Document 65e0mMqrZ7Z07d7eNkNj26rj4

UNIVERSITT of PENNSYLVANIA School of Arts and Sciences Departmen t of History and Sociology of Science 215 South 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104-6310 215-898-8400 nonday April 22, 1991 Hr. Neil Leif er Thornt on & Early 200 Port land St reet Bost on, MA 02114 Dear Mr Leifer: it was good to hear from you on Friday] 1hope t hat we can work t oget her -- it sounds like the Kehoe papers might st rengt hen your case, and learning about t he mat erials you've uncovered will help me. I'm writ ing my dissert at ion on indust rial air pollut ion in the f i r st decade or so af t er World War Two, t hrough a case st udy of a disast er in t wo st eel t owns near Pit t sburgh, the 1940 Donora smog. A lot of big names in the asbest os, si l i cosis, and lead st ories invest igat ed the Donora smog --f or " Pennsylvania's Depart ment of Healt h, the Unit ed St eelworkers, the Bureau of > Mines and Public Healt h Service,.t he indust rial Hygiene Foundat ion, the Ket t ering Laborat ory of Applied Physiology, and on. Through looking at t heir work, I hope to show' how indust ry and government let such shoddy expert ise develop (i t 's clear why --to keep air pollut ion from becoming a recognized cause of legally comperisible disease). Lot s of t elling anecdot es, and what looks like a conspiracy (what sociol ogist s of knowledge would call the ''social negot iat ion of science") to dissociat e US St eel from responsibilit y. The inj ury arid death smog cases were set t led out of court in June 1951 af t er Robert Kehoe of the Ket t ering assembled an al l -st ar cast of expert wit nesses to defend US St eel American St eel and Wire, including Ant hony Lanza, Wesley CL Herneori, Phil Drinker, Hurd C Willet t (a founder of MIT's Dept of Met eorology), and H. H. Schrenk (head of the Public Healt h Service's of f icial invest igat ion int o the smog, hired as the Indust rial Hygiene Foundat ion's research direct or l ess than a mont h af t er publicat ion of the federal government 's report!). The more I can learn about lead, the more sense i can make of indust rial air pollut ion research. The resource I ment ioned over the phone Friday night i s the Bay Area Ai r Pollut ion Cont rol Dist rict library. Art hur St ern ment ions t he library in the second edit ion of his Ai r Pollut ion manual (copyright 1968); i t 's a f ile of about 18,500 art icles, unpublished conference present at ions, bibliographies. and books on air pollut ion, st ret ching t rom t he early l yoos t o the m i di y/ os (copyright on t he handwrit t en aut hor and subj ect indexes i s 1958). in Philadelphia, the local t echnical inst it ut e (Drexel Universit y) has a relat ively complet e, if dog-eared, microf ilm copy, wit h copies a dime apiece. There may be ot her copies around the count ry, and perhaps even an original library; however, one can t ell f rom the microf ilms t hat it ems were copied all over the place (St anf ord Research Inst it ut e, Taf t Sanit ary Engineering Cent er, et c) so t hat t here may be no such t hing as an original library. Came across t wo papers on lead poisoning f rom the Lead Indust ries Associat ion's Nov 15-16, 1948 conference in Chicago, marked "published by the L!A, 1948" in Proceedings of the Lead Hygiene Conference: one by GG Harrold and SF Meek, "Sol ubil it y and part icle size in lead poisoning," (13 pages) and a second by DR Johns, "The t reat ment of lead poisoning, past and present ," (15 pages). Anyways, enclosed i s a copy of the New York Times art icle t hat ment ions your case, as well as a copy of the lat est let t er I sent to the Cincinnat i archivist Bil l ie Broaddus. As f ar as t ravelling t ime goes, the l ast week in April (next week) and the week of May 20t h look okay right now. I look f orward to hearing from you soon. Si ncer el y) Lynne P. Snyder (home) 215-386-5566 (work) 215-898-4643