Document 71kp3Rbz8qJ7eVNMLjw603wqE

FILE NAME: Texaco (TEX) DATE: 0000 DOC#: TEX028 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: Notes on Texaco History Texaco Previously known as the Texas Company, this firm hired Allan Dooley as its industrial hygienist in 1947 and employed him through the 1960s. Dooley was the second author of a study, Asbestosis, published in several parts in 1934-35 by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. One fourth of the asbestos factory workers in the study had asbestosis. Average concentrations of asbestos-containing dust were 4.64 to 44 million particles per cubic foot, and no level of exposure was found to be free from risk of disease. The study had 125 references to publications worldwide on asbestos and its hazards. The prevalence of asbestosis in the workers examined was consistent with other reports of this kind published previously in the U.K. and the U.S. A report prepared by the Texas Company for the MAC evidenced a widespread knowledge of worldwide medical literature (The Carcinogenicity o fBituminous Compounds/ Literature Review, Apr. 30,1945). Citing Hueper's 1943 paper, "Cancer in Relation to Occupation and Environment," the annotated bibliography listed substances as carcinogens including asbestos. The company obtained additional information on carcinogens including asbestos through its involvement in the MAC in the 1940s and 1950s (See "Oil Industry," this chapter). Dooley conducted an Industrial Hygiene Survey/Port Arthur Works in 1949. He wrote that crushing and bagging of 85% magnesia insulation, which was 15% asbestos, could give rise to an asbestosis hazard. Exposures from crushing and bagging of insulation, in particular, were in excess of the 5 MPPCF maximum allowable concentration. A report on two mesothelioma cases in oil refinery workers was published in 1960 by H. B. Eisenstadt and F. W. Wilson ("Primary Malignant Mesothelioma of the Pleura," JournalLancet 80: 511-514). Dr. Wilson was a physician employed by Texaco in Port Arthur, Texas. One of the workers was a Texaco employee. The report said that, "the etiologic association of asbestos and mesothelioma has been repeatedly discussed in the literature," citing reports from the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and the U.S. The patient's history of asbestos exposure "alerted suspicion of the authors in the second case." When the American Petroleum Institute (API) gathered information from member firms on asbestos in 1965, a "strictly personal and confidential" memorandum was prepared by Texaco (E. W. McNealy, to H. G. Tigh, Mar. 11,1965). It covered information on insulator employees and those retired within the preceding 5 years, including assessments by Dr. F. W. Wilson. In addition to the foreman who had died and been reported on by Eisenstadt and Wilson in 1960, there was another man in the group dying with peritoneal mesothelioma. Some of the men had pleural plaques and varying severity of diffuse pulmonary fibrosis, the latter judged by Wilson to be non-specific in etiology. Philips Petroleum Company industrial hygienist Lucian Renes wrote a report, "The Health of Refinerymen Applying Asbestos Insulation" and sent it to his counterparts in other oil companies including Dooley at Texaco. The report contained reference to SelikofP s work and limited data from API member firms suggesting that there could be an asbestos disease problem in the oil companies' insulators (See "Oil Industry," this chapter). Dooley wanted to assess whether there had been changes in the amount of asbestos insulation used in oil refineries; he also wanted to organize presentations by the medical directors of the oil companies on the health status of refinery insulators (letter to fellow members of a subcommittee on health of oil industry insulators, R. Diakum, Humble Oil, and L. Levin, Socony Mobil, Nov. 1,1965). It does not appear than any industry-wide medical study was completed by the API members. In 1969, Texaco hired another industrial hygienist from the state of Pennsylvania, Ronald Richards. Richards' co-workers at the Pennsylvania Division of Occupational Health included Dr. Jan Lieben, who conducted research showing that the rate of lung cancer in an asbestos factory was excessive and there were cases of mesothelioma in the neighborhood of factories and in the households of asbestos plant workers (Arch Environ. Health 13: 619-621,1966; and 14: 559-563,1967). As OSHA moved to develop its asbestos standard in 1972, Richards found that sawing and fitting of insulation and stripping of old insulation yielded exposures above the 5 free limit in the OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard for Asbestos. He recommended continued use of respiratory protection where such work was done (memorandum to F. D. Dorr, May 9, 1972). Richards has testified that in 1972 Texaco adopted a policy of using only non-asbestos insulation for new construction (Deposition in Jameson, Superior Court State of Washington, County of Skagit, No. 0202-01069-8, Aug. 19,2003). Articles linking asbestos and cancer appeared in Archives o fIndustrial Hygiene and Occupational Medicine in 1952 (Smith, Cartier), 1954 (Eckardt and Drinker), and 1955 (McLaughlin). Volumes of this journal for the years 1951-1955 at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, were stamped Texas Company. As a member of the National Safety Council, the company had occasion to learn about asbestos hazards at annual meetings of the NSC and from NSC publications in the 1930s and thereafter. Similarly, Texas Company was a member of the Industrial Hygiene Foundation from Apr. 15,1949 until Mar. 26,1959, and thus would have thus received abstracts of papers about asbestosis in insulation workers and cancer from asbestos in the Industrial Hygiene Digest.