Document 71QdpVrz3E9Z2bgjm652Rkw7V

t-n \ ANNALS OF INDUSTRY Casualties Of The Workplace bY , Paul Brodeur Part I "The New Yorker" - October 29, 1973 Reprinted by permission;@1973 The New Yorker Magazine, Inc. David joe smith, m.o. ASSISTANT MEDICAL DIRECTOR UNITED-STATES STEEL CORrORATW* COO ORANT STREET  CAfUALTlEJ OF THE VOMCPLACE l-JOME NONJEIUOUJ VIOLATIONS YEAR ago last winter, a flur no longer needed--tlierc being very A ry of unusual activity accom little left of tlie Tyler plant for any panied the closing of a factory trespasser to see--and by the end of owned hy die Pittsburgh Corning CAoprril practically nothing remained of cording to the Courier-Times, Holtnaft acknowledged that asbestos fibres posed a health hazard, but added tlut he knew of no specific Pittsburgh poration in Tyler, Texas, a city of sixty tlie factory except two dilapidated Corning employee who was suffering thousand about a hundred miles east of wooden buildings, which had once from significant illness as a result of Dallas, production stopped on Febru been warehouses at Camp Fannin, a working with the product. ary 3, 1972, and then the factory, Second World War training center Three weeks after Holman's re which for more than seventeen rears and P.O.W. camp. One of them--the marks were published, a somewliat dif had been manufacturing asbestos insu production building--was virtually ferent version of the situation at the lation, was subjected to a cleanup of empty; the otlier, the factory's storage Tyler plant was given hy Anthony prodigious scope and intensity. Under area, was half filled with sacks of Mazzocchi, the director of the Legis the scrutiny of armed Pinkerton guards, amosite-ashestos fibre,'>vhich the com lative Department of the Oil, Chem who had been hired by the company tq pany had not used before shutring the ical, and Atomic Workers Interna keep unauthorized persons away from plant. tional Union, which had represented the plant and its nearby dumps, sixty- Although Pittsburgh Corning never employees at the factory since 1962. two employees spent a week scraping as gave any official reason for the drastic Speaking at a press conference in bestos waste from machinery and other tidying up that accompanied the closing Washington, D.C., on February 10th, equipment, and removing and burying of its Tyler plant, an explanation of Mazzocchi disclosed that a government truckload after truckload of asbestos the shutdown itself was made two survey had shown major industrial- scrap that had accumulated in the plant. weeks before by E. W. Holman, the hygiene deficiencies in the operation of This work force was laid off perma corporation's vice-president in charge the plant, including a grossly inadequate nently on February 11th, and a crew of manufacturing and technology. In ventilation system, which had resulted of four maintenance men spent the next an interview published in die Tyler in airborne-asbestos levels constituting a two weeks washing down ceilings and Courier-Times on January 19th, Hol critical occupational health liazard. Ac walls and steam-cleaning ever}' piece of man said that increased costs of buying cording to Mazzocchi, the survey find machinery in sight. Meanwhile, thirtj'five thousand burlap sacks, in which amosite asbestos had been shipped to the factory from mines in South Africa, and which, once emptied, had been sold for a nickel apiece to some of the rose nurseries for which the DallasTyler area is famous, were repur chased hv Pittsburgh Corning at dou ble the price, brought kick to the plant in trucks, and buried at one of the fac tory's dumps. Toward the end of Feb ruary, the skeleton crew, using acety lene torches, cut up three one-hundrednnd-fifty-foot-longdiain conveyor belts, three five--hundred-pound cyclone amosite-ashestos fibre and transporting it from South Africa, plus the fact that his company was finding it more and more difficult to market its finished product because of comperition, had brought about a decision to ccasc opera tions at the Tyler plant and at a Pitts burgh Corning plant in Port Allegany, Pennsylvania. He remarked that "new dean-air restrictions'' had-also played a role in "speeding up" the closing of the two factories, since the restrictions would have forced his company to in stall costly filtering equipment in order to bring the level of asbestos dust in tlie factories down to lawful limits. Ac determined that seven of the eighteen workers who had bern employed at the factory for tell years or more showed symptoms of ashcsiosis--scarring of the lungs caused hy inhalation of asbestos fibres--which is a significant illness by almost any standard, in that it is irre versible, untrcatable, often disabling, and frequently fatal. Pointing out that asbestos has also been proved to be a potent carcinogen, Mazzocchi voiced the fear that many of the men who had worked in the factory would one day lie afflicted with Jung cancer or other malignant tumors. Mnrever, he indi cated that a health hazard might ex machines, and hundreds of feet of ventilation pipe, all of which were then taken outside and buried in a dump. Other pieces of heavy equipment, includ pend far beyond the plant, because the company had sold tens of thousands of burlap sacks contaminated with asbestos (lust to nurs erymen, who used them to ing eight twelve-fiHit-high wrap evergreens and other feeding machines, three une- stock for shipment to retail liiin<fred-foot-long (Irving ers and gardeners through sens, and a dozen dust out the nation. collectors, were cut up For its parf, Pittsburgh and -old for junk, and still Corninu made a public re other items, Mich a- saws, sponse onlv to the last of :oi asbestos--crap grinder, Mav.v.occbi's di>chuiv>. On and the draw works am! February 16th, a spokesman gears for the ovens, were for the company admitted to shipped hv rail to Pittsburgh a reporter for the "J yler Coming's home office, in ormtr^~aif'c(7^nil'h that Pittsburgh. Hv tile end of March, the Pinkertons were thirty^five thousand burlap i___ i . i i. . o I, v*he >JDa1jbs^Tyler.ara, blit he_ denied Pny, m Chicago, in 1918: According ; ih^tKcnjVwas any reason tn.consider Vto the United States Bureau of Labor .T.-'^thej^St health 'hazard; The apparent Statistics,'American and Canadian in- contradiction In this statement was not. soranee companies were even then gen ^resolved by the manager of the Tyler erally declining to insure asbestos work plant, who was quoted at the same tune ers because of the assumed hazardous ot!wr l1!* forward took place in'the mid-thirties, when the company develtiped an amosite-asbestos pipe insulation for the Navy. Amosite is a variety of asbestos found in large deposits in the Transvaal region of Smith Africa, ami as defying anyone to find any of the bags ` conditions of the asbestos industry. Un it had never been used before in the in question. "We've hired bulldozers to ion Asbestos started out as a jobber of United States, where most asbestos put all those bags underground," he railway supplies and an assembler of products had been (and continue to he ) said, making an assertion that would finished asbestos and rubber products. made nf chrysotile, a variety of the soon apply to much of the factory equip Business expanded rapidly, thanks to mineral that exists in vast deposits in ment as well. BV then, hoWcetcr^ wiml ' tile' development of a flexible asbestos Canada and the Soviet Union, and ac had got nut that considerably more of tape, which achieved wide use for in counts for ninety-five per cent of the the Tyler plant was buried than burlap sulating pipes in steam locomotives, and world's production. Because it is at bags and cut-up machinery. in 1926 Union Asbestos built a factory heat-resistant as chiysotfle, and can he in Cicero, Illinois, to manufacture as purdiased more cheaply, amosite was IN a sense, the stoiy of the Tyler bestos textiles, insulation materials, cluen for insulating the pipes, turhincs, plant begins with the founding of packings, brake linings, and gaskets, and boilers of modern warships, and hi the Union Asbestos & Kuhhcr Com-and a variety of rubber products. An- 1940 the Navy's demands for amositv pipc insulation were such that Union chance, seventeen of his early patients to the mineral. At that time, he wrote Asbestos--or CKARCO, as it had come were men who worked in the nearby to Edwin E. Hokin, the president of to be known--started a plant in Pater O'NARCO plant. At the time, fifteen of UXAKCO, asking him to make employ son, New Jersey. During the war years, the men showed some evidence of pul ment records available, so that he could the VNARCO plants in Cicero and Pater monary defects resulting from the in undertake a survey of all the men who son churned out amosite pipe covering halation of asbestos. When the Paterson had worked in the Paterson factor}'. for the Navy around the clock, winning factory closed, they went into other Hokin turned the request down, so) ing numerous Army-Navy "E" awards. work, and at that point Dr. Selikoff the records were not available, but he Such insulation continued to be much decided to continue his observation of was surely aware that men who had in demand in the postwar period, and them with X-ray examinations and worked in the Paterson factory might in 1949 the company set up a third lung-function tests to determine the his be having medical problems, for dur plant to manufacture it, in McGregor, tory and the natural course of asbestosb ing the nineteen-fifties the company Texas. Then, in November of 1954, in men who would not be further ex had paid out substantial amounts of as part of a consolidation program, the posed, but in whose tissues the previous money to employees of the plant who company shut the McGregor and Pat ly inhaled fibres would remain. This had become disabled with nshestosis. erson factories, and opened the factory was the start of a king journey of dis Dr. Selikoff then wrote to several other at Tv ler, Texas. covery for Dr. Selikoff, who would large asbestos manufacturers in the Little was known about the Tyler eventually help to demonstrate that as- United States to ask about the health plant except that it was set up to oper besms is one of the major industrial experience in their plants, and was un ate generally like the factory in Pater causes of cancer. At the time, he was able to obtain information from anv son. However, some information that interested chiefly in asbestosts, because of them. Meanwhile, he and Dr. Jacob would one day impart tremendous he was not convinced that the relation Churg, the chief pathologist at Ilarnert medical significance to this similarity ship between asbestos and cancer, which Memorial Hospital, in Paterson, who was just then beginning to be devel had previously been suggested In a had himself been finding nshestosis and oped by Dr. Irving J. Selikoff, a chest number of medical authorities, would lung cancer in a large number of work physician, who is head of the Division prove to be a serious problem. As things ers from the Paterson factory, took of Environmental Medicine at the turned out, he changed his mind., 'In their dam to llr. Rostov P. Kandle, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine of the 1954, all seventeen men from the Commissioner of the New Jcrscv State City University of New York, director Paterson factory were working and :ip- Department of Health. Concerned of its Environmental Sciences I-aborn- pa rently ahlc-lxidied. Today, only two about the situation. Dr. Kandte applied tory, and a pioneer in the field of ns- of them are alive. Of the fifteen who to the United States Public Health hestos epidemiology. A native of New died, seven were victims of lung can Service for funds to undertake a Siiult 'l ork City, Dr. Selikoff in term'd at the cer, two of cancer of the stomach, four of the Paterson plant and to make a ]{-th Israel Hospital in Newark; did of a>hestnsis, and one of malignant statewide survey to determine how hi. pathology work at Mount Sinai, mesothelioma--an invariahk fatal tu m;mt people were heing oecup.uionalh V.ii.ie lie has lieen a member of the mor of the pleura, the membrane that exposed to asbestos. Howcvyr, the re .lad inn; 1947; and became a chest encases the lung, or of the peritoneum, quest was denied, lack of resources be pin-Linn at the Sea View Hospital, on a similar membrane that lines the ab ing given as the reason. Stat.-n Island, specializing in tuliercu- dominal ca\itv---which rarch occur, Sind- Dr. Selikoff uli'cadv knew lo'i>. In 1951, he participated in the without some cx|Hisure to asliesios. that men who had worked in an in..ula- iia-i. leseaich on wmiaziil--the anii- ( One of the fifleen_death, u.is of heart tion factoiT were living of ashe-lu'i. bi-iti, iltug that, he effectively killing disease.) As early as 1961, he which or cancer at an alarming rate, lie felt t.dvrcle bacilli, has provided a cure fur tulierculosis--and in 195.1 lie founded six of the seventeen hail died, Dr. that men who were installing such ma began t" Sti.jiect the v^MTSt-for' terials-also risk iftSV.iSe,' and early a medical clinic in Patvisnn, where, by men who were occupational!! expiseil in 1962 he inado'Cunt.ict with ufiki.tU ** of New York Loci] 12 and Newark working conditions in the factory, for of 1935-36 in four asbestos-textile Local 32 of tlie Internationa] Associa at that time they asked the Industrial plants where ashestos fibres were found tion of Heat and Frost Insulators and Hygiene Foundation of America to to constitute about ten per cent of the Asbestos Workers. The asbestos in evaluate the asbestos-dust hazard there. total amount of airborne dust. The as sulators had been trying for yean The foundation, which k in Pittsburgh, hestos fibres in the airborne dust meas without success to interest doctors and describes itself as "an association of in ured in the Tyler plant bv engineer* of various government agencies in their dustries for the advancement of hcaltlt- the Industrial Hygiene Foundation medical problems, so they were only too ful working conditions," and it k ranged from a low of twenty-nine per glad to cooperate, and they urged Dr. financed entirely by industry. It sent in cent to a high of fifty-six per cent. The SelikofF to study the effects of asbestos dustrial-hygiene engineers to the -Tyler foundation, however, reported the per exposure among their members. He plant in July and August to'review the centages as if they were of little or no accepted the responsibility, and, though potential health hazards of handling as consequence, and contented itself with continuing to monitor those of his orig bestos and to take samples of airhomc making recommendations for better inal seventeen patients who had sur asbestos-dust concentrations. In its re housekeeping, better ventilation equip vived, temporarily abandoned his proj- port te> Pittsburgh Coming, the foun ment, and unproved maintenance of - cct to study the other men who had dation made no mention of any health the ventilation system. worked in the Paterson factory. At the hazard, and assured tlic company that, These measures were desperately rime, he did not know of the existence except in a few areas, the number of needed, but there k little evidence to of the UXAKCO plant in Tyler, Texas. asbestos fibres found in the air of the suggest that Pittsburgh Corning felt Tyler plant was well below the thresh compelled to initiate them, for when HE Tyler plant was tlicn thriving old limit value of five million particles the next survey of the plant was made, Tbut was about to cliangc liands. per cubic foot of air--a safety standard more titan three years Later, conditions UXAKCO held a large contract with tfhoer dust in asbestos factories that had were even worse. By that rime, the Navy to provide pipe covering for atom been adopted in 1946 by the American company liad acquired a new* medical ic submarines, and the factor}* was also Conference of Governmental Industrial consultant--Dr. Lee B. Grant, a re producing insulation for the chemical- Hygirnkts, which, despite its imposing tired colonel, who liad been Chief of processing industry on tlte nearby Gulf title, k not a government agency hut Aerospace Medicine for the United Coast, which was growing rapidly. a voluntary organization with members Slates Air Force Logistics Command, Over the years, however, the company from various groups, including indus and who had become medical director of liad acquired iialf a dozen plants for the try, anil with the sclf-imjioscd task of one of Pittsburgh Coming's parent cor manufacture of various products unre recommending safety standards for haz porations, the Pittsburgh Plate Glass lated to asbestos, and this diversification ardous substances in industry. Incredi Company, in 1965. At Dr. Grant's re had altered the objectives of its man bly, tile authors of the foundatioii's quest, a survey of the Tt ler plant was agers, who decided to quit the asbestos report apjKrar to have based their judg Conducted in November of 1966 he business altogether. As a result, the ment on the assumption that the thresh J. T. Destvfano, safety and industrial company sold the Tyler plant in 1962 to old limit value of five million panicles ist giene engineer for the glass division the Pittsburgh Corning Corporation-- per cubic foot meant five million ashestos of Pittsburgh Plate Glass, to see if there .a joint venture of the Pittsburgh Plate 'fibres, whereas the proponents of the had lieen :inv significant change in the Glass Company (now called PPG thresliold limit value liad intended it to levels of airborne-asbestos dust since the Industries) and the Corning Glass apply to nil the paniculate matter- 1963 survey. After anah'/ing samples Works---and the production of nmo- fibrous and nonfihrous--in a given cubic of air from sixteen different areas of the site-asl>estis pi|>c covering continued as fool of air. To understand the mag plant, DeStefano suhscipu-nth reputed before. By the sununer of 1963, lunv- nitude of this error, it should ho noted that asbestos-fibre count-, exceeded the cver, the new owners were apparently that the Study upon whith ihe-staiVdard tluv-holil limit value in seven iu-tances entertaining some misgivings about was hosed had been made in the winter and that ill ihiw of the samples the ord* and} compiled a "list of the names and i ^^Wr' addresses of all the six : ^ |V . . hundred and thirtv-two men who had been members of the lo cals on December 31, 1942, and nf the .eight . hundred- and ninety men who had joined between then and December 31, 1962. From the union cm- . plnyment records, they obtained detailed work histories of the total membership of fifteen hundred and twenty- two men, including data on the men's leav ing work for other em ployment, war service, illness, nr retirement. This enabled them to calculate the onset and duration of exposure to asbestos for each work er. Records of the un ion hcalth-and-welfare funds provided them with the dates and places of death of two hundred and sixty-two workers who had di-d between 1942 and 1963, and copies of the death certificates of all but one of them were count was twenty million or more fibres per cubic font of air. Destefano was, apparently, making the same erroneous assumption about the meaning of the threshold limit value which had been made three years before by engineers of projects; they spent half their time working with materials other than as bestos; and most of the asbestos ma terials the}* used had an asbestos con tent of less than fifteen per cent. (The men at the Tyler plant worked in a obtained. In addition, autopsy protocols, histological specimens, and hospital rec ords were reviewed by Dr. Selikoff and l)r. Churg, the Paterson pathologist, in those deaths (approximately half the total) which occurred in hospitals. the Industrial Hygiene Foundation. As confined, far dustier atmosphere, and In the next phase of the study. Dr. a result, though he also suggested bet manufactured a product that had an Selikoff and Dr. Churg were joined hy ter ventilation equipment and improved asbestos content of almost ninety per . Dr. E. Cuyler Hammond, vice-presi maintenance of the .ventilation system, cent.) In spite of this relatively light dent for epidemiology and statistics of his report did not mention that workers exposure, however. Dr. Selikoff_ found the American Cancer Society, who had at the T)ler plant were breathing con radiological evidence of lihrosis <if the participated In an analvsis of the medi centrations of asbestos fibres ten times lungs--that is, scarring of the lungs-- cal effects of the atomic explosions that greater than those of the recommended in fully half of eleven hundred'and Sev devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in safety standard that was supposed to enteen members of the two locals of the 1945, and whose large-scale epidemio protect them from disease. Heat and Frost Insulators and'Asbestos logical studies of more than a million Workers, Moreover, among three hun men and women provided a major basis URING the span from 1963 to dred and ninety-two men with more D 1966, a tremendous amount of than twentv years of experience in the netv information concerning the bitorade, he found that three hundred and for the conclusions drawn in the 1964 Surgeon General's report on the effects of cigarette smoking. Since previous logical effects of asbestos bad been thirty-nine had developed aslieMnSH, studies bad suggested that King cancer developed and was being circulated and that the disease had by then become associated with asbestosis seldom de through the medical and industrial moderate or extensive in more than velops until twentv wars after iuiti.il communities. !Vrha|i$ the most itn|>or- fifty per cent of tile cases. ex|sure to asbestos dust, Dr. Selikoff tant studv of the period-was the one Even more alarming were the results and Dr. Hauimnnd decided to limit that Dr. Selikoff conducted of the as of a mortalitv study of workers in the tbetr fiisl :in:tl\sis to the six hundred bestos insulators. As asbestos workers, agtu&Jncals. During the early part of anti tltim-tuif men who were on-the go, these men bad comparatively light .lit'-.- Selikoff anti hiOtbpio*- miinu-ttdls ;l5 of JLh&ooiber 31, 1942. and intermittent exposure: tlieV often trative assistant, Mrs. Janet S- Kaf- 1 .'iking the ineuls ages into considera f-i'l'..... I' mvr tile mooli rec tion, Dr. SrliL*i/T -mi! !)r M-immiiml tlicit sct alvHii comparing the niunlicr to determine unequivocally what their and causes of death among them with health experience'.' had beeru Unlike those of tin- general male population in almost all the previous investiga the United States. The results were tions,* which indicated simply that there depressing. According to tltc standard was a connection between asbestos anti tonality tables, two hundred and three various kinds of cancer, r was based acatlts could have been expected among, upon tlie incidence, of disease witltin a . the six hundred and thirty-two work defined imputation, and thus answered ers. Instead, there were two hundred a fundamental epidemiological ques and fifty-five, not counting seven men tion of how many cancers had devel who had died before incurring twenty oped among how many persons ex years of exposure--an excess of twen posed. In doing so, it furnished the ty-five per cent. The reason for the first incontrovertible evidence that in excess was not hard to find. The fact dustrial exposure to asbestos was ')/.- tltat twelve of the deaths were at ardous; it established sound methodolo tributed to asbestoses was not particu gy for future studies; and it marked larly surprising, but where six or seven a turning point in the views held by deaths from cancer of the lung, pleura, doctors and health officials around the or trachea were to be expected, there world. were actually forty-five. And where In October of 1964, in order to ninCTir ten gastro-intcstinal cancers review the data tliat had already were to he expected, there were twen been collected and to discuss the protv-. ty-nine. Since the death rate from lung lems awaiting solution, the New York cancer was known to he more than ten Academy of Sciences sponsored an in times as high among cigarette smokers ternational Conference on the Bio as among nonsmokers. Dr. Selikoff logical Effects of Asbestos, which was and Dr. Hammond realized that they held at the Waldorf-Astoria and was would have to take the smoking habits attended by more titan four hundred of the asbestos-insulation workers into scientists. In addition to (Ik statistics account if their findings were to have provided by Dr. Selikoff and Dr. Ham solid validity. It was, of course, im mond un tltc incidence of asbestosis possible for them to ascertain this infor- and cancer in tlte insulation workers, iDon urith accuracy in the cases of the tlierc were dozens of reports on the o hundred ami fifty-five men who occurrence of disease in people expised had died, so, for purposes of calcula to asbestos. Some of the most alarming tion, they assumed that all six hundred information was provided by Dr. J. G. and thirty-two men had Thomson, of South Afri smoked a pack or mitre of cigarettes cacti (lay, and they demonstrated that even if this had been the case it would have pro duced a lung-cancer death rate only three and a half times that of the general male population. Cigarette smoking, therefore, could. not explain the fact that in this group of asbestos-in sulation workers the rate of death from lung cancer was seven times the expected rate. Because of this study's objectivity, its scope, and its thoroughness, it had a great impact on the medical com ca, who repined finding what npjieared to lie as bestos bodies--inhaled fibres tliat have been al tered by the reaction of lung tissue, and coated with a colloidal substance rich in iron--in the lungs of one in four people coming to autopsy at ran dom in Capetown. Al- . though asbestos bodies are regularly seen in the lungs of ashesios workers, this discovery in- * dicated that asbestos was becoming a common coiiiaminain in the coniinuut- tl at lai 1 here was also repirt that iiu-sothelium.i was afflicting jvople munity. The findings were repined to wio hail bail onl\ minor e\josuiv [,, the annual convention of the American Medical Association in June of 1963-- a month hefnre the Industrial Hygiene aslieMo-. ( his tumor, u hieh takes ti om tvvclltl to turn \ ears to dewl*up, was pie\i>uis|\ so rare that it was known to I- 'Delation In-gan its survey of the 'Kin* in unit alvun un,- in ten thousand r plum- -and they were puhli-hed de.nh.s in tin- gfin-ral pipnlation. liv the ill the spring of 1964 in the Internal / nine of the international conference, thr AIltrrii Ittt Mrrlu'nl Anot'itifioit. it lioum.i, it u as being found inereas- was the first stuili e\cr made that had in p-ople wh.i uvre^-- taken a large enough oruup of asbestos p'seiPo,rtUdvst, Ht'iii their work hut afci*~ workers from a punt far enough hack m pop.,- vvho lived in the vieinitv of in time and followed them lont! enough asbestos niii,,. f., where asbestos products' were`-'mamifacturcd, or w1m simply lived in-the ' ' same Ihmisc with workers who came home ua`th asbestos-dust on their clothes. Perhaps the most' striking confirma tion of this came from London, wliere Dr. Muriel L..Newhpuse, of the De partment of. Occupational Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, investigated sev enty-six cases of mesothelioma that had been ascertained by autopsy or biopsy in the London Hospital. To no one's surprise, thirty-one of the seventysix patients had worked with asbestos, but,-in addition, eleven of the forty-five who had not worked with asbestos had simply lived within half a mile of an asbestos factor}', and nine others-- seven women and two men--were rel atives of asbestos workers. Most of these women had washed their hus bands' work clothes regularly. Both of the men in this group, when they were boys of eight nr nine, had had sisters who worked in asbestos-textile factories. One of the sisters had heen employed as a spinner from 1925 to 1936, and had died of asbestosis in 1947, at which time it was determined at an in quest that ushc used to return from work with dust on her clothes." Her brother, who had apparently had no other sustained exposure to asbestos in his lifetime, died in 1956 of a pleural mesothelioma. Subsequently, in the United States, there were similar find ings in a number of places. For ex ample, the proprietor of a junk yard next to the I'XARCO factory in Pater son died of mesothelioma, and so did the engineer who first developed tin amosite pipe covering manufactured b) the company for the Navy, as did hi daughter, whose only known exposure to the mineral was that she sometime played with samples of asln-stos pro,I ucts her_father brought home for hi. family to examine. As a result of site! incidents, scientists were forced to re vise their idea that asbestos was only a industrial hazard, and to luvc seriou consideration to Dr. Thomson's pn dic tion of danger to untold numbers of (K-opIe in the general cominunitv. Such consideration proved to Iv well founded, for since then the presence of :ishest->bodies in the lungs of onlinarv urban dwellers lias heen confirnvd In studi-.: made in Miami, Loudon, Belfast, Pitts burgh, and tsew Tirk C in, where, ir a recent. investigation conducted In __ Dr. Arthur M. [.anger, the. cliie mjntfah'gi<t at tlu- Mount Sinai i nj^i. vi run mental Spences Laboratory, rlec-T rron-microscope examination of repu ;  V'V^'SU,-r#>,,e-Tj^wsl,,vc 1 w*?*w ~ - ^ ;#&.'' " 'chryimle ashcstitt to be present in the lr'X ' lungs of a hundred and four out of a hundred and twenty-eight people com ing to autopsy at random in three city ' hospital*. The atthtidc of the asbestos indus try at this time can perhaps be best il lustrated by a cautionary letter that was sent to Mrs. Eunice Thomas Mi ner, tlie executive director of the New York Academy of Sciences, on Octo ber 26, 1964, just after the Conference on tlte Biological Effects of Asbestos ended, hy lawyers representing the As bestos Textile Institute--an association of asbestos manufacturers that includes the Jolms-Manville Corporation, Raybestos-Manhattnn, Inc., and Uniroyal, Inc. The letter began hy staring that all member companies of the institute shared a grave concern over recent articles carried in local and national newspapers concerning mesothelioma. It went on to say that "innocent but unwise treatment of research data in public discussions, or leaving it to lay men to appreciate the carefully phrased limitations and qualifications, can cause 1 reactions that are not justified by the' state of scientific knowledge," and it urged caution in the discussion of medi cal research into asbestos disease, "to avoid providing the basis for possibly damaging and misleading news stories." It concluded by warning the New York Academy of Sciences that although the. right to discuss these subjects was clear, "the gravity of the subject matter and the consequences implicitly involved im pose upon any who exercise those rights a very high degree of responsibility for their actions." ^During ] 966, the Academy sent out thousands of copies of its report of the conference in doctors, officials of state and federal health agencies, and custo dians of medical libraries all over the country, and from 1965 on there were many articles in leading medical jour nals and dn'/.cns of newspaper stunts concerning new and alarming data that had lieen developed about the perils of inhaling ashestivs. As a result, it seems higlilv probable that by late 196/ the in dustrial-health officer of any responsible rompanv engaged in the manufacture of asbestos products would have been given pause hy the kind of report that Dr. Grant received from Destefano in September of that tear concerning the levels of asbestos dust in the l'vler fac tory. It fact, considering Dr. Grant's credentials, any other would have lieen astonishing, for in addition to being medical directin' of the Pitts- *i m /"M / * cal consultant to Pittsburgh Corning, he.was a member of the American Medical Association, the American In dustrial Hygiene Association, and the American Academy uf Occupational Medicine, and would one day become president of. the American College of Preventive Medicine." In any case, in December of 1966 Dr. Grant paid a visit to Dr. George A. Hurst, clinical director of the East Texas Chest Hospital--a hranch of the Texas State Department of Health that happens to be in Tyler--and asked him to conduct a medical survey of the workers at the Pittsburgh Corning plant to determine if they were cn' countering health problems as a result of their exposure to asbestos. Dr. Hurst immediately set about designing a study of die workers, which included physical examinations, questionnaires, X-rays, and pulmonary-function tests. On February 3, 1967, having received ap proval from his superiors at the Texas State Department of Health, in Austin, he wrote Dr. Grant that the study could he conducted at a cost to Pitts burgh Coming of forty-two hundred dollars, and that, upon Dr. Grant's ap proval, it would be started by the first of May and completed as soon as posi sible. On March 7th, however, Dr. Grant wrote a letter informing Dr. Hurst that Pittsburgh Corning had decided to forgo the proposed study in favor of some studies that would be conducted by Dr. Lewis J. Crallcy, who was -as sociate program chief for field studies and epidemiology in the Public Health Service's Division of Occupational Health, in Cincinnati. I)r. Grant ex plained that the Public Health Service had been interested for some time in doing environmental and medical stud ies of the asbestos-products industry, and hail recently agreed to include Pittsburgh Coming's plants in Tyler and Port Allegany in the envirnn, mental study. According to I)r. Gram, the Public Health Service did not then have sufficient funds to perform the medical studv but huped to receive ad ditional money for that purjxise in July. "For this reason, I would like to hold i off until July on making a final deci sion on your proposed medical study," he wrote Dr. Hurst. "Our manage ment is vitally interested in accomplish ing the medical studv hut. would like the U.S.P.H.S. to accomplish if as part of their total study. If U.'S.I'.H.S. can't do the medical studv, lliev would like to 'Consider your pnijiiSSrPfurthcr.''*'1"r-"' An environmental survVy of the '] vh-r nlaut. whit Ii r--n.of i-ikin-/ ` ! -=T % ... * ! Jk ' . " , eigitty-two sample* of air in the factory, factory. It is known, however, that tw . ' .was conducted on March 20, 1967, by years later he died of mcsotltvlinma. engineers' tint there by Dr. Crnlley. However, more than a year passed be- Dr. Cralley's people gt around forming Pittsburgh Corning of the SINCE the primary- responsibility of the Division of Occupational Health was to protect workers frum results of the survey. The report was occupational disease, the omission from - - dated March 27, 1968, and it was its report of any concern for the Health sent to J. W. McMillan, the works of the workers at the Tyler plant seems manager of the Tyler plant, with puzzling, to say the least. Part of the copies to Dr. Grant and Dr. Crallcy. trouble undoubtedly stemmed from tlte In many respects, McMillan must have roundabout manner in which the Oc found it a baffling document. On the cupational Health people had to go one hand, it informed h'm that when about their business, for at the time they twenty-seven of the air samples col had no legal authority to enter and- lected in his factor)- were analyzed by a inspect factories and no enforcement Standard metliod, dust concentrations power of their own. To gain access to exceeded the threshold limit value of five factories, they had to he expressly in million particles per cubic foot "in a vited by state departments of laIvor, number of locations." On the other or by the few state departments of hand, it- indicated that when the air health that bad rights of access, or, samples were analyzed by a new method as in the case of Pittsburgh Coming's in use in Great Britain (and soon after Tyler plant and the other asbestos ward adopted in the United States), as plants they were studying, hy the com bestos-fibre counts were considered high panies that owned the factories. Since in forty-four of the fifty-five other sam the Occupational Health people usually ples. (The fact was that in five of the had to go hat in liand to industry in samples the asbestos-fibre count was order to initiate their asbestos field tweqty to thirty times the range that studies, they appear to have felt a was considered high hy the British Oc certain constraint about using the in cupational Hygiene Society. Moreover, formation they gathered. For exam with the exception of Pittsburgh Corn- ple, in making arrangements to gain - plant in Port Allegany, where ns- access to plants and take air samples, L. ^ts-dust levels were also very high, field-studies engineers invariably gave the over-all ashestos-fibre counts in the oral assurance to plant management Tyler factory were that the identity of indi far greater than those vidual factories would be measured in any of kept confidential and some thirty other as would he released only bestos-products facto to the appropriate state ries that had been sur agencies. In practice, veyed by the Division however, the Division of of Occupational Health Occupational Health al during the previous most never forwarded three years.) In spite of interpretations of the this, the report made no health consequences of mention that a health its findings to state agen hazard might exist at cies, and in most cases the Tyler plant, nor it didn't even send them - . did it advise the works the sampling data--the manager of the factor) report on the Tyjyr to improve the ventila plant being no e.\ce|>- tion system or to insti lion - and that, in effect, tute better housekeeping practices--or, prevented any possibility of action to indeed, to correct any condition that remedy any bealtli hazards. The pledge might have led to the excessive fibre of emili.l. ntialii\, .if curse, precluded counts it described. Instead, the re am |M.ssihi!iii t|iat the data rolleeted port concluded hy telling him that in the soivets would lie made known "vour coi'|.-ratiou in this study is siu- to the worker, uliov.- health was being C" V appreciated and the data gained affteteil or to the union, representing { your plant are of considerable val lliem. AJoreot'i r, in order tun to em ue." It is not known whether thi-works barrass management or make workers manager had the benefit of an) medi apprelwn.it t, the government engi- cal interpretation of the rcpoit. Nor is neewsw'lii1 t`H`1; air samples dining the it known whether he had anv other ent iiqfefi^rtaI sijrvets not unit- ttawi.- " way of ascertaining the dimensions of forbidden lo di.cii.$ the nature of their the health hazard that existed in his aetititivs with any worker, tliet en- Countered butAvvre'also instructed to wear respirators, which would luitv afforded them some protection against the hazard of inhaling asbestos dust. As a further extension of this solici tous policy toward industry, the Oc cupational Health pcple wvro careful not to alarm management by rc|virting in writing the existence of health haz ards in any uf the asln-stos factories they surveyed or hy recommending im provements in ventilation equipment and housekeeping procedures to reduce the levels of ashestns dust. In short, they simply took air samples, anal) zed them, and re|K>ned fibre counts, with out drawing any inference as to whar the fibre counts might mean in terms of the health and well-being of the men who were exposed to them. In order to understand more fullv what lay behind this practice, it might be helpful to examine the attitude toward asbestos disease Iveld by the people who were in charge of the as bestos field studies at that rime. As it happens, I spent several hours one afternoon in March of 1968--a week or so before the report on the Tvler plant was sent out--discussing the as bestos problem with Dr. Cmlley and some of his associates in the Division of Occupational Health. At the time, I was looking into the biological effects of asbesnis, and I h.-ul flown out to Cincinnati to see Dr. Cralley at the suggestion of Dr. Murray C. Brown, who was then chief of the Division of Occupational Health, with offices in Washington, D.C. Dr. Cralley, who received a Ph.D. in industrial hygiene from the State University of Iowa, had joined the Public Health Service in 1941. At the time of our meeting, he had been in charge of .-pidcmiol<><? and field studies' for tin- Division i Occupational Health for nearly fot. years. He was a fellow of the Amen can Public--Health Association, a pichairman of its Occupational Ileal- Section, a past chairman of the Aiilt can Conference of Governmental In .Iustrial Hygienists, a nn-mln r of tli. Committee on Astvsto.is and Canc.-i of ihe International Union .\-_'air..t Cancer, and an adjunct a..i-u:uit pro- , f.-s-or of environmental health .ti ;i-. j University of Cincinnati. At the heginnintr of nor coiii.r-a- lion, Dr. Cr.ilK-t explain, d that lb. .i- lv>|o-- lii-l.l-.iudk.. program bail iw.. ( < oni|kun-nt> an .-n\ironm. n'tal i.am. j wbicll bad-111 en t.iLin:; do.| .'.mu. in j-- :..lH-.|o.-te\tile and " frf. lion-uiaTei ial- j plain-semee 1 964t iauI a-nic.lienl-. pi.l. - -- niiol.igical Lam, wbicll would b. - I "in |o m'v.- X-ray e xunimatiiin., piilon- ' nan' five" ....._ . 5 fneidnesc.' Hc'did n>t tell me tlui - hb Engineers. lm*I already conducted environmental surveys of Pittsburgh '(imwg's insulation plant* in Tyler and Port Allegany, perhaps bemuse the initial focus of the field-studies pro gram was into other areas of the a.xU-sMs-prodocts industty, and tlivse two survey* were exceptions. According to Dr. Cralley, the purpose of the fichlI studies program was to establish criteria | for A possible lowering of the threshold | limit value for asbestos, ft would tube many years to develop these criteria, I however, for Dr. Cralley's medical 1 studies of the asbestos-factory workers were designed to proceed from the time of first examination, rather than to re construct the events of the past, as Dr. ScliknfTs and Dr. Hammond's study of the asbestos-insulation -workers had done. Dr. Cralley explained that it would take from two 'to four years to complete the first medical examinations of the five thousand men he proposed to study, and that if funds were avail able the men wtwld be reexamined ev ery five years thereafter. "By follow ing these men for the next fifteen or twenty years, we hope to establish a dose-response relationship for ashesto- i," he told me. "Then we'll try to determine what level of exposure carries with it no discernible health hazard." When I asked Dr. Cralley if this t wenty-year-frotn-now evaluation would take into consideration the de velopment of lung cancer and meso thelioma, he replied that it would not--tliat he was interested only in asbestosk. I then asked him about the medical studies indicating that meso thelioma could occur with minor ex posure to asbestos, anti lie sir rugged and replied that in his opinion the asso ciation between mesothelioma and aslicstos was not proved. At this point. Dr. William S. Laitthart, assistant chief of field studies in charge of the medical-eiiviriinmemal team, who was sitting in on our talk, explained that since the main pur|>n*c of the program was to trace the natural history of asbestos disease, little would he known about the incidence of lung cancer or nn-sotlielioin.-i until the file thousand mm under study were reex- ined in future \eais. "Ide.-ilh, we'd -... to take a I'uncli of tweiilt-yearolds, pm tin m into an asbestos plant where we know the exact dust levels, and olbcrvc them for the next fifty leafs, oi until they die," he said. "Ol course, we ian't dn that, We have to us from fifteen to twenty years to eval uate with any accuracy the medical ef fects of today's environment in the as bestos industry." When I asked about tlte high rate of ashestosis, lung cancer, and meso thelioma tliat was already afflicting workers in tlte asbestos indusm, Dr. Cralley told me that such diseases were the result of exposures sustained over the past twenty years nr so, and that because great improvements had been made in ventilation systems ami indus trial-hygiene procedures in the mean time, he expected to find much less dis ease in the future. When I asked him what he would consider a high rate of disease in the men he proposed to ex amine, he replied that he would not care to estimate. "We'll have to come to that when we come to it," he said. "Remember that practically everyone is susceptible to diest disease to some ex tent, and that you can get chest disease even from digging in your garden. With the means We now hare at Itand, we can only nsiume that ashestosis and other diseases are related to asbestos ex posure. Our first priority, therefore, b to study mir five thousand men over a long period, and use our observations of what happens to them as the criteria for developing a new standard." At the close of our meeting, I asked Dr. Cralley why, in view of the fact that ashestosis and cancer had afflicted great numbers of asbestos workers since the turn of the century, it Itad taken so long for the government t begin studying asbestos in earnest. Dr. Cral ley Stud he didn't know. "All 1 know, b that the first real interest came from idustry," he told me. "They asked for iur help hack in 1964, and they have :oCperated with us magnificently." Since it was iny understanding that the asbestos industry had ru-yec been particularly eager to have its operations scrutinized, I was surprised to hear this, and asked Dr. Cralley white segment of the industty had made the recpicst for help and coo|eratcd s' inagniihvntK. "The AsIk-sIhs I extile Institute," lie replied. WHA I 1A hK mu-rpietatiiiit one wishes 1<| place ujmn the ratlu-r leisurely approach to the probl-itt of asbestos disease bt tile administiatois of the asliestos'-held-studics program, the fact remains that during tlu- tiisi s.-ten years ot its exiMenci the program felarcd- no emphasis at all igruu-cuiiti'oL id "cliisflevcl- in a-lv.-los factories, or upon preventive measures for the work ers* who were exposed to the dust. Ii deed, almost all the meaningful da about dust levels in asbestos factor! which were acquired hv the progra between 196+ and 1971 simply n< cumulated in the files of its Cinrii nati offices, as did all the data on tl medical examinations of asbestos work ers it conducted after I96S. For f part, the asbestos industry seems to hat been quite content with thb quiet Rat of affairs. On the one hand, it cnul state publicly that, with its asristanci the United States Public Health Sen ' icc was investigating the possible h.t7 ards of industrial ex|xsure to nsbesto: On the other hand, it could rest at sured privately tliat, because of th -long-term, nature of these Rudies, n information would be forthcoming fo many years, and that, because of th pledge of confidentiality, none of i would find its way into the hands o anyone who might Seek to remedy an) hazards tliat were found in the mean time.- As for the Tyler plant, it seems tc have been considered a kind of fluke b\ almost everyone concerned. By Marc! of 1968, the medical Rudy of the work ers in which Pittsburgh Corning wr: supposed to be vitally interested wa: either forgouen or held in abeyance. Dr. Grant never did anything further about the study that Dr. Hurst had de signed, and Dr. Cralley and his associ ates in the Divbion of Occupational Health never got around to conducting their study. Meanwhile, as the health situation at the Tyler plant was going from bad to worse to appalling, a parade of government inspectors continued to troop through the place without any apparent awareness of the hazards that were staring them in the face. On February 13, 1969, still another safetyand-henlth insjk-ction of the factory was conducted, thb time hy imlustrialhygieue engineers from the Dallas re gional office of the United States De partment of Labor's Wage and Lahor Standards Administration; The Dc-1 partment of Labor ins|K'Ctors were au thorized to enforce the industrial-health regulations of the Wnlsh-Hcalcv Act I of June 30, 1936, which had been amended to ajtplv l companies holding federal contracts in excess of ten thou sand dollars. They found a number of unsatisfactory conditions in the plant, including, again, a substandard ventila tion system and incon-i-tcm use of respirators hy the wnrkcis, and thet_ proceeded-to take air sample.- iii six area- plant to determine the a-lu-stiA^J <1 nst levels., Jlv that time, in spite of the j foot-dragging of the Dhi-ion of OcctT?| it-- patioim! Health,' ritc."Amciicnn Om- minimum specified ventilating range.*; ini-VjJfcTvncc of -.(iot.-rnmcntal Industrial Instead of reins)K-cting the Tyler- plant u Hyjiknisis had proposed tltat the thresh to ntake certain tltat the company had *5* .V old limit value lv lowered from five complied with these recommendations million .particles (ter cubic f.M>t (the Iniwcvcr, tin- Department of Labor ^andard that had hoot in cltcct for (tropic simply took PittslMirgh Com- > titan twenty years) to two mil- iitg's word that approved respirators I. particles per cubic foot, the first of wtHtld be tsiiied to its employees anti t series of downward revisions they tltat the vemilntitm system would be im were to outsider---each an admission proved. Indeed, nobody fnnn the De that previously recommended guidelines partment of Labor visited the factory had alhiwed Workers to inltale enneen- again until November of 1971. crations of dust now. dremed Itamtful. For its part, Pittsburgh Corning (Tlte two million particles were eon* asserts tltat by May of 1969 the wear dderetl the equivalent of twelve as ing of approved resjtirators was re- bestos fibres longer titan five microns t|tiired fur all employees in tlte Tyler >er cubic centimetre of air--five mi- plant--an assertion tltat is denied hv ;rons being onc-fivc-thousandth of an most of the men who worked there-- rich, and a cubic centimetre of air and that the ventilation system hat^heen wing an amount equal to what might duly studied with an eye to improving te contained in a small thimhle.) The it. During 1969, the company did in Department of Labor insjx-ciors, )mw- deed engage the services of Dr. .Mor ver, not only Itad no equipment to ton Corn, professor of occupational ncasttrc ashestos-fihre cmmis-in terms health at the Graduate School of Public >f the promised ctmference standard I lealth of the University of Pittsburgh, Hit analyzed the air samples they took who visited tin? Tyler and Port Al n terms of a standard applicable mu to legany plants and proposed some engi ishestos, a known carcinogen, hut, neering controls to bring ashesins-dust writer, to nontoxic nuisance dusts, such levels in them down to recommended ts wood dust and chalk powder. As a limits. Hut if any significant improve esolt, tlicy failed to realize that even ments were made in the ventilation Jte new standard for asbestos was lK-ing system of the Tyler plant, they were -xceeded dozens of times over in the clearly not sufficient to bring the dust IVI. r plant, atul contented themselves levels within such limits. In January of a recommendin'; that J*il t>htircrlt 1970, engineers from Dr. Cndlcy's Jorning issue respirators to etitplotees group at the Division of Occupational vorking in dusty areas of the plant. Health--which hy then had become tile iVliat seems especially ironic Bureau of Occupational Safe ihottt this is that hack in the ly and Health--returned to orties, when IWAUt'O was the factory and took seven )H-rating its Paterson fac- teen air samples, and tltese ory--tint one upon which the showed rite average airbornc- Tyler plant was modelled-- ashestos level to be more than lot only had it paid its em- double tlte proposed twelve- ihiyees five cents extra an fibre standard. In keeping tour to wear respirators, with earlier practice, how vhiclt lltcy were obliged to lo by insurance underwriters ever, the engineers chose not to |>oim out tlte existence of nyway, hut it had also re-' ant (tossible health hazard itt vatcdly pointed out to tlte their re|wrt to Pittsburgh vorkers that wearing respi- Coming, or to make attv ators was a precaution that should al recommendations for lowering asltcsli $- ways he taken in any ashestos factory, dust levels in the 'Tiler plant. Nor did ml liad threatened to fire men who they forward their findings to the Tc\:t- (fused to wear them. St.-iti- Department of Health nr to .me As for the inadequate tcniilation s\s- titer agenct with enforcement powers. cin, the De|tartmem of I.alioi in-p. c- J Ims did tile Bureau ot Occupational ors n-comineitded in their iv|wut S.tfctt and Health add to the series of which teas sent to James 11.- Bu-n-r, tirtnallt menningless sH-vt-)s that had lie president of Pittsburgh Coiniii", begun hack in Julv of 196.1, when Pitts- ntl in Charles K. Van I Inrne, who had hin-gh Corning engaged the Indn-trial ci y lK-conie the manager of the Iltgii-ne J'nitndatinn of America m l yler plaftt) that the compain "make i study of the present system with proesshmal adtisers and come up to standtnl, or present qualified proof that the -taliiate tlte ashesios-dust hazard in the I tier plain. I)nrin those si\ and a half lisiVfie. five separate studies and iits|>-cii^if tJie f.tctnrc had liccit foil iri-M-nt ststem is operating, within the ducted, and inure than a hundred s.1111- T*5f- pics of air had been gathered and traits-.'', ported tit laboratories in various parts of' ' the : country, where . they had been counted, weighed, assayed, and pains takingly analyzed hy industrial hy gienists, who, depending on tvhat stand ard they were using, had repined their findings in terms of dust particles per cubic foot or dust weight per cubic metre or fihre counts per cubic centi metre hut never in terms of what the dust and fihrrs tltat the workers were inhaling might be doing to their health. BY this time, however, some prelimi nary data concerning the mortal ity experience of the men who hail worked in the I'JCARCO factory itt Paterson were being developed, and what the data revealed might have led one to anticipate a most unhappy fate for many of rite workers at the Tyler plant. With the aid of a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which had become concerned about the potential ashestos hazard to the general public, and wanted accurate data concerning it. Dr. SelikofF had set up an ashestos-contml program in Paterson in 1968, and had begun to trace the sixteen hundred anti sixty-four men who had been em ployed at the Paterson plant heiween 1941, when it opened, and 1954, when Union Asbestos closed it and trans ferred its op-rations to Tyler. This was a laborious process, for Dr. Sclikoff and Dr. Hammond had only the names of the men to go on, and addresses for them that were from fourteen to twen ty-seven years old. By January of 1970 they Itad managed to trace most of the nine hundred and thirty-three men who Itad worked at the factory for at least a year between 1941 and 1945, and who, if they were still alive, had passed tlte twenty-year mark since their initial exposure to asbestos dust. 'They wer< also able to collect death certificates fn almost all of the four hundred of the! men who Itad died. As in the caw of tl insulation workers in New Yoik !- 12 and Newark Local i2, the results were alarming, for, even thoituh the study was incomplete, the dial It cer tificates showed an exiraurdinaiile high frequency of death resulting fn-in ashcMosts, lung cancer, :;asl!;"-mu-s'>in:i! cancer, and mesothelioma. Meanwhile, Dr. Siliholi' i-id enitinued to maintain a clu-e w.11. It on the insolation workers' hi.dtli, p.oin-i par ticular attention to those men \\ it 11 more than tuentt t eats- . \pri iViicc, H llont^fi^eXJiniilledJcUUCe- nr twice 3 tear. He wit tliujv aide to delict st tnp101ns of illness in mam of ihc-c men much earlier.been ilen-ctcif utilei&TSC/jarid to observe. .with' threat accuracythe nirtnJii)'* c.xpcrwncc* of tlicYJire:hiihdrvd and seventy men whciinrhc had found in' 1963 to be survfvurs'of the original six hundred and :ny-two members nf the union in f2.'.The death rate continued to be disastriius.' Between January of 1963 and .March of 1968, sixty deaths would normally have been expected to occur among these men. Instead, there were a hundred and thirteen. Fifteen were caused by asbeSKVts, and, as with the earlier study, the twh. of the excess turned out to have been caused by cancer of various kinds. Two or three hroncltogcnic cancers would have been normal, but twenty-eight occurred, and, where the actuarial tables pre dicted only two gastro-intrstinal can cers, ahere were eight. In addition, a slurp rise in the number of mesothe liomas was observed. In .the earlier study, in which none had been ex pected, there itad been four in two hundred and fifty-five deaths; between 1963 and 1968, thirteen of these rare tumors were found in a hundred and thirteen deaths. In the spring of 1969, Dr. Sclikoff presented these findings to the Interna tional Conference on Pneumoconiosis, in Johannesburg, South Africa, which attended by dozens of scientists i..im all over the world--among them I)r. Brown, the chief of the Bureau of Occupational Safety and Health, wlto had been designated a vice-presi dent of the conference, and Dr. Crul ler, who had become director of the Bureau's Division of Epidemiology and Special Services. By this time, Dr. Selikoff and other scientists had developed reliable data to show that the insulation workers whose disastrous mortality ex perience lie had documented had de veloped asbestosis or cancer by work ing in areas of asbestos dust who-e levels were considerably below the twelve-fibre standard promised by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. Armed with tin's data. Dr. SeliknfF recommended to the Bureau of Occupational Safety ami Health in October of 1969 that an in terim level for asheslos he vt at two fibres per cuhic centimetre -a standard that had also been recommended hf the British Occupational Hjgiene Sovietv, and had hecn adopted l<v Her .Majestj's rctoralc of Factories. Dr. Selikotf |....>ted out that site'll a standard was intended only for the prevention of aShestosis, .mil not "f eancer, which mitlit well lie associated with exjiosuiv levels below those resulting in adiestosis. Bl ' way of emphasizing this possibility, he pointed out that' among the' insnliti. .a workers there were' ns many exce-- ' deaths resulting from mesothelioma afrom asbestosis, and twice as many ex cess deaths resulting from lung cancer. In spite of the alarming data supporting Dr. SclikofTs recommendation for a lower level, the bureau's asbestos ex perts appear to have been unconvinced that such action was necessary. A year later, when the bureau finally got around to proposing a standard for as bestos, it Settled upon the twelvc-fihrc standard. As usual, the Bureau of Oc cupational Safety and Health was lag ging far behind, for by this rime--the autumn of 1970--the Conference of Hygienists had proposed lowering the level for asbestos to five fibres. To more fully comprehend the ab surdity of such proposals and recom mendations, one should know that there are always many fibres smaller than five microns in length in any amount of aiv containing asbestos dust. In fact, most experts in the field readflv acknowledge that there may be hun dreds, if not thousands of these smaller fihres r fibrils--tinier particles into which asbestos fibres readily frag ment--simultaneously present for each one longer than five microns. (Indeed, if it were not for the electron niicroscojie, the extent to which asbestos is fihrous would be difficult to believe, for approximately a million individual fi brils can lie side by side in a linear inch of chrvsntile asbestos, whereas about four tJuiusand glass fibres--such as those found in various insulation materials--or six hundred human hairs can be aligned along the sum* dis tance.) Little is known about the dis ease potential of fibres smaller than five microns in length; nor does anyone know bow many asbestos fibres of am length must be inhaled in order to in duce scarring of the lungs, cancer, and mesothelioma. Why, then, count..mb filues longer than five microns--which, in effect, constitute onlv a tirp' portion of the total; I lie reason k simply that the average iiidiiMrial-livzicne latmralory is etpiip;ied with an ordinart pha-econtrast optical microscope, capable of tes*living only relative!) large partiele'. whereas most particles smaller than fiw mu mils can III tell IV I'll HIJH I1\ ell Ciron microscopy, which i> expcii-ive ami not rcailil) available. H.-iuv, even though recommended stamlaiil- of two. five, or twelve fibres greater than five mierons in length per cubic centimetre, guvriijmhleful, of air tniglit avtiialh n5CoaLal.hundred, or even a tfSmsVrml." aslust.s fibres |vr thimhh ful, micJi Uudards have Tontiiuially been justi fied on tlic Haris'of economic fcasiliflity \ sheer coYivenirnCc, and wishful tltink:ng--in other words, in tlnr hope that xninting only the larger particles would l* '-ast serve as an index for measuring contamination of the air being studied. As for how these patently and ldmittedly inaccurate counts of fibre* per thimbleful can be translated in terms of the lungs of aslk-stos workers, it should be pointed nut that in a nor mal eight-hour working day a normal worker will breathe in and out about eight cubic metres of air. Since each cubic, metre contains a million ciiIhc centimetres, or a million thimblefuls, the worker is breathing in and out eight million thimblefuls of air each day. Thus, an asbestos worker toiling in an environment that is supposed to contain, say, unly two fibres greater than five microns in length per thim bleful of air can in fact be-' inhaling anywhere from eight hundred million to eight billion asbestos fibres and fibrils of all sizes each day. No one knows for sure how many of these inhaled panicles may subsequently he exlialed, but recent studies of the aerodynamics of asbestos fibres suggest that as many s fifty per cent of the fibres may well be retained in the lungs. Not that anyi needs aerodynamic studies to prove t._. the lungs will retain vast numbers of asbestos fibres. That has been proved beyond a doubt by Dr. Danger, of the Mount Sinai Environmental Sciences Laboratory, who, using elec tron microscopy to analyze lung-tissue specimens in au topsies of asbestos workers, has been able to calculate that as many as a hundred thou sand billion to a million bil lion asbestos fibres anil fibrils had accumulated over cite years in the lungs of some of them. However, even as late as the autumn of 197*>, no one in the Bureau of Occu pational Safety and Health or, for that matter, in the independent medical com munity (let alone in the Im.irdrooms of the asbestos industry) was talking about tlie hazard in terms of human lungful* of literally billions upon billions of usIh'Mos fibres. Kiel)one u'.is talking aUiut it, as almost even one still is, , in tin- euphemistic terms of thimblefuls i ' r containing two, five, or, at the \ most, a dozen fibres. Tn this wav did a few needles become tlie metaphor for indeed, the nudicalh and sCK-n- tificallv acceprrd definition of --a whole haystack. 1 At the end of 1970, hoieeier, an event occurred .that slmwcd some prom-; be. of overcoming the ignorance', laxity,'.' and confusion tlrat had *jii long cn- " veloped tire asbestos problem and other occupational-health problems. On De cember 29th, after two years of prod ding front industrial unions, led in' tile United Steelworkers of America and tlie Industrial Union Department of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., Congress passed Public Law 91-596--the first compre hensive occupational-health legislation it had enacted since the Wabli-Hcalcy Act of 1936. Known as the Occupa tional Safety and Health Act of 1970, Public Law 91-596 sought to "assure . safe and healthful working conditions for working men and wnmtn;" and under its terms the federal govern ment was authorized to develop and set mandatory occupatiunal-safcty-andhealth standards applicable to any busi ness that engaged in interstate com merce. The Secretary of Labor was given the authority to promulgate im proved standards, and to enforce them by conducting inspections of factories and other workplaces and by issuing citations and imposing penalties if the standards were violated. The Depart ment of Health, Education, and Wel fare was made responsible for develop ing criteria for the establishment of the safety and health standards, including regulations for dealing with toxic ma terials and harmful physical agents and for instituting education and training programs to produce an adequate sup ply of manpower to carry out the provisions of the Act. So that tlie department could perform these functions, the Act provided for a Na tional Institute for Occupa tional Safety and Health, called XIOSIl, which re placed tile Bureau of Occu pational Safety and Health, and which was also given au thority to enter factories for"' inspections and investigations, hut, since the Act did not go into effect until April 2S, 1971, and since Xiosil did not begin its o|>erations until June .>f>th of that tear, little or nothing was done during the next few months to re solve the problem of industrial exposure to asbestos.'This delac was dishearten ing to main trade-union people and to ind. I Violent tnediial researchers, who had ho(>cd for quick action on a new as- bcSt;s standard. IfoWeVcr, the husincss- as-usual attitude that had characterized government jxilicv toward tlie nj*erations id asbestos industry for so long was al^nfejyj'e shattered h\ a series W-* '--* disclosures that, fittingH, would have their apotheosis in tlie revelation of the atnicithis"working conditions that bad prevailed'.through the years at the T)IcrpluitA- HE new turn of events got start Ted tin May 20, 1971, when in dustrial hygienists from the Meadvitle office of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources sent Pitts burgh Cuming a report on some recent inspections they had made at die com pany's insulation plant at Pure Alle gany, a small town in the northwestern part of the state. Tlie Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had not yet adopted the standard of twelve fibres per cubic centimetre, $<> the hygienists who in spected die Port-Allegany plant were using the long-outmoded standard of five million panicles per cubic foot, which b roughly the equivalent of thirty fibres per cubic centimetre. Even though Pittsburgh Corning had installed some new ventilating equipment in the fac tory during the previous two. years, tlie inspectors found that dust levels exceeded the old standard in five of twenty-five air samples. In one of the samples, the count was more titan twenty-six million particles, which meant that there may have been ap proximately a hundred and fifty fihres por cubic centimetre of air in that loca tion--five times the outdated standard. Such dust levels--and even higher ones--had, of course, been found and ignored in the Tyler plant for years, and the management of Pittsburgh Corning may well have come to expect this process to he repeated elsewhere. The Pennsylvania inspectors, however, gave the company sixty days to improve the ventilation system and institute (let ter housekeeping practices |o reduce dust levels at tlie factory. While Pittsburgh Coming's man agers were mulling over this unex pected situation, some personnel changes were taking place at XlOSIl that would soon cause them additional problems. Having reached retirement age, Dr. CrnllcV was about to leave the Divirion of Epidemiology and S|ieei:d Services, which was being reorganized into the Division of Field Studies and Clinical Investigations. A number of positions in the new divisiooihad opened up, among them that of chief medical officer, and it was filled on |uli 1st, with the appointment of a thirty -wav-hl doctor named William M. Johnson. A native of Olean, New York, Dr. John son was brought up in "Saranac Izike, gradu.'jtetLJrom the. Sttwtfrtrd Cniveiritv School of Medicine in 190S. in- ` .f School of.Pulilu" Health. Hi-' had dc . ~ WiK-il to fulfil! his military obligation by '' putting in a iwo-yvar stint' with the ' Uiitli-d State* Public Health Service, anil, as thing* turneil nut, it iliil nnt take him lung to become fnnnersetl in his job there. Within a few days of Dr. Johnson's arrival at the \IOSII offices in Cincinnati, one of the engineers who lujd been conducting held studies un> dcr Dr. Crallcy told him about the en vironmental sufvevs of ashestos factories that had been in the files fr several years. "That engineer was particular ly concerni-tl about the situation at the Tyler plant," Dr. Johnson lei* re called. ".And when I started digging through the files myself, I realized he hail good reason to he, for it was plain as Jay that there was an incredibly seri ous health problem down there. .At that point, 1 went to Dr. Crallcv and a.-ked him whom I should sec about the situation. He suggested that I get in touch with Dr. Grant, Pittsburgh Coming's medical consultant. How ever, when I called Dr. Grant, on July i.llh, he told me there really wasn't much of a health prohlem at the Tvler plant, In-cause the place was so dusty that people didn't stay around there long enough to get sick. He also told me that there were no plans to im prove the factory's ventilation system, and that the Company planned to con vert from asK-stos to mineral wool in tile near future." Since Dr. Johnson had received con siderable instruction at Harvard in the effects of asbestos exposure, he was less than reassured by his conversation with Dr. Grant. During the next two weeks, I jbe gathered as much information as lie riiuld about conditions at Tvler and j Port .Allegany; then he discussed the situation thoroughly with Dr. Joseph K.. ^ Wagoner, who had arrived at XIOStt on -August 1st to replace Dr. Crallel as directnr of the new Division ul Field Studies and Clinical Investigations. Dr. Wagon, r had rewivnl his Doctor ol Science degree in i-phlemiolottv and hioM.-itistic< front the Harvard Siluil of Puhlic Health in 1970, and had pi nt till tears as an < phlemiolufist veil It lli. Public Health Serv ice'. National (. anver Institute, where lie vv.is iii.tiiuu- ntal in ilie long struggle to devilop and iiistituii standaids for tin proniiimi of uranium miiii-rd who were u-iiip.iiiuiiallv es|tosid to radioactive dust. IF- was a. seiiou.lv ilisturl'i-d :iikp%.aJi' |viti ntial health h.i/ard at Tv liT>>Di-. Jolui.oii was. and together the two nun . V . ' decided to make it and other, aslvstos- .a.. pit- products factories their first order of business. In the meantime, pressed by the deadline given by the Pennsylvania state inspectors {or cleaning up the Port Alle gany plant, and aware of Dr. Johnson's concern about condition* at the Tyler factory, Pittsburgh Corning made a move to head off some of tile pressures that were building up against its asbestos opera lions. On August 3rd, the compa ny filed an application for a variance from occupatiunal-safety-aml-hea!th standards with the Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health of the Department of I-tbor, in Washing ton. Under the terms of the Occupation al Safety and Health Act of 1970, the Secretary of laihor could grant a vari ance to an employer if he determined that the employer "lias demonstrated hy a preponderance of the evidence that the conditions, practices, means, meth ods, operations, or processes used or proposed t be used by an employer will provide employment and places of employment to his employees which are as safe and healthful ns those which would prevail if he complied with the standard." Pittsburgh Coming's appli cation for a variance was signed and submitted by E. \V. Holman, the vice- president in charge of manufacturing and technology--who told the Tyler Couricr-Tinifi that he knew of no specific Pittsburgh Corning employee suffering from significant illness as a result of working with nsliestos. In the application, Holman stated that the threshold limit value for aslx-stos was exceeded in some areas of the com pany's Tyler and Port Allegany plants, that the company had hern vtnuhle to comply with the required standard lie- cause of the unavailability of effective ventilation equipment, and that the in effectiveness of the available equipment had become particularly .'gnificanr since the reduction <>( the standard for asbes tos from twelve fibres per cubic centi metre to five. The fact that such a re duction in the official ..taiulaid li.nl not taken place but bad onlv- liven pnlili-lied as a projvo^-d change bv the Conference of Hvgicnists Mt*'ge>lx that Pittsburgh CorningV managers either were af flicted with a lull C.-Ise of net v i. 01 were trving to obscure the fact that neither factoiv via.- in compliant i iven with the ill**tide .landau! ol livi iii1- iiuii paitieh. pel- cuhii- loot,-let alone .1the tvvv li e-film in.I.oil itvll. The applii .ition lor a vaiiinte went oil to -.IV that a. of fun--, 19, I,..the ci^SrpaTri had .pvloHmciily tv.o lliin-' died thiHi..iinl doll'ii.. fin" i'v..e-iTch and ,th;vf!i>piiU'nt of a niincral-woiil itii- Grant's visit to Tyler im August 17th uite.for adie-to#, that it would kgin was tu give the workers there an edu to use mineial wool in mhiic f its oj>- cational talk on the health hazards of erations in August, anl tliat it ln|Krtl to nskstos cxjKisure, which Pittsburgh make a complete conversion to mineral Corning had already claimed to Itave <xd at the Port Allegany anil Tyler done in its application for a variance, plants by the miihlle of 1972. As for filed two weeks kforc.) On August the steps the company luwl taken to pro 24th, Dr. Johnson telephoned Dr. vide working conditions as safe and Grant, in Pittsburgh, to tel! him that healthful as tltose which would prevail the Division of Field Studies and Clini if the government standard for askstos cal Investigations wanted to examine had ken complied with, Holman stated the workers at the Tyler plant. Dr. that Pittsburgh Coming had supplied Grant replied that Dr. Hurst, of the approved respirators and had required Fast Texas Chest Hospital, had just workers to use them; tint it had also finished giving the Tyler workers med purchased and was experimenting with ical examinations, including X-rays and new respirators; iliat it had provided pulmonary-function tests, and he sug dust-collection and ventilation appara gested that KIOS1I might wish to defer tus; that it had expanded its program of its study of the inen until the results of periodic medical examinations; that it Dr. Hurst's tests could be made avail had-improved housekeeping procedures able. by the more frequent use of vacuum In the light of this development. Dr. cleaners; and that it had "provided and Johnson and Dr. Wagoner decided to will continue to provide health educa hold off for the time king on their ex tion programs that fully explain to its amination of the Tyler workers, and to employees the health hazards associated conduct a medical survey of the men in with asbestos exposure and how they the Port Allegany plant.. (At that can protect themselves." In a sworn point, they Itnd no idea that almost five affidavit attached to the application for years kfore Dr. Hurst Itad outlined a a variance, Dr. Grant stated that he proposed--anil rejected--medical study had knowledge of the matters set forth of the Tyler workers for Pittsburgh in the application "so far as said appli- Corning.) On September 7th, in order rion states that tile applicant has pro- to make arrangements for the survey .ed for its employees health education of the Port Allegan}' workers. Dr. programs that explain to said employees Johnson went to the plant, where he the health Itayards associated met Dr. Grant for the first with ask*stos exposure and time, and heard him give a how they can protect them talk to the workers on the selves." health hazards associated with B^k at tiie Division of asbestos. According to Dr. Fk^Htudies and Clinical In- Johnson, Dr. Grant indicated ves^Jatinns, in Cincinnati, in his talk tltat the levels of several weeks were to piss askstos dust at Port Alle before Dr. Johnson and l)r. Wagoner would learn of > gany were not high enough tu k considered dangerous Pittsburgh Coming's appli cation for a variance. Mean while, on August 9th, Dr. Johnson called Horace Adri to health. Dr. Grant also i claimed that the dust levels i i were considerably lower than tlte ones that the insulation, an, chief of the industrial-hy workers Studied by Dr. S*di- giene program of the Texas knfT hail ken expised to. Stale Department of Health, ill Austin, (Actually, Dr. SelikofT bad demon and told him of the extraordinarily high strated that the insulation workers were dust levels that had ken [oiind in the exp^'d to levels of asbestos dust far be Tjler plant. Adrian odd Dr. Julm-oii low the twelve-fibre standard.) In ad that he hail never seen copies of ant dition, Di. Cir.int implied that cigarette iilS|H*ction of the Tiler |daiil - indeed, smoking u.it.-in un|n>rlaiit factor in the he gave Dr. John .mi tin- impiv-stin d.-i eiopmeiit of a-b; -to-i-, alt h* lilt'll sm -i lli.it he did tnu knou the f.ictort ex- l> u d it 1 a- aie available indieate a veil i---`l ami lie veuidd look iuln the s!tu:i- limited elii.'t of cigaiettr smoking on as cjnickh as |xi.--ilile. ,\ week later, bmg svai'ing. (|)r. Grant mav have Aitiian informed Dr. Johnvin tjt.it lie ini-inlerpr. t.,1 some studies conducted iva- tniino m '1`iler the next day, Au In Dr. S- !iko|) anil Dr' Hammond, gust J / ih, to eonduet a walk-through " hicl^kaia;d that ask<|iis,vi orkers W'lio uirvei of the fartort ami to meet Dr. smokv'vrejmvnes'-'nin right times tfif Ctiant, vfli'i al-o planned to Ik- there. n-k of ill ing of lung caneer a> cigarette (As it turned out, the purpose of Dr. smoker-. in geneial, ami nim-ti-tun tunes the.ii-k iif men who neither work with askstos nor smoke. But ivliat Dr. Johnson found most disturbing of all was Dr. Gram's assertion that, in addition to smoking cigarettes, a man would have to undergo from tweim to thirty years of expisure to asbestos kforc experiencing any ad terse effects. Later that day. Dr. Johnson made a point of telling Dr. Grant, in the pres ence of union officials, that radiological evidence of pulmonary fibrosis had been found in men with less than ten years' expisure, and that there was strong medical evidence to suppin the klief that `lung cancer ami mesothelioma could occur at expisure levels far Mow thosc that could cause askstusis. This encounter with Dr. Grant seems to have marked a turning piint in Dr. Johnson's dealings with Pittsburgh Corning, for, he has explained, "I came away from it feeling that Dr. Grant had grossly minimiz.ed the haz ard of working with askstos, and 1 assumed that he hail probably done tlie same thing at Tyler on August 17th." Dr. Johnson's mistrust of the com pany's intentions was heightened a few ilats after this, when he discovered that Pittsburgh Corning had filed the appli cation for a variance with the Occupa tional Safety amt Health Administratiun; he kite veil the application to be not only self-serving hut downright false in its claim that the company had undertaken to inform its employees adequately about the hazards of work ing with askstos. In addition. Dr. Johnson and Dr. Wagoner had other reasons to fear licit no immediate action would k .aken to reduce the health hazard at Tyler and Jbirt Allegan}'. In the mid dle of August-, they had prepared a memorandum expressing their concern about Conditions at the two plants (it also iiichttk-d data from Dr. Crallcv's files about excess mortalite among workers in several large ashestos-lextile factories) and Sent it to Dr. Marcus M. Key, the director of Mosll, which hail set up its lteadijuarti.is in RockiiHe, Maryland. During Auvii-t and Septellikr, as it happened, there were huge internal problem- at Yiosil heaiU|itarters about how tin in-lituie should earn out ii- r.il.Aui.l. r the Oc cupational Safi n and Health Act and how it should coordinate j|- activities with those of tlie I fep.ll [111. lit of I .alior S Occupational S.ifeti and Health Administration, ulncli fi.nl Inen ijmii u-qlSbilin fnr^rrvfbi-. ing healthstandards mnlrr the Act. \n .nlmini-- li'ative cii-i. en-in-d. uit.li iln- iv-iilt 1'1 give J)f:; Jnl\n*mf]thl)r. AVag. icr any-J.'hSsitranceVt1lhl.Somethtng quid he done to alleviate' tile contlt>ns at iltc Tiler ami Port Allegany ants. Feeling increasingly frustrated, r ' ihiiMin and Dr. Wagoner dead er tlie encounter with I)r.' Grant at the situation was serious enough warrant their Liking matters into eir own hands. The following week, r. Johnson telephoned Steven Wodi, the legislative aide for the CM, hemical, and Atomic Workers Interitional Union, and told him about e environmental studies of dust levels the factory which he had found iried in the files. (The two men had et previously to discuss the problem workers exposed to beryllium at e Kawecki Berylco Industries plant, HazletSn, Pennsylvania, where, as in e case of Tyler, the Bureau of Occuittonal Safety and Health had gathed data ahout health hazards associed with a substance that the workers ere exposed to but had for a number ' years neglected to inform tlie works of tlie dangers involved.) Upon arning of the situation at Tyler, /odka immediately sent Dr. Johnson letter requesting that he make die ivironmental data availahle, and, on :po*mher 24th, Dr. Johnson sent i iff to the union's Legislative De triment, in Washington, D.C. When Wodka discussed the Tyler tuation with his boss, Anthony Mazacchi, the director of the Legislative department, Mazzircchi remembered dr. Sclikoff's telling him ahout a study lat he. Dr. Hammond, and Dr. Ihurg were conducting of the morility experience of the men who had een employed at the Paterson plant, lazzncclii quick!) got in touch with )r. Sclikoff, who, as it turned out, had umpleted the first part of the study a /cek or two before, and was about to resent his data at the Fourth Internannal Pneumoconiosis Conference of le International Lalmr Office, in fuclinivst, <m September 29th. When -lav.'zucciii told liiin about the environacnt.il data on the Tyler plant that )r. Johnson was making available to lie union, Dr. Selikoff sent Mazzocehi lie j'eMilt> of his study of the Paterin workers. They were as alarming s ilu.- mortality data on the asheStos isolators. Of three iioudreil and lliir)- v men who had been einplojetl .t ... Paterson factor)' for a year or iiore between 1911 and 1945, eight)iglit liatl ilieil ht Devcinlier .'11, 1959, mil fifteen could not he traced. Hnwver, Dr. Selikoff, Dr. Hammond, and fun associates had managed to trace on January- 1, I960, and Itad studied 'their experience up to June 30, 1971 Using the standard mortality tables. Dr. Hammond calculated tliat no more than forty-seven deaths would norntally have been expected to occur among these men during that elcvcn-and-one half-year period. Instead, there were hundred and five. Fourteen of the deaths were caused by ashexosis, and, as with the insulation workers, a large majority of the excess deaths were caused by cancer. Two or three lung cancers would have been normal, but twenty-five occurred, and deaths from cancer of the stomach, the colon, and the rectum were three times what tlie standard mortality tables predicted. In addition, although none would normal ly have been expected, there were five deaths from mesothelioma. Mazzocchi and Wodka were pro foundly disturbed at the results of the Paterson study, for they could only conclude that the similarity of opera tions in the two factories meant tliat much the same thing would happen to the men at Tyler. Meanwhile, as they were trying to decide what to do, Pitts burgh Corning was informed by the Department of Labor that no action would be Liken on its application for a variance from occupational-safcty-andhealth standards until after a public hearing, and that no hearing could be held until the spring of 1972. Since this meant tltat the company would be forced to comply with existing health standards until then, and since the com pany had failed to prove that mineral wool could be successfully substituted for asbestos in high-temperature pipe covering, the Pittsburgh Corning peo ple found themselves in a hind. In the early part of October, therefore, they told representatives of Local 4-21)2, in Tyler, with" whom they were negotiat ing a new contract, that they might have to shut the plant, hut said that they wished to consider the local union'Fpreipoxals on wages, health, and safety be fore making a final decision. When Mazzocchi and Wodka learned of the compam's action, the\ sujjK'Cteil that Pittsburgh Coining was using the threat of a shutdown to force the local union to minimize its demands for improved working conditions at the Tvlcr plant. After consulting with representatives of Local 4-2(12, the two tnen determined that a strict-compliancc.program should become part of the union's contract prc^etSft-vfin safety and- health. jJnytlivn submitted a formal request to Dr. Johnson, at XlOSll, on October 7, 1971, for n comprehensive industri.ilhtgk-lttf study of the Tiler factorv and a medic.il survey of the men who were working there. Upon reoeii mg this re quest, Dr. Johnson made the necessity arrangements with Pittsburgh Corning and with tlie Texas State Department of Health, which had piviiwisly of fered to cooperate, and a survei of the plant was scheduled fur the last week of the month. AS things turned out, the Xiosit inspection of the Tyler plant coin cided with a crescendo of protest that had been building up for many months over the plight of tens of thousands of workers throughout the country who were being exposed to excessive con centrations of asbestos dust. On Au gust 3rd--the day Pittsburgh Corning filed its application for a variance--Dr. SelikofF wrote to James D. Hodgson, the Secretary of Labor, making carbon copies for leading officials of six labor unions whose members worked with asbestos, and for Dr. Key, at XIOSH. His letter said: Dear Mil Hodcsox : Your department has published initial standards in the Federal Register, in ac cordance with the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. I understand that these are "initial" and that modifications may be expected as a rrsu1: ,f research cri teria bring developed hv the National In stitute fur Occupational Safety and Health. One "standard" in the published list is so wrong, and represents such serious hazard to workmen, sli.it 1 advise its urgent revision. 1 refer to the standard fur asbestos, which would allow workmen to be exposed to environments containing as many as twelve fibres per cuhic centimeter of air. Our research in one asbestos trade--insu lation work--demonstrates that work in the past in areas with levels of two to three fibres per cubic centimeter of air lias resulted in a very great increase of death due to cancrr and to asbestosis. Just how serious this lias been may he appreciated-from current statistics: at present, one in every five death, among insulation workers is due to long cancer, one in ten to cancer of the pleur.i or prrilunruni, one in ten to scarred lungs or asbomsis. 'I he proposed level is much higher than I actually won- exists. It is ,u high as to ` make totally ineffective curr*-nl eliorts hi both industry and labor to coni ml this un happy occupational health hazard. In (ireat liritain, the .ippjoiol level is hxf limn one-fifth flir standard line pro posed and levels of twelve fibre, per cubic centimeter for more rh.ui r\rn ten min utes would be. >uf1ii ic-nr to icipiirr that the workman wear protective clnlhiu.: anil use-ail efficient respirator. A! r. Albert It. lluieltuison. Pir-ithmt m - ,*lr ll1'rili`t'l||l.nl Association ui Ileal and I* rust ufsulators ainl'y-V-bci-to. Woikcr,. Al-L-C. JO, ha-*irTlvul.ited (11r there .nc 1 approximately our hundreJ thousand men empluyrd doin^ asliotus insulation work in the United States, in various unions and in various industries. Utilizing sta tistical calculations by Ur. E. Cuyler Hammond, director of the Department of Statistics of the American Cancer Society, it may be predicted that, if the situation remains the same and docs nut improve, there will he more than seventeen thou sand excess deaths of lung cancer amtmg these men, as well as almost ten thou sand unnecessary deaths of cancer uf the pleura or peritoneum, ten thousand wholly preventable deaths of asbestosis, and many thousand other cancer deaths, in this one trade alone. Thousands of deaths will occur in other industries, to add to the unhappy toll of this serious error. I urge you, then, to recall this stand ard, and substitute one that will help pro-, tect workingmen forced to work with this j dangerous material. I Although Dr. SelikofTs letter did not engender any immediate response from Secretary Hodgson, it did evoke profound concern among the union of ficials to whom he sent carbon copies. When Dr. Sclikoff returned to New York from Bucharest, Sheldon W. Samuels, the Director of Occupational Health, Safety, and Environmental Af fairs for the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s Industrial Union Department, invited him to at tend a meeting of the I.U.D.'s ad-hoc Committee on die Asbestos Hazard, in Washington, on October 18th, so that lie might present additional informa tion, which the union people hoped would cnahle them to get some ef fective action from the Department of Labor on the prohlem of occupational exposure to asbestos. Meanwhile, hav ing discovered additional reports in the old Bureau of Occupational Safety and Health files which showed exces sive dust counts in a dozen more as bestos factories (there was also an in complete study of mortality among em ployees of those factories, which showed an extraordinary humber of deaths re sulting from asbestosis among men in their forties and fifties), Dr. Johnson ami Dr. Wagoner continued to express concern about the asbestos problem to their superiors at NIOSII, who they l\i>|H:d would take a firm stand in ad vising the Secretary of Labor to pro mulgate a tough emergency standard for asbestos. On October 4th, feeling that tile situation was getting out of hand. Dr. foltusoit and I)r. Wagoner visited Dr. Selikoff in Neve York to exchange information about the asbestos problem in general andj in particular, alnuit [obits-MainilleV a>lestns-le.\lile factory in Manville, New Jersey, ^ where that corjioration has oveneil an^3i<4 operated the largest complex' of as- he-to--pioduct- fav lories in the world i'f'' - - [' -'Av'fc'jyfe .Li)|;-viV -'- for more than fifty ycarszDr.Cralley.'s ` files' had yielded . up several .'environ mental studies showing' that' excessive dust levels had existed in the Manville asbestos-textile factory at least since 1965, when the first study was made; a 1969 medical survey- showing find ings consistent with asbestosis in thirtyone of a hundred and seventy-nine chest X-rays of the factory' employees; and an incomplete mortality study showing, on preliminary analysts, four deaths from mesothelioma and at least ten other ashestos-related deaths among a hundred and eighty ashestos-te.vtile workers. Indeed, the situation at Manvillc appeared tu be similar to the one at Tyler, and on a larger scale. In 1967, engineers from Dr. Cralley's of fice--now the Department of Field Studies and Epidemiology--had taken air samples that were not analyzed for asbestos fibres until September of 1971, when Dr. Johnson discovered the data in the files. That September, too. Dr. Johnson had fibre counts completed on over a hundred air samples that engi neers from Dr. Cralley's division had taken at the Manville asbestos-textile plant during the spring of 1971. The fibre counts showed that even then there were as many as twenty fibres per cuhic centimetre of air in some opera tions of the plant. Dr. Johnson and Dr. Wagoner be lieved these data to demonstrate a seri ous and persistent health hazard at the Johns-Manville factory, and they' were anxious to know if Dr. Selikoff could give them any additional informa tion, particularly with regard to other cases of mesothelioma that might have occurred in Manville. As it hap pened, Local 800 of the United Papermakers and Paperworkers Union, which represented tlie company's production workers, had provided Dr. Sclikoff with a roster of its membership sev eral months before, and lie, I)r_Hnmmond, and one of their associates at Mount Sinai, Dr. William J. Nichol son, had just'begun a mortality study of the Juhns-Manville employees, So Dr. Sclikoff was able to give his visitors de tails on about a dozen deaths among the workers which had been caused b\ mesothelioma. On October 5th, Dr. Johnson and Dr. Wagoner went to Trenton, where they met with the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Labor and Industry and the deputy commissioner of the state's Department of Health, and told them of the health hazard that they helieveil to exist at the JnhnsManvillr^thhTt. When diet' asked these officials to investigate the situation. ' -V however, tlu v l<-ariH'l that" the' state-.;; M;mifcml`of. two' fihres per. cubic'conti- jiio>-mm--imileerreedi! ..iitt ttuo bIne.- 'aa fleeudeerraail pprrioblem 'l iretKf'antlTto^Ksiie'.'.Y bulletin prescrili- .ami, iti aiu case, did not puin'55 mod ing' that an'"aj>pmprx.He label be affixed m-tii fibre-counting equipment for such to each .container of asbestos and as Ci ta-'ky Tin- following ilny, the two bestos products warning workers of >' ' look tlie dal.i they had compiled danger. In addition, the letter asked the .lie John--Manvilie textile factory Secretary to get in touch with tlie ad to the New York Regional Office of ministrator of the Environmental Pro the Occu|iatKiiia! Safety and Health tection Agency "to enable him to in Administration, in New York City, vestigate the necessity for invoking the unit to discover that the people there imminent-danger provisions of tlie did not possess adequate fibre-counting Clean Air Act, as amended in 1970, to equipment, or eveii know how to use protect our families and comuuini.ies such equipment properly. With tltat, from tin- effects of atnhicnt asbestos they flew back to Cincinnati and got in tltat escapes from the workplace." touch with officials of the United Pa- As might he $up|x>scd, the Industrial permakers and P.-qx-rworkers Union. Union Department's letter placed con A few weeks later, they learned some siderable pressure upon Secretary Hodg thing from the union people that the son to take some kind of action.' When Commissioner of the New Jersey De he ditl so, however, on December 7th, partment of Labor and Industry Itad he declared an emergency standard for known for more than a year--that in ashestos of five fibres longer than five 1969 alone the Jnhns-Manville Cor microns per cubic centimetre of air.' poration had paid out $887,341 in This, of course, was an emergency workmen's compensation to two hun standard only in the eyes of the De dred and eighty-five employees of the partment of Labor, since it was two Manvilie plant who had become dis and a half times as great as the stand abled with asbestosis. ard requested by the Industrial Union At his meeting with union leaders in Department, and since the Conference Washington on October 18th, Dr. of Hygienists Itad already published it Selikoff documented his contention that as a proposed change. It is not known tlie Department of Labor should es what, if any, medical data prompted tablish a standard for occupational ex- the Secretary of Labor to Select the five- re to ndx'Stos to replace the fibre standard, or why he chose to dis current twelve-fibre standard. At the regard the data indicating that aslx-stos same time, he stress'd disease could occur at the fact that any stand this level of exposure. ard for asbestos cx|*>- Perhaps he was seeking sure could be con a middle ground that lie cerned onh with the hoped would hi- satisfac prevention of |mlm<>- tory both to iodustrv and nary fibrosis, and that to the union people. If little was known as t<> so, he was neglecting the how low a standard reqxmsihility placed upon might have to lie in or him by the Occupational der to prevent aslu-n >-- Safety and Health Act related cancer, which for promulgating stand had accounted fur full) ards that, e\ ell if tltev three-quarters of tin entailed conflict. Would excess deaths among assure "the greatest pro the insulation workers. tection of the Safett oi On Nmemlx-r 4, 1971, the Indus health o| tin- affected emplniecs."'-In trial Union Department transmitted ant case, it is a pity that lie was not through Ciemoe Tnvlor, tlu executive aware of tin- XIO.-II re|t-iit on I'itt-- S'-efetai'i of the A.l-.L.-C.I.O.'s stand bttrgli Coming's Tt lei plant, which ing committee on fe-v\ ami mcup.i- was then sloulj making its w.n tiotial lirahh, a letter uigendi 1'iqtu-Si- through tlu- hui'e.tiKTulic lain rintli, for ji:-j Si i retail I lode -on le u-e ihe |mw- tin- stoi\ of tlu- plant cotiMitimd incon- i- granted him In the Occupational l i`o\ ertlbl, e\u|. lie, o| tlu- so lie t.lll*.dc S-*et\ and fltahh Act of 1970 to di- of igiioi.nin, |.i\it\, ami l.u k o| cum- an iiiici'a-iM standard governing miiiiicatioii that li.nl fiom tin- veil be til-, indo-tii:J Hu- o| aheslo>. 1 lie letter ginning cli.ir.-u lerized government (mi ih v l.ii\ d that the existing tiielve-fihtv n') tou-.uil occupational expo-me to -.land.ml i<ui-titut<.d "a license to jeop asbestos. I In- stori of Tiler also made ardize without , li'retiie restraint tin- a utoiB^g.^jf one of the hasic assiin^jj- __ lives of milh.iiisof woikeis," and ursied lions oeiuiul"tliis",policy: that tlu- tin Si Cretan to deil.nv an eiiiei "enci erntm-nt could and would foice inilus- try to abide hi a numerical fibre stand Iard, and, by so doing, could insure healthful working conditions in aslvstos factories. THE XIOSII inspection, which was conducted between October 26th and October 29th, included an in dustrial-hygiene survey, carried out hv engineers from XIOSH's Division of Technical Services, and a medical sur vey, performed by a three-man team from the Division of Field Studies and Clinical Investigations. The medical team was headed by Dr. Johnson, who has a vivid memory of his first look'at the Tyler plant. "Two carloads of us drove in from Dallas late on the after noon of the twenty-sixth," he recalls. "The factory was situated in an in dustrial district on the outskirts of town, and it consisted of a pair of wood-shell buildings, each of which was about a thousand feet long, fifty feet wide, and thirty feet high. When we arrived, wo were met in the front office by Mr. Charles E. Van Horne, the plant manager, and since it was late in the day, there was just time for a quick preliminary walk-through. Tlie place was an unholy mess. Whv, com pared with it, the Port Allegany plant looked like a hospital operating room! A thick layer of dust coated evertthing--from floors, ceilings, and raft ers to drinking fountains. .As tve walked through tlie interior, we saw men fork ing asliestos fibre into a feeding ma chine as if it were hay. They obviously had no idea of the lur/artl involved, farther down tlie line, we came upon some fellows with respirators hantiin" around their necks, who were sitting in an open doorway eating watermelon. I hate to think of the fibre counts on those dices of watermelon. I remem ber turning tu Dr. Richard Spiegel, one of nn assistants. `This is intolerable,' I told him._IK* was as shocked as l wn." It diil not take Dr. [oiiu-on anil lu's associates from XliVSM Ion" to realize that at itriualli elerv static of die manufacturing process ennimoti- qn.uiUliis of .-islv-ios dust weie heinc -pi u i d out ii it i tin- faflun. In addition |.. poor housekeeping procciliu. die clii. I i.iu-e uasa gro--li inadcqual* iiiiula- t:on m Mem. Other aspects i-tf th> plant's operation were found toll, iipi.dli liiz.ii'ilous. I lie si-1 .ip-g i inti in it iiuilim.-, u here refuse from variou-. op, rationuas made iviisahl, , ivasiXtr. null diisii anil lacki d s'uflici, ill i i-ntil it-on c.qiiip- meiii. antLa fan ne.ir-_ili. Jin I h"pp*i' simjdi eoniiibuii-d imhulinct dial u- di-per-eil iliisj into die u-oikina ;i \ i- ronnn-nti Moreover, Kith the 'Cr;:> \ grinder am! tin- feeding machine' relied Jon a dust-collection system that . n-- l sisted nf canvas hags inside the plant. ,,heueath the roof. Thr*e hags Were pe riodically emptied lie mecleinic.il -bak, and wju-n this liappened huge amounts Ilf asheslo* duet Were reier-ed into the air; then, after it had >ei;!ed. instead of being vacuumed the dust war swept into piles with push broom-. The ventilation equipment on the raws in the finishing department was also found to he inadequate; excessive amounts <'! asbestos dust were escaping into the air there as well. Because of Pittsburgh Cuming'.' ap plication fur a variance, the XIOsH inS)vectors learned, the wearing of respira tors had been mandator)' in all areas ut the plant since August. However, in stead of being used for emergency or backup protection, as industrial-hygiene standards prescribed, the- respirators were obviously being cmploved in the Tyler plant as substitutes for an ade quate dust-control system and for prop er housekeeping. Nor did the com pam have any adequate program for select ing, fitting, cleaning, ami maintaining the respirators worn by its employees, and many of the men were wearing them improperly. In addition to noting se hazards, the in<|vctor$ saw that factory's lunchroom was within fifty feet of one of the dustiest opera tions in the plant, ami that workers were allowed to enter it wearing clothe* that were contaminated with asbestos. The XIOSII men also discovered that compressed-air outlets throughout tlnplant were heing used to blow excess dust off the employes--a practice that simply reintroduced asbestos fihres into the working environment. As a result of these multiple de ficiencies in the ventilation s\stem and in the operating procedures of the Tv - lor plant. Dr. Johnson ami his associates were not surprised to find that, of a hundred and thirty-eight air simple- taken at different locations in the f:*c- torv, a hundred and eeveiilcen exceed-.d the recommended five-lihre 't..nd.-rd. (Of course, even if the Tv let- ;-.l mt htul observed th.u sianilaid, not wearing respirai-o' .niiilil 'lill . Iieen inhaling .11 h-.i-t fmiv r.ii!!: ..-i l'r:Uo-. li'.iii' in .hi 1 ighi-iiour v.-.dav. ) \\ I1.11 ::'ioui-!i-d th. m, Imv.- \. ;. - - hiivv m:i. h tin l-i,l. . \v v-!..! t. 1111iKi1.il 1! .j.iud ,!_ ,,| ali:ui.; . . :\ 'lop in 1 lie Iii.iiu:i.i, t.iiing pi-tt-e'.. iu tile mixing d. JI.O 'III.-Ill, will-re ti-..- ! . .! l.o|i]iei' ami 11:. up grinder vv it n.iltil, the m.iximiitn c..nn niraiit.n w... .1 him.lied .uni . i;;1-i\-nine lihu- | cubic centimetre of air, and the average was seventy-five. In the forming depnrtment, where the material was rolled 011 mandrels, the maximum concentra tion was a hundred and thirty-four fibres per cubic centimetre, and the average was thirty-nine. In the finish ing department, where pipe covering was trimmed and sawed, the maximum concentration was two hundred ami eight fibres per cuhic centimetre--an approximation, for the air sample was actually too dust)- t*> permit an exact count under a microscope--and the average was forty-one. Even in the in spection and packing department, where the finished product was weighed, Itoxcd, and shipped, the maximum con centration was ninety-two fibres per cubic centimetre, and the average was twenty-three--nearly double the in terim standard of the Department of Labor, nearly five times the stamla'rd recommended by the hygienists, and ten times the level of exposure that Dr. Selikoff and other epidemiologists had found to be responsible for the extraor dinary number of excess deaths among the insulation workers. But the true in tensity of the exposure of the Tyler workers can only be appreciated when one recognizes that such concentrations of long asbestos fibres per thimbleful of air really meant that, before they were required to wear respirators in August, some of these men were inhaling op to a billion of the longer fibres each work ing day, and many more of the shorter ones, which were not being counted bv the engineers. Since asbestos-induced cancers gen erally take at least twenty years to de velop, and tlic Tyler plant had been in operation for only seventeen years, Dr. Johnson and his associates did not yet expect to find neoplasms among the six ty-three men working there. However, in order to complement the X-rays and pulmonary-function tests - jliat had been performed in August In Dr. Hurst, they examined tlu- eniplovees for rales--crackling s-mmls in tin- chest which can occur with aslvstusis--anil for finger clubbing, a thickening of tissue at the fingertips which often occurs with ashe'losi*. After comparin'; notes with Dr. Hurst, tllev deter mined - eVeli without the benefit nf tlu x-ravs, which they vveie not allow. ,1 1. we - that seven of the eighteen workerwith more than ten wars of einphnnient at the faetnrv met at lea-t llnee ol four criteria for a-hi-tii'i.. (Tins.criteria inchitletl, he-.nli.-s rale, ami ItitW^si^L'hhiijig, (Ivspuea, which<txhWl- iii-ss of breath, ami marked reduction 11I forced vital iai>;u-'(i . w hieh i- an .. -.jV . inability to take suflicient airinto the lungs because of pulmonary 'fibrosis.) Reduced pulmonary function 'was also observed in some, workers whv> had been employed at the plant for less than five years. Because of these findings. Dr. Johnson and lits associates con cluded that the Itealth of the sixty-three employees at the Tyler plant had been gravely jeopardized, hut tltev wished to liave the X-rays reviewed hy an expert pane! of radiologists before making a definitive diagnosis of nsbestosis on an individual hasis. As things turned out, however, they vvere seeing only the tip of the iceberg, for when they got around to examining the company's employment records they discovered that a total of eight hundred and ninety-five men had worked in the plant at one time or another. Consider ing the disastrous mortality figures of die men vvlm had worked at the Pater son factor)- between 1941 and 1945, this was disturbing news, to say the least. It also provided a chilling corol lary to Dr. Johnson's first conversation with Dr. Grant, back in July, when Dr. Grant had suggested that there wasn't much of a health prohlcm at the Tyler plant, because people didn't work there long enough to get sick. The preliminary report of the XIOSH survey, declaring that an extremcly seiious occupational-health situation existed at the Tyler plant, was sent, on November 16th, to Dr. James E. Penvv, the commissioner of the Texas Stale DipartiTicni of Health, and copies went to a number of other officials, in cluding i)r. Key, Dr. Grant, Van Horne, and John K. Barto, the region al administrator for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, in Dallas. Barto received the report on November I81I1, and acted quickly on it, for he was aware that industrial htgienists from the Department of lathor X-Dallas office had inspected the Tiler plant nearly three years before, Old, even though they had found an iiadcquate ventilation ststetn ami faultv Ys-piranirv protection, li.-ul not taken my effective action to remeili the 'imalam, or even reinspcited the f.ictorv to m-v whether Piilshnrgh Corning had 5 torncteil the defect*. On No'iittlvr 23rd, Barto sent his a"l'i.int, Claience R. Holder, and |ii)ui P. B-.vl<-, an in- diiKtti.il Ingieiii't, to conduct 'till .01oihi r iii'p. v lion nf the 1 11- r pi.ml. A* iltigln he expia ted, tlu i: lindiii-j. -imph | Kiih'i.oitiatvil 1 !*' of th. .mi. i ioijk j ilu.uil In-.Xliisil.. On l)..,au!i.r 1 -1. | yoytrand |}m le infoi im d V..11 ll,-ntfe.+ that ' iolaiinns of m rup.Mi'-M.d--ulfli - and-hi alth it giil.ui.-ii' found in tin-5  v; plant included nut unit improper wear >Sp ing" of -respirators but failure to e\ani ine workers to determine'whether the liatl the physical capuciii for weann respirator.-^ iii:t<le<|u:ite . housekeeping, a nil insuflicient dust control. Tltei aho told tlie plant manager that citation would he issued and |K-nabk-s im|xsed, attil lieu the viidatioits would re<|uirc immediate corrective action---except extensive improvements in ventilation and dust equipment, for which a later date., .would Ik- set. Holder and Boyle then rcturnetl to Dallas, where in tinnext two Weeks, as they awaited analy sis of air samples tln-y had taken, they wrote up a lengthy report of their in spection, which was Sent to Holman, the corporation's vice-president in charge of manufacturing and technolo gy, at Pittsburgh Coming's home of fice, on December 16th. In the mean time, Secretary Hodgson had declared the emergency five-fibre standard for ashestos, hut since the ins|K-ctors for the Occupational Safety and Health Ad ministration had sutvejed the faetorv under the twelve-fibre standard pub lished in tile Frtlrral Register of Mav 29th, they decided it would Ik- unjust to apply the new regulation <-i post acta to the situation at 'I cier. As things turned out, their sense of failplay made little difference, for the ob solete twelve-fibre standard was ex ceeded--in some instance:,, ten times over--in forty-two id the fort\-four air samples they had taken at the plant. Even so, the Occupational Safeti and Health people failed to eite Pittsburgh Corning for violating anv fibre stand ard, or even to list, in the citation for insufficient dust control, the s|-cilie du-t levels they had found. Moreover, al though their Ctmiplinnee ()perntun,. Manual clearly compelled them to fol low Section 1 7 (kl of the Occupation al Safety and Health Aet, which states that "a serious violation shall he deemed to exist in a place of emphntnent if there is a substantial prohuliiiitv tltat deatb or serious pln-ical haim could result from a condition wbii b ex ists . . . unless the employer did not, and could not with the cxcrci-c id ria-inaldc diligence, knoi\ of tlu pti---nce of tile violation,'' tin- ili-p, ctm listed the Conditions the\ had ill-cm t t, tl :o the filer plant not under the heading of "Seiinii- Violation," but under ||,. heading u| "Nniisi tious ( Othei ) Vio lations," which, accm ding to tin it manual, applied to riiu.iti-ius `where an I'ictiletii m occiipation.il illness lesulnu^ 1*001 li.ilatiott of a standaid I'fcnW ptohahli not cau.-e death or stTfcit|j pin sic.d liaitn." J| tin- liolation- hat 'u'JV.V . i. W been considered serious, tile Adminis- tration could have assessed Pittsburgh Coming as much ns a thousand dollars . for each ohe. For nonseriiHis violations, the Occupational Safety ami Health Administration could have assessed a penalty f anywhere from a tltnttsund dollars each to no penalty at all, de pending tipon the inspector's jutlgntent of "the severitj of the injury *r disease most likely to result." Given this lati tude, the Administration |K-opk- iindertook to grant Pittsburgh Corning the benefit of every doubt. For three viola tions--improper wearing of rcsjiirators, failure t examine the workers to see if they could wear respirators, and inade quate housekeeping--they proposed a fine of twenty-five dollars each. For insufficient dust control, they prop<*sed a fine of a hundred and thirty-five dol lars. The total came to two hundred and ten dollars. --Paul Bkooeur (This it tlir first of a irrin of articles.) ----