Document 992NXLegpG0K0QO1QZ54RDqx7

FILE NAME Newspaper & Magazine Articles NMA DATE 1968 Oct 12 DOC NMA012 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION The New Yorker - The Magic Mineral a A REPORTER AT LARGELARGELARGE ACK in the twenties when the word ASBESTOS THE MAGIC MINERAL the forces of corrosion and decay under almost every condition of temperature requently appeared in large or unquenchable is a broad term and moisture and of being resistant as block letters on the fireproof drop cur- embracing a number of fibrous sili- well to the action of acids alkalies tains that closed off the proscenium cate minerals that are found in prac- and other chemicals it is just about openings of theatre stages it was customary in certain parts of the country for youngsters attending Saturdaymatin^'e performances of Charley's Aunt or The Vagabond King or Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch to greet the raising of the asbestos cur- tically every country in the world According to geologists chrysotile asbestos variety of the mineral that accounts for ninety per cent of the world's production its origin millions of years ago when subterra- nean upheavals provided fractures in frag indestructible It looks extremelyextremely ile yet its fibres have a tensile strength equal to that of piano wire Apparent- ly as light and feathery as thistle- or eiderdown it isactually as heavy and dense as the rock from which it is extracted In one sense then it is a tain with the chant All school boys eat stewed tomatoes on Saturday This was not of course an exercise in mnemonics but an expression of youth- serpentine rock which were penetrated fibre of stone In another sense how- mineralogical by water heated in the earth's interior ever it is a vegetable Subsequently these waters dissolved whose fibres are soft and Rexiblethat some of the serpentine and as the so- they can be carded spun and woven ful exuberance and to extent lutions cooled fibrous silicate crystals easily fibres cotton or flax perhaps a reflection of the tendency in an era celebrated for parochialism and flippancy to dismiss strange and exotic substances with jokes Among older Asbestos began to grow within thevarietsfractures the only mineral that can The two othermajor varieties of as- be woven into cloth and its fibrous crocidolite and amosite structure isif anything even more inated through somewhat procesesdifferent ' amazing than its remarkable ability to people it was certainly common knowl- edge that asbestos was noncombustible for when Joe and Asbestos syndicated comic strip about rac- first appeared in the Baltimore Sunin 1925 the stableboy named As bestos explained to the readership that he had acquired his odd moniker he- dynamic and thermal processes in meta- morphic rock and their fibres though similar to chrysotile possess different structural and chemical properties Al- though known to man as early as the Stone Age when it was used in pottery asbestos was considered a novelty until the late seventies when fact withstand heat In if it were we for theelectron microscope microscope the extent whichasbestosis fibrous would be dis ficult to believe for there are appross mately a million individual fibrils lying side by sidein a linear inch chrysotile thirty asbestos whereas only hun- _ dred glass fibrils such as those foundin cause no matter how hot my tips are they'll never burn a hole in your pocketbook Such knowledge was hardly universal however for it was also true that a popular put of the flapper age consisted of solemnly assuring a susceptible theatre companion that the looking word on the curtain meant Welcome in it began to be mined on a commercial basis Since then it has achieved enormous industrial importance because of its unique and astonishing physical properties It appears to be highly combusti ble yet it can withstand the fiercest heat It seems as perishable as grass but by virtue of being almost immune to various insulation materials or sixbun- dred thirtyhuman hairs can be aligned along the same distance fisc over in addition totheirextreme unusual ness high tensile strength unusual ; ibility spinnabiliatndy resistance to heat and the elements asbestos fibres pos- sess great powersto adsorband to Latin The fact of the matter is that although asbestos was linked one way or another in the public mind with fireproof theatre curtains many people thought its name was a trademark few people knew that it was being utilized in a wide variety of industrial products only a handful of medical researchers were just then beginning to sus- pect that it was affecting The health of the work- rs who handled it irtually no one had ava that it would and any one day prove to be one of most important indus-- ses of cancer in Aj Aj from ch Alter Small wonder then that when : asbestos which had been known the ancients asthe magic mineral was a in effect rediscovered less than a hun- dred industrial fl yearsago in the age of Ba # expansion it was put to work : Since that time the demand for and milled from its host rock In 1879 when the world's first commercialcommercial estos mine was opened at Thetford i. the Province of Quebeconly three hundred tons of themineral was four million tons until a few years ago called thethosemineral of mbination materi- with other raw such as Portlandcement vinyl and other plastics asbestos iiss resent as an invisible and anonymous gredient in a myriad of industrial woducts many of which are never identified as asbestos even containing hough it may constitute up to per fifty et of their content The asbestos industry which y the principal consumer of the min- roofing eral makes shingles for and ding sheets for exterior and interior walls insulation board clapboard cas- gs for electric motors pipes to carry watersewage and gas and numerous other products Asbestos textiles are ed not onlyin fireproof theatre cur- s but also in lagging and other in- ting wrapping in conveyor belting safety clothing in pot holders board covers draperies rugs fetwi picture screens as filters in yes asks and in the processing of fruit es acids beer and medicines and me mailbags prison padding air- e fittings stove and lamp wicks rkplugs and fire hose The electri- equipment industry has depended : ears on asbestos yarn and tape for Pos lating conductors ranging from gauge wire to heavy cable and aca asbestos friction materials- ^ as brake linings and clutch Luc -are found in cars trucks tracrs power shovels hoists and other Industrial machines as are asbestos- | both packings seals and gaskets As- estos papers and felts are used for oofing for piano padding for lining FG Moves heaters filing cabinets military helmets and the mufflers and hoods of automobiles and they also are found ** armored cars carpets and car- endges and as boiler jackets and radi- pator covers Asbestos millboard which a heavier version of asbestos paper used for acoustical ceilings as plasterboard and fireproof wallboard and f in electric switch boxes safes table pads stove mats ovens and dry kilns Vinyl and asphalt floor tiles contain anywhere from thirty to fifty per cent by weight of short asbestos fibres and the floor industry has become the largest user of the mineral | ince the development of phen- formaldehyde resins in 1909 as- bestos has been used in large quantities as a reinforcement and filler by the plastics industry and today there are euntless t plastic products that contain bestos ranging from frying han- alles to rocket nose cones Asbestos is also an ingredient of many paints and alants of compounds used for roof j coating and road building of putties emulking and other crack fillers of elays used for pottery and sculpture of artificial snow of plaster and stucco of reproof insulation sprayed on struc- ral steel and of undercoating sprayed Jon automobile bodies i As a result of these multiple and iscellaneous applications asbestos has Some practically ubiquitous in mod- asociety There is not an automobile plane train ship missile or engine any sort that does not contain as- betes in some form or other and it as found its way into literally every Building factory home and farm ross the land And because its mi- escule fibres are eminently respirable chestos has also found its way into the ngs of man where by remaining as estructible as it does in nature it can ak terrible havoc TH THE E adverse biological effects of THE were observed as Greek as first century by the Greek geog- apner Strabo and by the Roman natalist Pliny the Elder both of whom porntioned in passing a sickness of the ags in slaves whose occupation was wave asbestos into cloth Strabo | Pliny were calling attention for the st time in history to a disease that ld one day be known as asbesto- a form of pneumoconiosis the general term for all dust diseases of th lungs caused by the inhalation of fin fibres and particles of asbestos- but th ancients were much too awed by the magic of the mineral to be concerne with the possibility that it might con | stitute a health hazard Indeed the attitude toward asbestos sometimes ber dered on veneration Strabo and Pl tarch noted that the perpetual used in the sacred and inextinguish ble lamps of the vestal virgins made of asbestos and Pliny des ribee : asbestos cloth which had been used 4 for centuries in cremations as the rare g and costly funeral dress of kings It was generally assumed in ancient times that asbestos was of vegetable origin- i Pliny called it linum vivum and the century Greek topographer | Pausanias referred to it as the only linen that is not consumed by fire and this misconception endured for }! centuries Only a few years ago a major shareholder of an English as- bestos company who was visiting the source of its supplies in South Africa (y@ were asked the resident manager where the jg plantations were The Romans especially impressed by the fact that| when cloth made of asbestos was ex- posed to flame it always came out whiter than before the Latin word for asbestos amiantus meaning unpolluted or undefiled they are said to have cleaned asbestos dinner napkins by tossing them into the fire 3 The use of asbestos in Europe ap- pears to have diminished greatly during the Dark Ages although it is said that the Emperor Charlemagne convinced some warrior guests from a rival king- dom that he possessed magic powers by throwing an asbestos tablecloth into the fire and then withdrawing it un scathed from the flames In the latter part of the thirteenth century when the , indefatigable Vene ian traveller Mar 3 co Polo was traversing a part of Si1 beria then known as the Great Em- {4 pire of Tartary he was shown was some 4 cloth that would not burn and was 4 told by his Tartar hosts that it was made from salamander's wool Toe ; wily to be taken in by a story like that Marco examined the material carefully carefully | and after making some inquiries| j learned that there was a mineral in the | |4 mountains of the district that con- tained threads like those of wool In 1720 asbestos deposits were discovered in the Ural Mountains and forty years later a factory was built to manu- : facture asbestos products Because thej known uses of the mineral were few| and the demand was limited this first 4 commercial attempt to revive the long- | dormant asbestos industry was a failure but the second attempt which took dace slightly more than a century later F succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of : its backers As a result the fact that F asbestos could produce lung disease [| which had been forgotten since Strabo F and Pliny first recorded it around the time of Christ soon manifested itself } again Modern knowledge of asbestosis dates from the year 1900 when a post- | mortem examination was performed by Dr. H. Montague Murray a physician in London's Charing Cross Hospital on the body of a thirty man who had worked for fourteen years in an asbestos factory The patient found to have been suffering from severe pulmonary fibrosis which % scarring of the lungs had been the last survivor of a group of ten men working carding who were inin the room of the factory in 1886 and since Dr. Hurray found spicules of asbestosin the lung tissues at autopsy he was able presumptive to establish a connection between the man's occupation and the disease that killed him A few years later an inspector in the Department of Labor at Caen whose name was FL Auribault reported the results of what was undoubtedly the first study of mortality among asbestos workers Ac- cording to Auribault whose account appearedin the Bulletin de l'Inspection du Travail et de l'Hygi^nel'Hygi^neIndustrielle an weaving mill had been established in 1890 at ' Cond^' H Noireau in Calvados and during its first five years of operation when there was no ventilation and the employees were heavily exposed to dust from the looms fifty of them a died Moreover the director of the fac- tory who had previously owned a cot- ton mill at Gonneville in Manche had recruited seventeen workers from his former staff of whom sixteen were wiped out by what Auribault who was not a physician mistakenly described as chalicosis pneumoconiosis common A among stonecutters Unfortunately neither Murray nor Auribault realized the importance of their findings Testifying before a DeA partmental Committee on Compensation for Industrial Diseases in 1906 e Murray said One hears generally is peaking that considerable trouble | now taken to prevent the inhalation of i Aust and so the disease is not so likely to cur as heretofore and the conclud- sag recommendation of Auribault's re- ort was simply that people under ghteen years of age should not be alwed to work in dusty conditions Be- Pe: cause of ignorance about the cause of i the disease and because it manif sard pa itself slowly and insidiously over riod of from ten to twenty years more asbestosis was probably mors +- ten than not misdiagnosed in the PE. part of the century as pulmonary tas EE: berculosis silicosis or fibrosing pnen- Fay monia In addition coyness on the part of industry timidity on the part of labor and obtuseness on the part of the medical profession often combined to Bf make early investigations into the health of asbestos workers meaningless As a , result even though the asbestos indus- for a scientific journey that started on an apparently straightforward path of occupational hygiene and that has since branched out into epidemiology oncology physical chemistry physiology and experimental pathology As a re- sult of studies made between 1927 and 1931 a whole literature relating to asbestosis appeared in Great Britain which included clinical and ray find- ings descriptions of the histology of the disease and the hypothesis soon widely accepted) that the looking yel- lowish bodies noticed by Cooke were asbestos fibres that had been al- g try was growing very rapidly in all the industrialized countries of the world almost nothing was done to control dust levels in asbestos factories and almost no medical information on asbestosis f was gathered during the quarter of a century that followed the disclosures of F Murray and although as- tered by the reaction of lung tissue and coated with a colloidal substance rich in iron In fact Cooke's curious bodies proved to be so abundant in the lungs of autopsied asbestos workers many of which contained literally billions of them that they quickly came to be called asbestos bodies bestos workers were probably dying like flies of it It was 1924 before the first clear case of death due to asbestosis appeared in medical literature In that year Dr. W. E. Cooke an English The most important investigation of this period was conducted by Dr. R. A. Merewether a medical in- spector for the Factory Department of the British Home Office Between 1928 and 1929 he examined three hundred physician who gave the disease its and three asbestos workers name performed a mortem ex- amination on a three f woman patient who had started work- ing at the age of thirteen in an asbestostextile factory in which there was no provision for the removal of dust By 1917 after thirteen years of exposure she had been coughing and in bad health and from then on her attendance at work had been inter- mittent because of | shortness of breath and lassitude The autopsy showed extensive pul- monary fibrosis and }/ 4 pS dense strands of abnor- mal fibrous tissue con- necting the lungs and I the pleural membranes out of an estimated total of twenty hundred asbestos workers employed in Great Britain at the time and found that ninety or slightly more than twenty per cent showed evidence of suffering from pulmonary fibrosis He also demonstrated that the incidence of fibrosis increased in direct pro- portion to the number of years of exposure reaching eighty per cent in the group of workers who had been employed in the indus- try for twenty years or more As a result of Merewether's re- port Parliament passed legislation in 1931 that made asbestosis surrounding them In addition Cooke noted the presence of solid yellowish particles which he called curious bodies in the areas fibrosis We have never seen any- a compensable disease required improved methods of exhaust ventilation and dust suppression in astextile factories and instituted periodical medical examinations for thing parallel to this in pneumoconi- osis due to other dusts nor have we been able to find such occurrence in Biterature he declared and he added _ We cannot think there is any reason- _ workers engaged in particularly dusty processes in the asbestos industry After this promising promising burst of activity However progress progress in the field of asbes- tosis M depressingly slow for as able doubt that the particles in the lung are the heavy brittle containing fragments of asbestos fibre Cooke's discovery which was pub- shed in the British Medical Journal of things arned out the doctors had only begun to scratch the surface of a problem of bewildering complexity Many investigators assumed that the new regulations would prove effective in con- July 26 1924 and republished in 1927 provided the point of departure trolling the disease thus failing to appreciate the fact that once inhaled asbestos which is virtually indestructive continues to react within the lungs t a lifetime and to heed the warning Merewether who when asked if tw years of exposure was sufficient to caus asbestosis in a young girl replied Yes if she lives long enough Morcover techniques of dust sampling were primitive and inaccurate and dust level varied so greatly only from fac- 4 tory to factory but from area to area within a given factory it would. have been almost impossible to establish | criteria -- -- w--hich to recommend a safe level of exposure But as time went by the generally lowered dust levels that did result from the regula i: tions of 1931. appeared to be slowing down the attack rate of the disease at - least in Great Britain and the life ex- { pectancy of the average asbestos worker was further increased by the advent of antibiotics which drastically reduced the death rate from infectious pulmonary diseases that often had to be feared as a complication of asbestosis The totally unforeseeable consequence of all this was that asbestos workers in- stead of dying of asbestosis began living long enough to develop asbestos duced cancer The first published suggestion of an association between asbestosis and ma- lignant disease was made in 1935 by Dr. Kenneth M. Lynch professor of pathology at the Medical College of South Carolina who described the case of a seven asbestos weaver who died of asbestosis and in whose lungs cancer was also found Because the regulations of 1931 required British coroners to conduct autopsies on men who had been suspended from work with asbestos on account of pul- monary disability when their length of service rendered it likely that their occupation was a contributory cause of death pathologists in Britain were able to investigate the suggested link between asbestosis and lung cancer much more easily than their counter- parts in the United States where few states had workmen's | compensation laws covering dust diseases and where there were no specific regulations re- quiring mortem examinations of asbestos workers The British investi- gations were not made the subject of official comment until 1949 however when Dr. Merewether who was then Chief Inspector of Factories published a review of data that had been accum- ulated from 1924 to 1946 which revealed that lung cancer was present in thirty out of two hundred and thirty deaths that were caused by asbestosis or in which asbestosis was And at autopsy This was an inci- Mence of slightly more than thirteen Her cent and Merewether found population highly significant for lung cancer ac- cording to its incidence in the general [ should only have been pres- A ent in approximately one per cent of the cases At the time no formal claim of an association between the two diseases was made but during the next few wears an increasing amount of evidence to establish one Then in 1955 began Dr. Richard S. Doll director of the Statistical Research Unit of the British Medical Research Council completed #study #study of a hundred and thirteen condecutive autopsies of men with more than twenty years of exposure in a large asbestos factory which B showed that the extent to which they had risked lung cancer over the whole period was eleven times as great as hat of men in the general population England and Wales From then many doctors were convinced that , causal relationship between asbestos exposure and lung cancer had been demonstrated although almost no part auf the vast asbestos industry either acknowledged the relationship or found advisable to aid the independent re- archers who were investigating it A A A this point many epidemiologists this point many die hazards presented human health were were limited to the by asbestos } relatively small ae group of heavily exposed workers en2 gaged in making asbestos textiles The trouble was that very few studies had been made of the tens of thousands of workers engaged in other branches of j the industry which was then expand- ing at an enormous rate all over the world so that no one really had any way of knowing whether there was any danger from moderate or light for that occupational exposure matter from indirect occupational Such studies were under way xposure a number of countries however and when the results began to appear in the late fifties it became evident that the hazard posed to man by asbestos had once again been underestimated The most dramatic development wa 4 f the discovery of an association betwee to asbestos and mesotheliom mesotheliom exposure an almost always malignant tumor the pleura which is the delicate meu brane that encases the lungs or of a similar membrane the peritoneum i lines the abdominal cavity Previous mesothelioma had been so rare thas feRE was considered a pathological curios It was found in only one out Every ten thousand autopsies it listed in most medical books and was not even coded separately in the World Health Organization's Internamal Classification of Diseases In 956 and 1957 however sixteen cases this rare tantamount to an polemic diagnosed at the Pneu- coniosis Research Unit in Johansburg South Africa by a pathologist amed J. Christopher Wagner Two ircumstances led Dr. Wagner and his ociates to suggest that asbestos might play some part in the mysterious outreak asbestos bodies had been found at the lungs of autopsy in use and ten of the the very first cases had come from a hospital to which patients suspected of suffering from tuberculosis were referred froma large crocidolite- usbestos mining area =. f At the beginning this hypothesis eemed rather tenuous for none of the Nxteen patients who suffered from mesothelioma had ever worked in as- Bestos mines or mills Within a short period however cases of mesothelioma gan to crop up elsewhere in South Africa and when Vagner and his asso- mates discovered that the father of one an asbestos mine f their new mesothelioma patients had been the manager of d that the patient had played around we mine and on the adjacent dumps as child they undertook to reinvestigate the sixteen original cases and to ob- tain detailed life histories in all future cases By the end of 1961 they had diagnosed a total of eighty mesotheliomas of the pleura and two Only B mesotheliomas of the peritoneum welve of the cases proved to have and industrial exposure to asbestos ut all the rest came from the arid windswept region of the Cape asbestos Selds where they could easily have sus- ained exposure simply by living in the vicinity of asbestos mills and dumps A @ particularly striking case was that of a } woman who was born in a town on the asbestos fields left the region at the age of five and died of a pleural mesothe- homa at the age of seven Detailed questioning about her childhood re- kinder- wealed that she had attended a arten near an asbestos dump and that she and her playmates two of whom so died of mesothelioma) used to en- gay sliding down the dump on their way home from school Another exam- she was provided by the youngest pa- nt of the series man who died at ry age of twenty He had been posed to asbestos from the age of six areks until he was weaned period ring which his mother took him ong with her when she went to work robbing site which is a place where asbestos is separated from its host rockEven among those patients who had worked in asbestos mines the actual & exposure appeared to have been slight forin most cases the lungs showed no evidence of asbestosis but only a few as- bestos bodies and fibres in the air spaces g From this Wagner drew the chilling conclusion that mesothelioma might r sult from an exposure to asbestos duas q that was considerably less than that needed to produce fibrosis condi tion that had always been considered es sential for the development of asbester lung cancer In some areas of South Africa occupational exposure to asheste dust was so heavy however that h brosis of the lungs was almost certain- ly killing people before cancer could Schepers develop According to Dr. G. W. a native South Africa who is now director of the Bureau of Lab oratories in the Department of Health D.C. in Washington conditions of industrial hygiene in the asbestos mines ' and factories were often deplorable In 1949 when Schepers was sent inte the northeastern Transvaal to make the first official radiological and clinical survey of the asbestos industry for the South African government he found barefoot Bantu children spending their| days inside large jute shipping bags where they were forced by overseery trample armed with whips to down fluffy amosite asbestos as it came cas cading over their heads intothe bags Schepers found that a number of these children had developed asbestosis with cor pulmonale heart fail ure which often accompanies the _ before the age of twelve and he has said that he would be very sur prised if any of them had lived long enough to develop either lung cance a or mesothelioma 4 In 1960 the year that Wagner pub lished the first of his disturbing repor about mesothelioma there were twe additional developments that caused grave concern among scientists investi gating the asbestos problem One them occurredin Finland where D Raimo Kiviluoto a radiologist had been surveying the general population for tuberculosis he detected deposite of calcium on the pleura which ha previously been seen almost exclusives ly in asbestos workers in four hur dred and ninety out of sixty hundred and twelve people most farmers and their wives who lived in 4 county where asbestos had been mined and milled for many years and no pleurad calcifications in seventy hundred and one people who lived in a neigh boring county where there was no bestos industry The other development took place back in South Africa where Dr. J. G. Thomson professor of pa- thology at the Medical School of the University of Cape Town was exam- ining fluid smears from five hundred consecutive autopsies to determine the extent to which the ordinary urban dweller was exposed to the inhalation of asbestos he found asbestos bodies in twenty per cent Thomson's discovery medical world for up of the total astonished the until that time no one suspected that asbestos bodies ij might be present in the lungs of people who did not work in asbestos mines or factories He pointed out however that there had been a tremendous in- f} crease in the use of asbestos throughout the world over the previous twenty years million tons were market- ed in 1960 that asbestos was be- ing incorporated into an increasing number and variety of industrial products with which the ordinary urban Lf dweller came into intimate daily contact He also suggested that the air of city streets was a likely source of as- j bestos exposure and that the average motor vehicle which wears out three or four sets of asbestos brake linings and one or two asbestos clutch facings in its } lifetime might well be a major cause of the liberation of asbestos dust Thomson reminded his colleagues that compared to a half of twenty years for strontium 90 the half of asbestos fibre was an infinity of years and he concluded that ' :3 because of the contin- Thomson's observations were con- firmed by studies made in Miami in London and in Belfast while in Pittsburgh asbestos bodies were found in the lungs of forty of a hundred consecutive autopsies at Presbyterian versity Hospital And Wagner's findings were corroborated by investiga- tions that associated mesothelioma with exposure to asbestos in half a dozen cities in Europe and the United States Perhaps the most striking confirmation of Wagner's data came from London where Dr. Muriel L. Newhouse and Dr. Hilda Thompson of the Department of Occupational Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine investigated the life histories of seventy cases of mesothelioma that had been confirmed by autopsy or biopsy in London Hospital To no one's surprise thirty of the seventy patients had worked with asbestos but eleven of those who had died had simply lived within half a mile of an asbestos factory and nine others women and two men- were relatives of asbestos workers Most of these women had washed their husbands work clothes regularly The investigators learned that one of the husbands a docker had come home white with asbestos every evening for three or four years and that his wife had brushed him down Both of the men in this group when boys of eight or nine years had had sis- ters who worked in asbestos factories One of the sisters had been em- mous disintegration of asbestos products such as brake linings floor tiles and roofing materials as well as the demolition of buildings containing numerous other asbestos products asbestos was constantly F} finding its way into the atmosphere as an everlasting contami- nant He even went so far as to pre- dict that in future decades as the ac- cumulation of asbestos in urban areas led inexorably to higher concentrations of asbestos fibres in the lungs of urban dwellers induced neoplasms would rival cigarette lung can- cer as cause of death As might be expected the disclosures made by Wagner Kiviluoto and Thomson provided a powerful stimulus for further investigation of the probem of asbestos exposure During the next few years a hunt for mesotheliomas and asbestos bodies was undertaken by pathologists all over the world ployed as a spinner from 1925 to 1936 and had died of asbes- tosis in 1947 at which time it was determined at an inquest that she used to return home from work with dust on her clothes Her brother who had apparently sustained no other exposure to asbestos in his lifetime died in 1956 of a pleural mesothelioma Further corroboration of Wagner's findings came from southeastern Pennsylvania where Dr. Jan Lieben then head of the Division of Occupational Health at the State Department of Health in Harrisburg investigated the backgrounds of forty people who had died of mesothelioma between 1958 and 1963. Of the forty patients ten proved to have had definite occupational exposure to asbestos three were relatives of asbestos workers eight either lived or were employed in the vicinity of an asbestos factory and ten others were discovered to have had at least some minor exposure to the min- eral The ten people with minor exposure included a employed maker of Swiss cheese who used a five- W hundred boiler covered with f asbestos insulation that flaked off on contact a salesman who had mixed and applied asbestos insulation to boilers in his home and a fourteenyear boy who at one time had helped his father saw up and install B plasterboard during an extensive re- | modelling of their house From an epidemiological point of view the investigations that tended to support the findings of Wagner and Thomson were weak because they locked a defined population as a base against which the data could be meas- ured On the other hand the presence of asbestos bodies in the lungs of such a consecutive large percentage of autop- sies in so many widely distributed cities of the world was sufficient to indicate that asbestos fibres were probably being haled by a majority of urban dwell- ers everywhere and the association between asbestos and mesothelioma was striking enough to suggest that a B history of exposure to the mineral was likely to be found whenever a positive diagnosis of the tumor was gy made As a result epidemiologists were Hi forced to revise their idea that asbestos was only an industrial hazard and to give serious consideration to Thom- son's prediction that it might prove to be dangerous for untold numbers of unsuspecting people in the general Fg community IN October of 1964 order the past view the data collected ord the past and to discuss the problems awaiting solution in the future the New York 4 Academy of Sciences sponsored an international Conference on the Biologi- cal Effects of Asbestos at the Waldorf- Astoria The conference enabled more than four hundred scientists from all over the world to discuss the immense- Wy complicated epidemiological and linical problems that had appeared in the forty years since Dr. Cooke de- scribed the first clear case of asbestosis and its planning was largely the work Bot one of its chairmen Dr. Irving 13. Selikoff who is head of the Divi- fon of Environmental Medicine at the City University's Mount Sinai school of Medicine director of its nvironmental Sciences Laboratory nd a pioneer in the field of modern asbestos epidemiology Like many of his colleagues at the nference Dr. Selikoff became inter- ested in asbestos in a roundabout A native of New York City he terned at Beth Israel Hospital in New ark did his pathology at Mount Sin where he has been a member of th staff since 1947 and became a chea : ' physician at the Sea View Hospital es Staten Island specializing in tuberes losis In 1951 he participated the basic research on isoniazid anth biotic drug that by effectively killing tubercle bacilli has provided a cure for i tuberculosis which he receives receives the American Public Health Associa tion's Albert Lasker Award in Med cine In 1953 Dr. Selikoff founded . medical clinic in Paterson New Jersey where by chance seventeen of be early patients were men referred for # disease consultations who worked in a local factory that had been making insulation materials sinc 1940. When the factory closed down in 1954 the seventeen men went into other work and at that point Dr. Seli- g @ koff decided to continue his observa@ tion of these patients with ray examinations and pulmonary tests in order to determine the history and the natural course of asbestosis men who would not be subjected * further exposure At the time Dr. Selikoff was chief y interested in asbestosis because as heJ has explained " was still 4 unconvinced of the relationship between asbestos and lung cancer There wasn't much data] and what there was scarcely seemed to indicate that it would prove to much of a problem As things turned out he changed his mind In 1954 all seventeen men from the Paterson factory were bodied and work ing By 1961 however six of them were dead and today only six of thea are alive Of the eleven who died four were victims of lung cancer three of other cancers one of mesothelioma and two of asbestosis Of the six whe are still alive two are disabled becaus of respiratory insufficiency caused be fibrosis of the lungs and one has re covered from surgery for cancers the lung and larynx Dr. Selikos shook his head in describing the fate of these patients but as early as 1961 their ranks had been thinned out drastically that as he said " wa forced to the awful realization of whe could happen to men who were occ pationally exposed to asbestos Afas the company that owned the fact said it was unable to make its emples ment records available he wrote several other large asbestos manut turers in the United States inquiring about the health experiences in te plants and was unable to obtain in- formation from any of them Meanwhile he and Dr. Jacob Churg chief athologist at Barnert Memorial Hos tal in Paterson who had been findang asbestosis and lung cancer in a number of workers from the PatLarge erson factory took their data to Dr. Roscoe P. Kandle Commissioner of the New Jersey State Department of Health and Dr. Kandle applied to the United States Public Health Service for funds to undertake a study of the Pat- erson factory and to make a statewide statewide mrvey to determine how many people were being occupationally exposed to Dasbestos However the request was denied for lack of resources Since Dr. Selikoff already knew that men who had worked in the factory that made insulation materials were dy- ng of asbestosis and lung cancer at he an alarming rate considered that men who were materials installing such might also risk disease and early in 1962 he made contact with officials of New York Local 12 and Newark Lo- 32 of the International Association Heat and Frost Insulators and As- i stos Workers The asbestos insulators had been trying for years to interest doctors and various government agen- ries in their medical problems so they were only too glad to co^perate and arged Dr. Selikoff to make a study in depth of the effects of asbestos expo- ure among their members During the next six months Dr. B fe Selikoff and his administrative assistant Mrs. Janet S. Kaffenburgh pored through the unions records and com- piled a list of the names and addresses of the six hundred and thirty men who had been members of either of the metropolitan locals on December 31 1942 and of the eight hundred and ninety men who had joined between and December 31 1962. From then the unions employment records they A obtained detailed work histories of the total membership of fifteen hundred and twenty men including data on their withdrawal from work for E other employment war service retireament or illness This enabled them to alculate the onset and duration of ex- posure to asbestos for each worker Records of the unions health and wel- Fire funds provided them with the dates and places of death of the two hundred ad sixty workers who had died tween 1942 and 1962 and copies of e death certificates of all but one of hem were obtained In addition au- E opsy protocols histological specimens and hospital records were reviewed by Dr. Selikoff and Dr. Churg in those mee aths approximately half of th tY al which occurred in hospitals In the next phase of the study Di likoff and Dr. Churg were joine Dr. E. Cuyler Hammond Vice President for Epidemiology and Sta stics of the American Cancer Society ho had participated in an analysis o ne medical effects of the atomic ex sions that devastated Hiroshima an Nagasaki in 1945 and whose largele epidemiological studies of mor an million men and women pro- ed a major basis for the conclusion- kawn in the 1964 Surgeon General port on the effects of cigarette smokng Since previous studies had sug- usted that lung cancer associated with bestosis seldom develops until twenty wars after initial exposure to asbestos ust Dr. Selikoff and Dr. Hammond ecided to limit their first report to the hundred and thirty men who ere on the union rolls as of Decem- er 31 1942. Taking the men's ages to consideration Dr. Selikoff and Dr. Hammond then set about comparing he number and causes of death among hem with those of the general male opulation in the United States The esults pe were depressing According to standard mortality tables two hun- red and three deaths could have been pected among the six hundred and two workers Instead there| ere two hundred and fifty not unting seven men who had died be- incurring twenty years of expo- -an excess of twenty per cent The reason for the excess was not hard find The fact that twelve of the aths were attributed to asbestosis was | ot particularly surprising but only six seven deaths from cancer of the lung eura or trachea were to be expected hereas there were forty And there nine or ten intestinal can- were to be expected there were tually twenty Since the lung- ancer death rate was known to more than ten times as high mong cigarette smokers as among smokers Dr. Selikoff and Dr. ammond realized that they would ve to take the smoking habits of the insulation workers into account their findings were to have any va. It was of course impossible for to ascertain this with accuracy in cases of the two hundred and fifty- men who had died so for purposes rid calculation they assumed that all six {4 ndred and pack thirty men had moked a pack or more of cigarettes ch day and they demonstrated that en if this had been the case it would ve produced a cancer death rate {| only three and a half time general male popular smoking therefore cal the fact that in this gre insulation worker the fore ids spla estes dean from lung cance 45 Hes Ul expected rate Because of os objectives IES SP and its thorougeness this dudy o ducted by D. Selikoff L a, Hammond io a great impact oc . the medical community when 4 oo Was published in the spring of 1964 1 the Journal of the American Media Media As- sociation and when it was dvereddvered dvered before the Conference on the Blogi- Blogi- cal Effects of Asbestos that October October It was the first study ever made that had & taken a large enough group of asbestos workers from a point far enough back time and followed them long enough to determine unequivocally what their 4 health experience had been Unlike al- most all the previous investigations@ which simply indicated that there was an association between asbestos and various kinds of cancer it was based upon the incidence of disease within a defined population and thus answered} a fundamental epidemiological question of how many cancers had developed out of how many persons exposed In doing so it furnished the first incon- trovertible evidence that industrial ex- posure to asbestos was hazardous it established sound methodology for future studies and it marked a turning point in the views held by doctors and health officials around the world N the autumn of 1962 Dr. Seli using donations from private sources and a grant awarded by the Health Research Council of New York City headed by Dr. George S. Mirick set up informal clinics at union halls in New York and Newark and started giving ray examinations pulmonary tests and blood tests to the members of the two asbestos workers local During the next year he examined eleven hundred and seventeen workers and he also questioned them closel about their smoking habits the kind of materials they used and the cond tions under which they worked Th , insulation workers an intelligent and highly skilled group of craftsmen pa tiently educated me concerning there trade he once said " learned the they had had comparatively light an intermittent exposure as asbestos work ers go because they often worked ou doors on construction projects ana because most of the materials they use had an asbestos content of less that s icen per cent also found out bo heir problems had been neglected neglected Most of them had never seen a labi nspector in their lives and only andful could remember seeing anyon Snake a level count in the are at where they were work Dr. S uff also learned that although su 4 the workers knew they ran ^ rank of developing asbestosis which the usually referred to as silicosis almost none of them had any idea that thes also risked cancer because of their o pation As things turned out Ae und radiological evidence of asbesed in fully half the eleven hundre ieml seventeen men The extent of the brosis varied directly with the dura n of exposurOef three hundred and rty men whose exposure had be gun less than ten years before only tem er cent showed any abnormality and # three hundred seventy men who had been exposed for between ten and nineteen years more than half still ad normal rays in neither group as there any discernible evidence of ncer Onthe other Dr. Selikost and that among three hundred and inety with more than twen ty J years of exposure three hundred and nine had developed asbestos which had by that time become mode leven of the men had developed ca peers the lung or pleura Aided by yearly grants from the f Health Research Council Dr. Sel off has maintained a close watch on the asbestos workers health paying particular attention to those men wit snore than twenty years of exposure examining them once or twice a year As result he has been able to deters symptoms of illness in many of the mer much earlier than they might have been detected and to observe with great as racy the mortality experience of pehree hundred and seventy whom he und in 1963 to be survivors of riginal six hundred and thirty members of the union in 1942. It cm 4 tinues to be disastrous Between Janne sary of 1963 and March of 1968 tit deaths would normally have been e pected to occur among these men I stead there were a hundred and the teen Fifteen of them were caused asbestosis and as with the carie g study the rest of the excess turned - to be caused by cancer of various kin BE. Two or three bronchogenic can would a have been normal but twine ! ight occurred and where the ach ables predicted only two gasti tinal cancers there were eight pectedly sharp rise in the number aesotheliomas was observed In arlier study there had been only fo Fer two hundred and fifty deaths tween thirteen 1963 and 1968 howeve : of these rare tumors we bound in hundred and thirteen deaths Dr. Selikoff suspects that the lates period for mesothelioma may be long an that for either asbestosis or lung ; ancer but so far he regards the heav increase of mesothelioma among the nsulation workers as something of e mystery f Dr. Selikoff and Dr. q Hammon Sound special significance in the fast that all twenty bronchogene carcinomas occurred among asbesty B workers who smoked cigarettes regu B arly None were found among eighty seven men who never smoked ciga rettes Dr. Selikoff and Dr. Hammond have reservations about these data which suggest that asbestos worker who smoke cigarettes are ninety times more likely to dieof lung cancer than men who neither work with asbesto nor smoke because they are based apon the experience of a Theyrelatively mall number of people They do con dude from it however that an im portant carcinogenic effect exists be ween asbestos exposure and cigarette moking and in a recent article pub of hed in the Journal the Americas pM Medical Association they recommen ; that asbestos exposure be minimized hat asbestos workers who do not smoke been suggested in some quarter at asbestos fibres which are known be highly adsorbenats well as vir lly indestructible may retain the bstance known as benzo a pyren am cigarette smoke for long periods tissue time in lung thus tending duce lung cancer by a synergistic Nect No one knows for sure however Dr. Selikoff will not hazard a gues Sout the matter until more informa is gathered He expresses certainty | await the effects of asbestos exposure . ly when he has epidemiological proof knows for example that one out * every five insulation work- @ ers who die in the New York ersey metropolitan area dies of lung cancer and that almost half of the j shree hundred and eight deaths he as recorded among these men in the st twenty years have been caused * cancer of one type or another Last March citing these figures before a 7 Mouse subcommittee on labor he #4 arned that if they are projected to country as a whole and if no im- : Total provement in the men face is achies ward to perhaps wealth hazards these ! we may look fora thousand deaths Recall from lung cancer cancer and to prhaps fifteen thousand death com cancer in general among men in this single asbestos trade This Fujica Single Instant Load camera has a photographic memory It records what you see just as you see it Clear bright true Unique features not found in any other instant load movie system make this possible The camera has a built pressure plate You have nothing to do with ... but it does something important for you ... automatically locks the film flat behind the lens to give you the sharpest movies you've ever seen outside a theatre screen Even if you've never taken a movie before you get professional results easily Drop in cartridge A full 50 continuous feet if you wish with no film flipover Zoom in or zoom out Fully automatic electric eye sets correct expo- sure Reflex lens gets you exactly what you see Less than 125 Other Fujica Single less than ... at camera stores or write for the colorful facts QUE FUJI PHOTO FILM U.S.A. Inc. U.S. Distributor Ehrenreich Optical Industries Inc. Garden City Y. 11530 In Canada R. & H. Products Ltd. alone Consadering that the total membership of the International As- sociation of Heat and Frost Insulators and Asbestos Workers is only eighten eighteen thousand men and that there are about the same number of union asbestos workers his prediction has staggering implications RECENTLY spent several days with Dr. Selikoff in the Environ- mental Sciences Laboratory at Mount Sinai where he has assembled a team of thirty men and women to work on various aspects of the asbestos problem The rooms include laboratories for his- tology pathology electron microscopy chemistry and mineralogy and among the imposing array of equipment they contain is an electron microprobe that is capable of identifying particles of in- finitesimal size Dr. Selikoff's office is large and modern Its walls are lined FUJICA with shelves and cabinets containing hundreds of hound volumes of research INSTANT LOAD papers and reports on asbestos and at Single Reflex Zoom 300 one end are a large conference table and a blackboard The place gives an immediate impression of rather cold OPRESS OPRESS See ~ Squire Style OPRESS Matching Jackets and Waistcoats Waistcoats Power Loom Irish Tweed fa] 85 Handwoven ra] Irish Tweed 90 Irish Supersax Hunting |Checks 95 Tailored in Ireland Solely For J. PRESS in long center vent & steep side vented models with matching waistcoat Sample Swatches & New Brochure Upon efficiency but this is tempered to a great degree by the affability of the di- rector As we talked Dr. Selikoff a large spoken man in his early fifties was frequently interrupted by telephone calls and by questions from staff members but he generally re- sumed with an enthusiastic Where were and rattled off statistics about asbestos disease the way some baseball fanatics recite the batting averages of league ballplayers On the day of my first visit however he received a call from a doctor in New Jersey who informed him that a lunga cancer had just been diagnosed in another of the insulation workers Dr. Selikoff told the physician that the patient's last rays showed moderate as- SUTLER AND MANCIPLE TO THE SPORTING GENTRY IRISH TWEED HATS & CAPS 800 to 1200 FOR RACE WATCHING HUNTING FISHING STROLLING GOLF SKATING AND ALL FASHIONABLE SPORT EVENTS SEND FOR ORDER FORM AND PRICE LIST GRATIS Turlough Finn 520 FIFTH AVENUE Y. C. Y. bestosis that he had had more than twenty years of exposure and smoked a pack of cigarettes When he hung up the phone visibly upset and fell silent that he a day he was A few moments later he told me that he had taken more calls like that than he cared to remember don't relish the role of Cassandra but I feel we've got to forge ahead on this problem as quickly as possible he said There are about PIPES FROM AROUND THE WORLD DUNHILL COMOY SASIENI PETERSON BARLING KRISWILL STANWELL LONGCHAMP na ai el du nal Please send me your FREE Illustrated Catalogue Name thirty thousand insulation work- work- ers -union and union the Weatherproof mer treated leather boot by Joyce You don't have to worry about how this Sherlock Holmes corduroy coat will look after sleuthing in the rain The MER brand silicones give it durable water repellency crush and stain resistance And a luxurious hand And this protection lasts So all you have to worry about is the next case Watson RAINCHEETAHS by NAMANa great fash- ion look in Cone Mills Regina 100 cotton corduroy Brown bone Sizes 8-14 About 65 At Lord & Taylor New York and branches Dow Corning Corporation Midland Michigan United States All in all including astextile workers and people engaged in manufacturing other asbestos products there are probably more than a hundred thousand workers who are regularly and d 4 exposed The hazard would were the only jous enough if this go up at risk but it's ob- vious that the problem extends further simply because floating asbestos fibres do not respect job classifications Dr. Wil- liam H. Stewart who is the Surgeon General of the United States told the House subcommittee that the asbestos- insulation workers are probably sharing their exposure to some extent with more than three and a half million other construction workers fit- ters electricians welders carpenters ironworkers plumbers masons tile setters and the who are employed on the same projects often in the same room or general area and who there- fore must be inhaling the same dusts Because of their concern with the possible effects of such indirect occupa- tional exposure Dr. Selikoff and his assistants have spent months compiling the names addresses and work his- tories of twelve hundred tile setters three thousand roofing workers and three thousand tunnel foundation and caisson workers in the New York metropolitan area They plan to examine these men for possible health problems as they did the insulation workers and to determine whether they have significant indirect occupational exposure and if they do wheth- er it is associated with risk of asbestos disease We will study defined pop- ulations that have been selected in terms of what appear to be diminishing levels of exposure to a known risk Dr. Selikoff told me It's as if a rock had been thrown into a pond and we're watching how far the ripples ex- tend Since the pond in our case is the general community you can see how difficult the epidemiological detective work will be If we discover for ex- ample that the tile setters run a significant risk of developing asbestos discase there are some preliminary indications that they might we must look into the question of fibre fall- out from the construction sites where they're employed wait for the rest We're not going to of the setter study however beuse beuse the problem is too urgent We're initiating a whole cluster of studies designed to provide information on whether environmental asbestos pollution carries a risk for the general population At the the same time by analyzing the ripples we can determine which rocks thrown into the pond The beautiful lizards darting along with tweeds furs leathers ours alone Newton Elkin's pumps in brown black or grey with a twist of gilt metal 38.00 Designer shoe collections at all Lord & Taylor stores dinner guests and weekend visitors JACK JONES DOUG TALBERT Musical Director MARTY BARRIS COPACABANA FULL COURSE DINNERS SERVED 6:30 P.M. P.M. 2 SHOWS NIGHTLY 8 & 12 3 SHOWS SATS 8 11:30 & 2 10 E. 60. PL 8-0900 8-0900 AIR CONDITIONED | 158 Adaptation of a traditional votive candlestand in the spirit of Ch'ien Lung bronzes 41 inches About 100. The Stiffel Lamp For brochure of selected Stiffel lamps send 25 to The Stiffel Company Chicago 60610 Slightly higher west and south make the biggest splash By thus identifying the sources of contamina- tion appropriate control measures will become feasible Our plan of attack is to discover where associated diseases may occur and to control the sources in them as such a way to eliminate hazard It must be a team effort of course including epidemiologists basic scientists engineers publichealth officials and industry and labor One of Dr. Selikoff's studies will ex- amine the possible health problems arising from interrupted exposure by tracing thirteen hundred and sixty- seven men who worked at the asbestos- insulation plant in Paterson down in where Dr. Selikoff's 1 first seventeen patients were employed Another will look into the matter of neighborhood exposure by tracing and investigating the health experience of seventy hundred people who lived within a mile radius of the plant in 1942. The question of neighbor- hood exposure was emphasized as a re- sult of the mesotheliomas discovered by Christopher Wagner in South Afri- violets A perennial reminder of spring violet plant abundant with oxidized green flowers and leaves Hand- crafted in metal and mounted on a wooden base u 12 high 12 spread 50 delivery Add 3.00 for shipping outside regu- lar vo ca and later by Molly Newhouse and Hilda Thompson in London and by Jan Lieben in Pennsylvania Dr. Selikoff told me Since current evi- dence suggests that the tumor rarely THE FINEST AMERICAN CRAFTS W. 53rd N.Y. 10019 7-9494 occurs without a history of exposure to } asbestos epidemiologists consider it a || | marker disease and we'll be looking |} for it when we trace the medical his- tory of the people in Paterson Inci- }) Sometime this week a quiet walk along our canal in dentally there's one preliminary indi- cation that leads us to suspect we may find it In 1955 the proprietor of junk yard next to the Paterson instafation plant died of a pleural tumor Bucks County 1 week is a wonderful time to stay with us at the i1740 House an early American j Delawan River inn overlooking the a When you get here the 1710 House will tt Ei ae expect as you had hoped it would be * harming and memorable ... ... ... quiet 23 condit oned rooms each with with bath and h swithtning fishing boating and tennis terrace A third study in Dr. Selikoff's cluster will aim at the protection of rela- Please write for our brochure and driving Then make reservations for a refreshing respite from crowds and cares directions week tives of asbestos workers As in the case of neighborhood exposure previous investigators of this group had no population base against which to meas- ure the occurrence of the disease they discovered Dr. Selikoff however has a definitely established group to work with It is composed of the asses and HOUSE BUKS BERVILLE PA F8933 BUKS Tel 215-297-5661 COUNTY COUNTY ENJOYING STEAK AND LOBSTER IS THE GREAT INDOOR SPORTAT SPORTAT children of all the insulate a... ~. and their health problems will fully scrutinized especially for evidence evidence | of mesothelioma In Dr. Selikoff's upin- ion this study will be of tremendous importance because its subjects have been far removed from direct exposure If the families of insulation workers turn tions said out to be in trouble the implicawill be very serious indeed he On the other hand if we find no trouble among them and this is my we'll be on safer growd Our observations will also enabl ous AL SCHACHT'S 52ND ST N.Y.C. PL 9-8570 DAYS A WEEK TILL 1 AYEM 160 OCTOBER 1968 to recommend whether special facilities should be provided so that insulation workers can change their work clothes before going home to With the aid of a United States Public their families grant from the Health Service Dr. Selikoff and his associates are cur- rently conducting an investigation that covers an even wider range by study- ing samples of lung tissue from three thousand consecutive autopsies that| have been performed at three different in hospitals in New York City and trac- ing the work histories of each of the dead people So far theyhave examined samples two thousand lung and have found asbestos bodies in nearly half of them According to Dr. Victor Baden a histologist at the Environmental Sci- ences Laboratory from one to five or fifty more asbestos bodies are foundin per cent of the tissue slidesexamines Since each slide is composed of seven sections that together represent less than one millionth of an entire lung and since it is widely assumed that asbestos bodies are evenly distributed throughout a lung the finding of just one of them can be projected to million mean that half a ent may be pres } DeDe Busschere ) Belgian Shoes MR HENRI BENDEL Ouner Ouner Presbleet Presbleet DAISY i Black or blue calf with lizard trim 65 Classic timeless styling Brochure on request BELGIAN BELGIAN BELGIAN BELGIAN SHOES Dr. Selikoff and his fellow miologists do not know whether the Ll Great legs- legs- would you know they're wearing Belle Sharmeer's relatively small amount asbestos nownow being inhaled by the general public carries a risk of inducing mesothelioma or whether the presence of what appear to be asbestos bodiesin the lungs of many peoplein the general population repr^'Isents a serious health problem Nor do they know whether relatively light inhalation of asbestos is associated with a special cancer riskin cigar- ette smokers At present we simply have no way of telling what the dosedisease relationships are Dr. Selikoff said Is it better to have breathed in only fifty asbestos fibres than fifty thousand or fifty million Does each fibre have the potential of causing a cell with which it comes in contact to turn cancerous The answers to these im- Internationally Famous Restaurant with a tradition of Elegance BOARDWALK ATLANTIC CITY NEW YORK PHONE Local Call RE 2-5450 or Atlantic City 344-8131 Whisper Sheer support stockings Seamless spandex to mensely complicated questions will have to come from epidemiology over a long period of time An eightfold increase in asbestos production over the last thir- own in suntan nude pale beige misty taupe ty years would appear to make it likely that asbestos cancers will increase but only the future will tell Remember dark brown or black that current cases of mesothelioma must < be associated with inhalation that took all in proportioned leg place twenty thirty or more year sizes 4.95 the pair All Lord & Taylor stores ago when world consumption of as bestos was only about five hundred thousand tons a year and that the neoplasms associated with today's press duction sk PAN four millian to cae LADIES GIFT HANDKERCHIEF Personalized with her full name or 3 initials this Handkerchiet press made of the irish linen with the added glamour of Inch wide shrinking face from France Price 54.75 each Box of three of the same name 513.50 pud Write for free Gift Brochure THE NEW YORKER 161 year will not be evident until the nine- nineties Moreover we have found that all varieties of asbestos fibres appear to be implicated in meso- thelioma and not just crocidolite as some of us had hoped following Wag- ner's observations in South Africa The problem would have been simple if only one variety of asbestos had been related to this tumor Control proce- dures could have been narrowly focussed As it is however a control pro- gram will have to be concerned with asbestos in general . I that sible asked Dr. Selikoff if he asbestos air pollution was for the occurrence of thought responasbestos bodies in the lungs of people in the general population and he replied that although there was relatively little direct confirmation he felt it was at least partly responsible Pointing out again that direct and indirect occupa- tional exposure were much more com- mon than had been suspected especially in the construction and shipbuilding industries he went on to say The possible sources of environmental con- tamination are numerous Mining and milling operations manufacturing processes and the delivery and storage of finished products constitute just one part of it The constant use of asbestos materials in the construction industry is another and the destruction and de- terioration of asbestos products in the community at large constitutes a third There's no question in my mind that unsuspecting people are being exposed to small quantities of fibres from such sources as torn ironing covers and pot holders and who knows how much asbestos is inhaled by hobbyists engaged in yourself projects around the house sawing up wallboard mixing crack compounds insulating pipes with asbestos materials and repairing furnaces and boilers with asbestos cements I agree with those who suggest that small numbers of fi- bres may be liberated from many products in widespread use such as asbestos- cement pipe and asbestos filters which are employed in the food and pharmaceutical industries but we have no in- formation that this carries a disease potential What troubles me is that relatively few people are aware of the fact that it can be dangerous to inhale asbestos Not long ago we discovered that children in a number of kinder- gartens in New York California and other states were being allowed to mix raw asbestos with water to make a cheap form of play dough We have also learned that the powders in some children's cosmetics kits and in certain Holidays are happy days in Germany Germany has probably the most modern cities in Europe But many old fashioned things like the well in the picture still persist The Germans cling to the relics and reminders of the past their visitors are charmed by them The old and the new stand side by side contrasting yet blending But more important is the spirit of the cities and of the towns villages hamlets and resorts This spirit too is a wonderful combination of old traditions and strong vital contemporary ideas and thinking It's in the air as are music and song and the gay laughter of your friendly hosts the Germans Come to Germany where holidays are happy days Send coupon for illustrated brochures See Your Travel Agent d | GERMAN NATIONAL TOURIST OFFICE B 500 Fifth Avenue New York 10036 323 Geary Street San Francisco 94102 11 S. LaSalle Street Chicago 60603 1176 Sherbrooke Street W. Montreal Can i postpaid Please send me free and illustrated travel brochures | | Name ] cote eet neon | Street Address I a | City & State | wee Zip Cose felt felt a i we Doubt Doubt al 162 powder jewelry kits con- tain asbestos In addition within the past couple of years two different thoracic surgeons have published articles in leading medical journals which advocate the sprinkling of asbestos on surgical incisions in order to promote the adhesion and healing of tissue This is very bad advice Why Dr. William E. Smith who con- ducts animal studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University has readily induced mesotheliomas in hamsters by injec- tions of asbestos fibres into their pleural cavities a Dr. Selikoff went on to say that he understands full well that asbestos is an extremely valuable material and that it has become essential in modern industrial society We epidemiologists recognize and study its dangers so that we may devise ways of minimizing or avoiding them he said Improvements in the practice of industrial hygiene are needed to eliminate unnecessary exposure among asbestos workers and men in other building trades and awareness of the potential risks of en- vironmental contamination is needed until our studies indicate just how far out into the general population the i} problem extends All I can say is that the public should be made aware of the problem and that no one particularly children and young people should be unduly exposed After all today's chil- dren are almost certainly inhaling more asbestos than their parents did and we now know that if a person inhales significant amounts of asbestos dust he carries a burden that will provide a la- potential tent potential for the development of cancer for the rest of his life Here's an example I'll never forget A couple of years ago just after Cuyler Hammond published Jack Churg and I an article mesothelioma mesothelioma about about asbestos and and in the mesothelioma the New England Journal of Medicine 1 | received a phone call from doctor in Massachusetts who said that when he read the piece he immediately told his three wife about it be- cause her sister had died of mesothelio- ma the year before Imagine my horror this physician went on when my wife proceeded to tell me that in 1943 while she and her sister were students in college they had responded to a pa- triotic appeal and spent six weeks in a shipyard insulating pipes in destroyer me escorts >> Dr. Sclikoff paused Two Games aaa FAME de FAMEdede CORDAYCORDAY An imported French perfume To 40.00 CANADA 1967 PARFUMS CORDAY INC AVAILABLE IN sisters with six weeks of exposure in 1943 he murmured Twenty years later one of then dies of meso- || thelioma And today the other one the doctor's wife being examined every few months to keep track of Demi handles of gilded metal dress this handsome small bag by Block black or brown leather or plastic patent or black alligatorgrain leather 30.00 At all Lord & Taylor stores One of the 7 Wonderful Inns of of tthhe e world ! ! Luxurious Luxurious acomodations for 600 accommodationsactivities activities Write for Color Brochure & Weekend Plans Hill Cher y Inn RoutCe herry at Haddonfield Rd 15 min from downtown Phila N.J. Turnpike Exit 4 Cherry N.J. Reservations 609 NO 2-7200 etic | Caf^' Caf^' Caf^' Caf^' Currently Appearing BOBBY SHORT Complete Dinner 6.50 served to 9 p.m Entertainment from 9 p.m. to a.m. Cover 3 p.p. Minimum 3 p.p. = i HOTEL CARLYLE MADISON AVE AT 76TH SY NEW YORK TEL RH 4-1600 THE NEW YORKER some suspicious rays lows on her AS I was arriving the Environ- mental Sciences Sciences Laboratory one day I happened to notice a newspaper clipping tacked up on a bulletin board near the entrance The story which was from the Times of September 2 1967 started out as follows The scene looked wintry on Madison Ave- Hunge Daily | CARMENCITA nue between 57th and 58th Streets yesterday Flurries of what seemed to be snowflakes fell on the area from between the 25th and 30th floors of FILIPINA At children Pat blind Unable the General Motors Building which suspect Wash is nearing completion on the site of the former Savoy Plaza Hotel The article went on to say that residents of the neighborhood had complained to the contractor and that one of the only occasion 12.82 per mt pig is woo by flattened project engineers had explained that the white flakes were fallout from fireproofing material that was being sprayed on the structural steel girders Hole in roof se ture Few kit aginable prin~ beams and decks of the story gry ragged Po skyscraper According to the Times the engineer would not identify the in- sulating material which was being applied with spray guns because I don't cannot feed e dren adequat cita means he want to read newspaper stories about how we are messing up city streets He was also quoted as saying This is Thousands of ch anxiously await Choose a boy or g a job condition all over the city The last paragraph of the article read The | city's Buildings Department said that it had not received any complaints Vi tNam Hong ! Colombia Ecuado your Foster grant helps provid Child In addition PLAN cal care when ca about the Madison Avenue snowfall clothing and he The department said the use of tarpaulins was required for spraying op erations in construction work to pre- vent inconvenience to neighborhoods Beneath the article was this typed notation Examined in our laboratory the material was found to contain amorphous glass fibres presumably rock wool and chrysotile asbestos It is known that other sprayed insula- emphasis = on educ _ citzens come supporting citizens Since 1937 more than 110,000 el PLAN's You receive a case history and photograph Ea program a letter original and translation These letters will tell you the entire family Soon through the regular letters and PLAN child develop a warm loving relationship CHECK YOUR CHARITY We eagerly offer our financial sta see that your contribution truly benefits the child for whom it PLAN is a political profit sectarian independer under No. VFA019 with the Advisory Committee on Voluntary International Development neovuuemeics tion materials contain amosite asbestos plus rock wool while still others con- tain asbestos fibres alone I When asked Dr. Selikoff about the bulletin items he said that the mineralogist in the laboratory Dr. Ar- thur M. Langer had collected a sample of the material and identified its 352 PARK AVENUE SOUTH NEW YORK N.Y. PARTIAL LIST OF SPONSORS AND FOSTER PARENTS Steve Allen FOSTER PARENTS PLAN II 352 PARK AVENUE SOUTH NEW Y In Canada P.O. Box 65 Sta B Moni A. wish to become a Foster Parent of A. contents by means of electron diffraction and electron microscopy and with the aid of the electron microprobe Then he went to a shelf and took down a small glass jar that contained Julie Andrews Sen. Paul H. Douglas Helen Hayes Conrad N. Hilton Sen. Jacob K. Javits Art Linkletter Amb & Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge If possible ........ , ..... I will pay 16 a month for one year Payment will be monthly ( , quarti annually ) I enclose herewith my first payment B. I cannot adopt a child but I wou a grayish wad of looking stuff about the size of a half dollar This is Gorry Moore Sen. William Proxmire Dr. Howard A. Rusk the sample Dr. Langer brought back and analyzed he told me It comes from a type si insulation material that & MrsMr. s. Robert W. Sarnoff Gov. & Mrs. William W. Scranton Sen. John G. Tower Address City e sc no e es daveesaweeeeenes is about twenty per cent asbestos 164 Saks Saks VERY VERY of flip pocket pocket handsome OCTOBER 1968 | and in this tiny wad alone there are literally billions of fibres Of course the snowfall those people saw and complained about was not what may have been hazardous What may have been hazardous was what they couldn't see untold number of micro- scopic and highly respirable particles The snowfall was a perfect ex- ample of how asbestos gets into the ambient air and that engineer was right when hesaid it's a job condition all over the city You'll see the same material floating down from many other building projects in town It's sprayed on by men in the Plasterers and Cement Masons Union Inciden- tally as far as I know no one has ever made a study of their health | | This fountacinhairnmlieandg make love- ly addition to informal terrace or informal gar- den setting timations It was a blustery day filled with intimations the season's changinangd when Ileft hospital took a Fifth { Avenue downtown I sat by win- | Complete with recirculating - pump available in oxidized lead patina or Porn- peian gre" en fin- ish F high 20 diameter dow and was looking idly out at peo- ple strolling along the sidewalks when the bus came to a stop the upper shell 375.00 F.O.B. New York City Send 25g in stamps coins for 40 page Catalogue illustrating many other com- Forties beside a dump truck parkeidn front of a small office building that was being gutted Several workmen were carrying canvas sacks of refuse across the sidewalk and heaving them up to a plete fountains and garden ornaments FLORENTINEFLORENTINE CRAFTSMEN tall well Negro who stood in the 650-654 FIRST AVE 37th St. NEW YORK N.Y. 10016 _| rear of the truck emptyitnhge sacks at Phone LExington 2-3926 his feet As he did clouds of dust rose into the air around him Some of it | showered the window beside me It ap- peared to be ordinary cement dust but that | then I saw the pile of debris on which the man was standing contained | FF broken pieces of acoustical panelling }; and wallboard both of which often contain asbestos and lengths of pipe [' coated with crumbling white insulation material that looked very much like asbestos POUND RIDGE N. | INN When I got off the bus I walked Finest type of American Food and Cocktails west along fourth Street Half- Merritt Parkway exit 35 north on 137 way down the block I saw two work- men slide a large rectangular container from a pickup truck and carry it into a or Route 22 to Bedford Village John F. Shaw Pres CLOSED MONDAYS Pound Ridge 4-5779 VISIT OUR WALK IN WINE CELLAR building The container was full of white powder some of which was be- ing blown away by the wind and the men's clothes were covered with white dust When I looked into the truck I saw half a dozen large paper sacks labelled Fireproof Plaster One of the workmen returned for his tools and I asked him if the plaster contained as- bestos Sure he replied That's what makes it fireproof I walked on to the corner of Sixth ABBE LANE sets the world on desire from October October 22 Performances at 9:15 & 12:15 For reservations call PLaza 9-3000 PERSIAN Avenue where a story office building had been under construction for several months During that period I had passed the building nearly every day but now for the first time I L PERSIAN ROOM --fl-- AT THE PLAZA iy? THE NEW YORKER looked up and scrutinized it carefully About halfway up its side I saw some tarpaulins billowing in the wind Above the tarpaulins the steel girders and beams were reddish brown between the tarpaulins and the ground however they had been sprayed with asbestos in- sulation which clung to them like gray frosting Then all at once I saw wads of the same gray stuff falling out of the area that had been curtained off by the tarpaulins Some of the pieces were car- ried away on the wind others that were heavier came tumbling down around me One fell on the sidewalk at my feet I picked it up crumbleidt be- tween my fingers and saw dozens of tiny fibres float away It was the same color and texture as the material that me Dr. Selikoff had shown half an hour before The sidewalk was covered with it and even as I stood there more of it came showering down A woman hurrying to make the light with a friend brushed some off the sleeve of her coat and said What the devil is this stuff I watched her cross the avenue and saw asbestos insulation blowing over the pavement like thisde- down across a field The wind was southerly and most of the asbestos was travelling north in the direction of Mount Sinai Hospital where Dr. Seli- The compuct carryall Ready to work with a and checkbook holder 5 frame coin pocket A section vinyl carcard d holderholder takes car . ST. THOMAS : else A swarm of pocket honey kid Himelhoch B. Altman & Co. New colors about 12.50 , Detroit Frost Bros. York City and all branch St. Thomas Inc. St. Thomas Place GloversvilNl.Ye. and all other fine stores koff and his associates are still follow- or | ing the trail Dr. Cooke set out on in 1924. But I was not thinking about @% Dr. Selikoff the difficulties of epi- thinking demiology just then I was about the children who play in Central Park every day and about all the other children who live in this city and breathe its air -PAUL BRODEUR CRIES WE DOUBT EVER GOT CRIED OUT RAPTURE OR NO RAPTURE From the St. Moritz Courier ] When GIOVANNI SEGANTINI first came up to the Engadine from Lake Como he cried out full of rapture I bow before this earth which is hal- lowed by beauty I kiss the grasses and the flowers under this blue vault of heaven and while the birds sing and meet to- gether for flight and the bees suck honey from the open blooms I drink at these pure springs where beauty is ever re- newed where love is renewed that gives life to all things fi fi GEST your ca Western observers believed Brezhnev's remarks would aid American propaganda abroad while leaving the Kremlin free to deal with almost any future American President except possibly Richard Washington Post ware +11 one The Now Nivox 1 i Two candidates Ciner collection original confident of Donkey candidates from our exciting pin design about 17.50 At fine stores Jewelers 20 West 37th St. Nietu 4