioma has been proved correct The sentence was removed in the published paper Gaze letter to S. Holmes Feb. 22 1973 and JMG DavisJ.Nat Cancer Inst 52 1823-1837 1974 In 1976 Davis submitted a paper that offended ARC corporate reviewers by referring to polluted and contaminated water supplies Less emotive words water supplies containing asbestiform minerals were ordered The Asbestosis Research Council Asbestos Medical and Legal Aspects 5th Ed pp 754-755 11 The British asbestos companies realized that they were best served by having separate organizations for research support ARC and industry lobbying and publicity Seeing that the Factory Inspectorate was moving to issue new asbestos regulations the leading British companies set up the Asbestos Information Committee AIC in 1967. AIC shared London offices with the public relations damage control specialists Hill & Knowlton which had experience working for the tobacco industry ARC ran annual advertisement campaigns stressing safety where would we be without asbestos printed leaflets for school children sales representatives and public inquiries Asbestos Public Not at Risk printed posters circulated promotional films and initiated media outreach to publish favorable articles ARC lobbying weakened the UK asbestos regulations of 1969 regulations that would otherwise have been far more severe In 1971 ARC convened a conference of asbestos information bodies in London by which time similar asbestos industry propaganda groups had been set up in 10 other countries includitnhge Asbestos Information Association in the US International Conference of Asbestos Information London 24th and 25th November 1971 & archives Dr. Smither was there from Cape Asbestos Selling Asbestos and Avoiding Liability in the US in the 1970s Cape's US sales agent North American Asbestos Corporation joined the Asbestos Information Association In 1973 NAAC sent the US asbestos lobby group a position paper from Cape Asbestos It was suggested that the paper could be provided to selected people in OSHA The evident concern was that crocidolite and amosite might be more stringently regulated than chrysotile asbestos On crocidolite it said The only evidence based upon exposure to crocidolite alone is that supplied in Wagner's papers Subsequent work has not confirmed the conclusions that were at one time drawn from Wagner's findings Conclusion number 1 said there are very few cases of mesothelioma where the cause can be said with certainty to relate exclusively to crocidolite exposure Morgan NAAC letter and attachment to Robert Mereness AIA Dec. 18 1973 Cape's claim that there were very few published cases of mesothelioma with exclusive exposure to crocidolite was helped considerably by their termination and suppression of the 1960-62 PRU survey in Prieska Very few internal Cape Asbestos documents have been publicly disclosed Much of what we know comes from discovered documents from other asbestos companies in US personal injury and property damage litigation Millions of & documents were revealed in litigation by Chase Manhattan Bank whose world headquarters needed to have 66 floors of sprayed amosite insulation removed in the 1990s at a cost of 85 million As judgments in product liability cases mounted in 1977 Cape lawyers concluded that Cape could withdraw from the Texas proceedings and rely on British authorities and courts to not enforce payment of judgments from Texas Cape's corporate counsel wrote 12 W really cannot be said to have a moral responsibility and are simply victims of the US product liability cult AJ Penna telex to S. Milwid July 4 1977 Corporate restructuring was used to avoid liability while continuing to sell asbestos in the US Cape Asbestos itself once part of the great South African conglomerates of De Beers and American Corporation provides a classic example of these tactics In 1982 after Cape had been ordered in one American court verdict to pay 55 million in damages for exporting a lethal product without warnings the company simply refused to pay and closed its US operations Reluctant to give up the American market however Cape established a secret shell company in Liechtenstein through which Cape continued to ship blue fibre to America Insulating Asbestos Companies from Compensation Defending the Indefensible Global Asbestos Industry and Its Fight for Survival p 181 Devastation from Cape's Asbestos Mines in South Africa The environmental contamination of the crocidolite mines was described by Dr. Christopher Sleggs who became superintendent of an area hospital in Kimberley in 1948 and saw many mesothelioma victims When I first saw it the land was blue for miles around the asbestos settlements The mills indiscriminately spewed blue dust clouds over the countryside And whenever the wind rose a blue haze hovered over the dumps ( McCulloch Asbestos Lies and the State Occupational Disease and South African Science African Studies 64 202-216 2005 Many women were employed at the crocidolite and amosite mines These two varieties of asbestos occur in geologic formations within a host rock of banded ironstone which is very hard Men worked in the mines drilling and blasting but it remained to separate the asbestos from the host rock before it could be shipped to customers Because the rock was so hard it caused severe damage in the machinery and ducting in the mills set up to extract the asbestos fiber To minimize or avoid such problems women were employed to hammer the asbestos free from the host rock Swinging pound hammers some with babies on their backs and children sorting and bagging women cobbed asbestos unaware of the danger They worked in groups sharing food preparation and child minding Cape's annual report for 1958 acknowledged that the company depended heavily for its success and 20 percent per annum dividends upon the South African mines What it did not say was the company's profitability was dependent upon the labour of women and children ( McCulloch Women Mining Asbestos in South Africa 1893-1980 J South Afr Studies 29 413-432 2003 Cape exploited more than just the considerable lack of human rights in South Africa 13 The poverty and lack of work that plagued communities in both the north Cape and the eastern Transvaal drove men women and whole families onto the asbestos mines Ibid Grenada television documentary journalist Laurie Flynn investigated the giant gold diamond and asbestos companies operating in South Africa His minute World in Action programs had introduced him to the big asbestos companies in Britain Accompanied by South African Dr. Neil White Flynn set out in 1980 into the Kalahari to see what Cape had wrought in the town of Prieska Cape was a registered part of Harry Oppenheimer's American empire which had been among the biggest asbestos producers from the beginning and a company whose British factories had been shown to be so negligently run that they brought death disease and injury to the communities around them L. Flynn Dust to Dust Studded with Diamonds and Paved with Gold Miners Mining Companies and Human Rights in South Africa Bloomsbury 1992 pp 166- 188 Dr. White reported that Cape had left everything and dust was everywhere You could pick up tufts of blue asbestos in the main street Talk about concreting over the worst areas came to nothing In the town of 12,000 the local doctor said he had seen over 900 cases of mesothelioma and heard of many more in surrounding areas Of 80 White miners who worked at Prieska the doctor said 70 died of mesothelioma Whole families the pastor's wife were among the victims When the desert wind blew the dump west of town rained dust over the houses collecting on floors and windowsills Some useful machinery had been removed after the mill closed but nothing was done about the pollution around the mill and the waste mine tailings dumped around the area People for many miles distant across the country were being cut down by the toxic leftovers of the modern sciencebased corporation Cape refused to be questioned by Flynn saying only that with the sale of the mines they had disposed of their obligations South African law enabled Cape to pay little or no compensation to people who worked in or lived near its operations one of whom was interviewed by Dr. Neil White crushed by terminal cancer and abject poverty Ibid Richard Gaze Robert Cryor and historian Jock McCulloch who made numerous visits to asbestos mines in South Africa in the 1990s and had no occupational exposure to asbestos all died from mesothelioma Perspective I have spent my professional life as a public health worker confronting and documenting the corporate crimes of the big asbestos companies Even with its withdrawal from discovery in US asbestos litigation Cape stands out for its ruthlessness and the human toll in maximizing profits from asbestos mining and manufacturing 14 I was a chemical engineer a Masters student in 1970 learning about air pollution when I read about asbestos It horrified me that millions of construction workers their family members and the neighbors living and working near construction sites and shipyards nationwide were in mortal peril They were oblivious to the danger which I saw all around as I went to work as a local air pollution control official in 1972. I appeared on the scene at the end of the wild west era of asbestos use before regulation and liability would induce restraint Paul Brodeur's articles in The New Yorker in 1968 incited a battle to stop the use of sprayed asbestos on the World Trade Center and skyscrapers going up all over the country This was taken up first by state and local governments later by EPA A national survey done for the Asbestos Information Association in 1973 found that only 22 percent of all Americans were aware that asbestos was hazardous to health a mere 3 percent of those interviewed thought it was a hazard to the general public As an environmental activist I did frequent interviews with the media hoping to warn people and press the new governmental agencies to regulate the industry Plaintiffs lawyers came to me in 1976 about documenting the public health history of asbestos After a few years of research and with the discovery of corporate documents I began to testify as an expert witness in 1979 My book on the public health and corporate history of asbestos 1984 was largely identical to my doctoral thesis at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health The Asbestos Pandemic and the Public Health Response to Date Nearly 80 of the world's asbestos consumption in the 20th century came after 1960 Wagner and coworkers showed that groups of rats inhaling all varieties of asbestos for as little as one hour day developed lung cancer or mesothelioma no such tumors were found in unexposed rats Longer exposures yielded higher rates of these cancers and there was little difference in cancer potency of the asbestos fiber types BrJ Cancer 29 252-269 1974 Britain's Mesothelioma Register included a man whose only known exposure consisted of sawing asbestos boards one day to build a chicken coop Greenberg and Lloyd Davies Br J. Ind Med 91-104 1974 It is widely accepted by health authorities the world over that no level of exposure to asbestos can be considered free of cancer risk and that has been the case since the 1970s Asbestos IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risk of Chemicals to Man Vol 14 World Health Organization 1977 Swedish unions succeeded in getting Volvo Saab and Scania to develop asbestos brakes in the early 1980s while the Swedish government was also gradually forcing an end to the use of replacement brakes containing asbestos The metallic brakes that replaced asbestos brakes worked fine lasted longer and were not much more expensive This set the stage for enacting national asbestos bans starting in the Nordic countries in the 1980s As leading European countries banned asbestos in the 1990s vehicle manufacturers globally went asbestos to continue to sell their products in Europe 15 EPA published rules to ban all major uses of asbestos in 1989 but they were overturned in a 5th Circuit court challenge in 1991. US asbestos consumption continued steadily down thereafter in my opinion mainly because of the weight of liability For the last decade the US has made no asbestos products but imported asbestos to serve as diaphragm processing material in some old plants that make chlorine This is ending too The global death toll from asbestos is estimated at 304,000 worldwide maybe 40,000 in the US Global asbestos consumption is down from its peak of 5 million metric tons in the late 1970s to about 1 million most in Asian countries Almost all of it is used in corrugated asbestos A roofs seen all over the developing world This industry is rife with cancer hazards Cutting into these construction products with power tools releases immense asbestos exposures All the C product plants produce large quantities of broken waste asbestos sheets and pipes that can't be recycled In Italy one plant crushed the broken waste outside and sold the granules for surfacing farm roads and driveways This irretrievable pollution is now causing new cases of mesothelioma almost weekly in Casale Monferrato a town of 35,000 most in people who never worked at the plant closed in 1986 All varieties of asbestos are banned in around 70 countries worldwide national bans have been recommended by the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization since 2006. Based on legislation in 2016 EPA is movintgo ban imports of containing auto parts and end the use of asbestos diaphragms in the chlorine industry Chlorine interests have challenged the rules in the 5th Circuit Legislation to ban asbestos has been introduced in Congress We have done something about schools but still have many thousands of public and commercial buildings with deteriorating asbestos in them 16