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MERLE BUND', M. D. J.-'S. Bonta XI W-r-ni R.i E.-Grenfell //<* -Clr--V. 'Bernj Ji IL^irtft Please return. c MB/rp 1/7/74 ^ MERLE BUNDT, M. D. f Please return to Merle Bundy; M. D Room MECr-W. K V?>- i i MEMO FFIOM >' Philip X. Masciantonio ANNALS OF INDUSTRY Casualties Of The Workplace By Paul Brodeur Part I "The New Yorker" - October 29, 1973 Reprinted by permission; (c) 1973 The New Yorker Magazine, Inc. ANNAL5 OF INDUSTRY C ATUALT1E5 OF THE VOWCPLACE l-JOME NONSE.MOUS VIOLATION5 YKAR ago last winter, a flur no longer needed--there being very Ary of unusual activity accom little left of tlic Tyler plant for any panied the closing of a factory trespasser to see--and by the end of owned by the Pittsburgh CorningACporirl practically nothing remained of cording to the Courier-Time!, IIolmaft acknowledged that asbestoS fibres posed a health hazard, but added that he knew of no specific Pittsburgh poration in Tyler, Texas, a city of sixty the factory except two dilapnlated Corning employee who was suffering thousand about a hundred miles cast 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 1 hree weeks after Holman's re which for more than seventeen years and P.O.W. camp. One of them--the marks were published, a somewhat 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 other, the factory's storage Tyler plant was given by Anthony prodigious scope and intensity. Under area, was half filled with sacks of Mazzocchi, tlte director of the Legis the scrutiny of anued Pinkerton guards, amosite-ashestus fibre,',which the com lative Department of the Oil, Chem who had been hired by the company to pany had not used before shutting the ical, and Atomic Workers Interna keep unauthorized persons away from plant. tional Union, which bad 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.gon February 10th, equipment, and removing and burying of its Tvler 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 itt tlte operation of This work force was laid off perma coqxiration'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 resulte;. of four maintenance men spent the next an interview published in the Tvler in airborne-asbestos levels constituting a two weeks washing down ceilings and Courier-Times on January 19th, Hol critical occupational health hazard. Ac walls and steam-cleaning every piece of man said that increased costs of buying cording to Mazzocchi, the survey had machinery in sight. Meanwhile, thirty- amusite-nshestos fibre and transporting determined that seven of the eighteen five thousand burlap sacks, in which it from South Africa, plus the fact that workers who had been employed at the amosice asbestos had been shipped to his company was finding it more and factory for ten years or more showed the factory from mines in South Africa, more difficult to market its finished symptoms of ashestosis--scarring of the anil which, once emptied, had been product because of competition, Itad lungs caused by inhalation of asbestos sold for a nickel apiece to some of the brought about a decision to cease opera fihres--which is a significant illness by rte nurseries for which the Dallas- tions at the Tyler plant and at a Pitts almost any standard, in that it is irre Tvler area is famous, were repur burgh Corning plant in Port Allegany, versible, untrcatable, often disabling, chased bv Pittsburgh Corning at dou Pennsylvania. He remarked that "new and frequently fatal. Pointing out that ble the price, brought hack to the plant clean-air restrictions" had also played asbestos has also been proved to be a in trucks, and buried at one of the fac a role in "speeding up" the closing of potent carcinogen, Mazzocchi voiced tory's dumps. Toward the end of Feb the two factories, since the restrictions tlie fear that many of the men who had ruary, the skeleton crew, using acety would have forced his company to in worked in the factory Would one ilav lene torches, cut up three one-hundred- stall costly filtering equipment in order Ik- afflicted with.lung cancer or other and-fifty-foot-long chain conveyor belts, to bring the level of asbestos dust ill malignant tumors. Minever, he indi three five-hundrrd-pnuntl cyclone the factories down to lawful limits. Ac cated that a health hazard might ex machines, and hundreds of tend far bevnnd the plant, feet of ventilation pipe, Ix-cause the company had all of which were then sold tens of thousand-, of raken outside anil buried burlap sacks contaminated in a dump. Other pieces of with nsb.-'tos dust to iims- heave equipment, includ eninen, who used them to ing eight twelve-fnut-liigli wrap evergreens anil other feeding machines, three nne- stock for shipment to retail lti:ndred-fuiit-!iiii^ dri mg ers and gardeners titroii^li- i.ns, and a iln/eli duet out tile nation. . MiCtors, Mete cut up For its part, Pntsbuigli ..n.! -dd (..I junk, and still Corning made a public a- r iti me, -itch a- sau-, spnnse only to the l.at of .hi adv'tn--wrap grinder, .M.i/./.ikcIu's ilisi Ionuu-.. ( In ..ml tin dr.iu work' and February [Cth. a sp.-keni-.aii g..n- f..r the ovens. Mere for file company admitted to 'litppid b\ i.it) tu Pittsburgh ' = 'ES;i repoftiV "foT tile filer Coining's Inline office, in Pitts'iurtrli. l!v the end of .March, tin Pin hi i tons u eie ( riorum" 1 tlerrttf'h that thirty-five thousand burlap h-.^'l.-.d i.....- -...... " ' live Dallas-Tylcr area, but he denied that there was any reason to consider _ them a health hazard. The apparent contradiction in this statement was not resolved by the manager of the Tyler plant, who was quoted at the same time pany, in Chicago, in 1918. According to the United States Bureau of'Labor Statistics, American and Canadian in surance companies were even then gen erally declining to insure asbestos work ers because of the assumed hazardous other leap forward took place in the mid-thirties, when the company devel oped an arnosite-nsbestos pipe insulation for the Navy. Amosttc is a variety of asbestos found in large deposits in' the Transvaal regain of South Africa, and as defying anyone to find any of the hags conditions of the asbestos industry. Un it had never been used before in the in question. "WVve hired bulldozers to ion Asbestos started wit as a jtihbcr of United States, where most asbestos put all those hags underground," he railway supplies and an assembler of product* had been (and continue to be ) said, making an assertion that would finished asbestos and rubber products. made of chrysotile, a variety of the soon apply 10 much of the factory equip Business expanded rapidly, thanks to mineral that exists in vast deposits in ment as well. By then, howwK-ri word the" development of a flexible asbestos Canada and the Soviet Union, andAc had got out that considerably more of tape, which achieved wide use for in counts for ninety-five per cent of tin- the Tyler plant was buried titan burlap sulating pipes in steam locomotives, ami world's production. Because it is as bags and cut-up machinery. in 1926 Union .Asbestos built a factory heat-resistant as chnsotile, and can he in Cicero, Illinois, to manufacture as porcltascd more cheaply, amositc teas IN a sense, the story of the Tyler bestos textiles, insulation materials, chosen for insulating the pipes, turbines, plant begins with the founding of packings, brake linings, and gaskets, and boilers of modern warships, and hi the Union .Asbestos & Rubber Comand a variety of rubber products. An 1940 the Navy's demands for amositc 2. pipe insulation were such that Union Asbestos--or k: NARCO, as it Itad come to be known--started a plant in Pater son, New Jersey. During the war years, the t/N'AKCO plants in Cicero and Pater son churned out amositc pipe covering for the Navy around the clock, winning numerous Army-Navy "E" awards. Such insulation continued to be much in demand in the [aistwar period, and in 1949 die company set up a third plant to manufacture it, in McGregor, Texas. Then, in November of 1954, as |>art of a consolidation program, the company shut the McGregor and Pat erson factories, and opened the factory at Ti ler, Texas. Little was known about the Tyler plant except that it was set up :< t[>erate generally like the factor)- in Pater son. However, some information that would one day impart tremendous medical significance to this similarity w:is iii-n then beginning to l>c dcvelo|H.-ii be I)r. Irving J. Selikoff, a chest pin sician, wlm is head of rhe Division of l.nuroniiiental Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine of the Citi Umverrin of New York, director <.f it- Environmental Sciences l.al>oratoiv. and a pioneer in the field of aslv >|m. epidctllinlogv. A native of New York Cin, Dr. Selikoff interned at the H.tit Israel Hospital in Newark; did in- putholugi win k at Mount Sinai, 11 lie ha- linn a nu-inlier of tile-l.it' -ime 1947; and became a chest |-.n mm ,u the Sea View Hospital, on St.ii -n 1-laml, speciali/.ing in uiIhichl-i-. In 1951, be particip.netl in the :ei-.. ie-e.in.li on i-miiavidthe aiitib;--i, ding tlt.it, In effectively killing r-le baiilli, ba.- providvd a cure for till'. Tv nlo-i- and in 1953 be founded a u idkal e lime in Paterson, where, hy chance, seventeen of his early patients were men who worked in the nearby UNARCO plant. At the time, fifteen of the men showed some evidence of pul monary defects resulting from the in halation of asbestos. When the Paterson factor)- dosed, they went into other work, and at that point Dr. Selikoff decided to continue his observation of them with X-ray examinations and lung-function tests to determine the his tory and the natural course of asbestosis in men who would not be further ex posed, hut in whose tissues the previous ly inhaled fibres would remain. This was the start of a long journey of dis covery for Dr. Selikoff, who would eventually help to demonstrate that as bestos is one of tlie major industrial causes of cancer. At the time, lie was interested chiefly in asbestosis, because lie was not convinced that the relation ship between asbestos and cancer, which hail previously Wen suggested In a number of medical authorities, would prove to be a serious problem. As things turned out, lie changed bis mind.. In 1954, all seventeen men from' the Paterson faetnr\ were working and ap parently able-liodied. Today,-"only tXvu uf them are alive. Of the fifteen uho died, Seven were lictims "f long can cer, two of cancer of the stomach, font of a-lv.-to-i-, and one of malignant mesothelioma --an iinari.ilih fatal tu mor of the ph lira, tile menlbi.me that encases the long, or of the p<. i itoiu mu, a -imilai iikuiheane that hm- tin- ah lomin.il c:n ill -- which iaiel\ ocemvvitlnuit -"iiie exjio-ure t* a-E-to., (One of the filteen death- was of hc.nl As eaill as.1961, in w liieh litnc Vft nf the .-cienleen had dintyT)!. S.-likoff began t" -n-|iect (he wor-t for n'eii who were occiip.ition.illi e\jxi-iil to the mineral. At that time, he wrote to Edwin E. Hokin, "the president of UXARCO, asking him tn make employ ment records available, so that he could undertake a survey of all the men who had worked in tile Paterson factory. Hokin turned the request down, sating the records were not available, but he was surely aware that men who had worked in the Paterson factor)- might he having medical problems, fur dur ing the nineteen-fifties the company hail paid out substantial amounts of money to employees of the plant who had become disabled with asbestosis. Dr. Selikoff then wrote to several other large asbestos manufacturers in the United States to ask about the health experience in their plants, and was un able tn obtain information from any of them. Meanwhile, he and Dr. Jacob Cburg, the chief pathologist at Barncrr Memorial Hiispit.al, in Paterson, who had himself h.-en finding ashesto-is .and lung cancer in a large ntnnhrr of work ers from the Paterson factory, took thi ir dr.t.a to |)r. Roscor P. K.andlc, the Commissioner of the New Jcr-ci State Department of Health. Concerned about the situation. Dr. Kamlle appliii to tin- United States Puhlii iie.ilt Servite for funds to umk rt.ake a studv of the Paterson plant and to make a statewide -urvel to dclcimi-.u ii.-w mam people were heing uccup.itioiial'i exposed to asbestos. However, the t -anc-t was denied, lack of retool..-- ing given .as the reason. Since Dr. Sc.likotV .iliindv kin w that niv n who bad worked in an in.idaliuii factori Were dung of a-1 or iaiu-ir.it an alaiming iat< , h. hit that ineTr^Clfo were installing -uvh mati rial.- might also iislt di-ea-< , and i nly in 1962 lie made contact with ofiniii- of New York .Local 12 .m<l Newark working conditions in the factory, for of 1935-36 in four asbestos-textile Laical 32 of the International Associa at that time they asked rite Industrial plants where asbestos fibres were found tion of Heat and Frost Insulators and Hygiene Foundation of America to to constitute about ten per cent of the Ashcsios Workers. The asbestos in evaluate the asbestos-dust hazard there. total amount of airborne dust. The assulators had been trying for years The foundation, which is in Pittsburgh, hesttis fibres in the airborne dust meas without success to interest doctors and describes itself as "an association of in ured in the Tyler plant by engineers of various government agencies in their dustries for the advancement of Iwalth- the Industrial Hygiene Foundation medical problems, so they were only too ful working conditions," and it is 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 airborne making recommendations for better inal seventeen patients who had stir-, asbestos-dust concentrations. In its re housekeeping, better ventilation equip vived, temporarily abandoned his proj port to Pittsburgh Corning, the foun ment, and improved maintenance of ect to study the other men who had dation made no mention of any health the ventilation system. worked in the Paterson factor)'. At the hazard, and assured the company that, These measures were desperately time, he did not know of the existence except in a few areas, the number of needed, hut there is. little evidence to of the CJCARCO plant in Tyler, Texas. asbestos fibres found in the air of the suggest that Pittsburgh Corning felt Tyler plant was well below tire thresh compelled to initiate them, for wlnm THE Tyler plant was then thriving old limit value of five million particles the next survey of the plant was made, but was about to change hands. per cubic foot <f air--a safety standard more than three years later, conditions U.YAKCO held a Large contract with tfhoer dust in asbestos factories that had were even worse. By that time, the Navy to provide pipe covering for atom been adopted in 1946 by the American company had acquired a new medical ic submarines, and the factory was also Conference of Governmental Industrial consultant--Dr. I.cc B. Grant, a re producing insulation for the chemical- Hygienists, which, despite its imp<isii>g tired colonel, who had been Chief of processing industry on the nearby Gulf title, is not a government agency hut Aerospace Medicine for the United Coast, which was growing rapidly. a voluntary organization with members States Air Force Logistics Command, Over the years, however, the company from various groups, including indus and who lud become medical director of Itad acquired lialf a dozen plants for the try, and with the self-imposed 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, the authors of the foundation's quest, a survey of the Tiler plant was agers, who decided to (juit the asbestos report appear to have based their judg conducted in November of 1966 by business altogether. As a result, the ment on the assumption that the thresh J. T. Destefano, safety and industrial company wild the Tyler plant in 1962 t old limit value of five million particles ly! giene engineer for the gLss division the Pittsburgh Corning Cor|i<r:uiou-- per cuhic foot meant five million asbestos of Pittsburgh Plate Glass, to *e if there .a joint venture of the Pittsburgh Plate fibres, whereas the proponents of the had Iven any significant change in -the Glass Company (now called PPG threshold limit value had intended it to levels of airborne-asbestos dust since the Industries) ami the Corning Glass apply to nil the particulate matter--- 1963 survey. After auah/ing samples Works--and the production of ;imn- fibrous anil nonfihrous -in a given cuhic of air from sixteen different areas of the sile-.islH-.tos pi|>o covering continued as fooi of air. To understand the mag plant, Destefano siib-sijiiemh reported before, By the summer of 1963, how nitude of (his error, ii should he noted that asbestos-fibre counts exceeded the ever, the new owners were ap|vtrenilv that the smdt upon wliii h the 3ttndard ihiisliold limit value m sewn instances entertaining some misdoings about was based had heen made ill the winter and that ill three of tlie samples the ords and compiled. a list of the names and addresses of all the six hundred and thirty-two men who had been members of the lo cals on December 31, 1942, and of the .eight hundred and * ninety men who hatl joined between then and December 31, 1962. From the union em ployment 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, or retirement. This enabled them to calculate the onset and duration of exposure to asbestos for each work er. Records of the un ion health-and-welfare funds provided them with the dates and places of dcatli of two hundred and sixty-two workers who find di -d between 1942 and 1 963, and copies of the death certificates of all count was twenty million or more fibres per cubic foot of air. Destefano was, apparently, making the same erroneous assumption about the meaning of the threshold limit value which had been projects; they spent half their rime working with materials other titan as bestos; and most of the asbestos ma terials they used had an asbestos con tent of less than fifteen per cent. (The hut one of them were obtained. In addition, autopsy protocols, histological specimens, and hospital rec ords were reviewed by Dr. SelikofF and Dr. Churg, the Paterson pathologist, in those deaths (approximately half the made three years before by engineers of men at the Tyler plant worked in a total) which occurred in hospitals. the Industrial Hygiene Foundation. As a result, though he also suggested bet ter ventilation equipment and improved maintenance of die ventilation system, his report did not mention that workers confined, far dustier atmosphere, and manufactured a product that had an asbestos content of almost ninety per cent.) In spite of this relatively light exposure, however. Dr. SelikofF found In the next phase of the study. Dr. SelikofF and Dr. Churg were joined by Dr. E. Cuyler Hammond, vice-presi dent h'r epidemiology and statistics of the American Cancer Society, who had at the Tjler plant were breathing con radiological evidence of fihrosis'trf flic participated in an analysis of the medi centrations of asbestos fibres ten rimes lungs--that is, scarring of the lungs-- cal effects of the atomic explosions that greater than those of the recommended in fully half of elevrn hundred-anil 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, amnne three him- men and women provided a major ha>.; DURING till- span from 196.3 to tired and ninety-two men with more fiir the coricliisu>n<- drawn in the 1964 i 1966, a tremendous amount of than twentf years of experience in the Surgeon General's report Oil the efFsClS new information concerning the bitorade, lie found that three bundled and of eigai'ette snuikin". Since previous logical efFiCls of aslieSltis had been thirn-niue had developed asbestosis, studies had siitittcstvd that lung caneer develop'd and u as heins: circulated and that the disease hail by then become a-^K'iateil u ah a-hesto-is seldom ih- tlirongli the medical and industrial moderate or extensive in more than vclops until twenty \ears after initial . romiminities. IVrliajis the most im|mr- fifty per rent of the case.-.. exposure to a-Iuxfo^ dust. Dr. Sehlodi tant studt of the period wa> the one Even more alarming were the results and ])r. Hammond deiided to limit ' that I)r. SelikofF conducted of the as of a^fniirtality study of workers in the their fii-t au.ds-is to tin- rix hundred bestos iriMilators. As aslvstos workers twKrofeL'.. Jinring the early pS&^nF 'and thirfC3prt=o men'tTffiT'were "ii the : go, these men liatl comparatively light 1962, Dr. SelikofF and his adminis union rolls as of Deeember 31, 1912. I and intermittent exposure: they often trative assistant, Mrs. Janet S. Kaf- 1 aking the men's nees into Con-id: ra- , worked fuu-of-iloors on ron-rructiou fenluirtrli. imred over the union rec tion. Dr Selil-.ifV .2.1 II- ti........... 1 y j {hen set jilxmt Cdinjwn.ng tlic number to determine unequivocallv what their ami causes of death aiming tliem with health experience had been. Unlike ' tJmsc of the general male imputation in almost all the previous investiga tile United States. The results were tions,'which indicated simply tliat there depressing. According to the standard was a connection between asbestos and oreality tables, two Immlrcd and three various kinds of cancer, it was hased deaths could have been expected among. upon tlu* incidence of disease within a the six hundred and thirty-two work defined population, and thus answered ers. Instead, there were two hundred a fundamental epidemiological ques anti fifty-five, not counting seven men tion of how many cancers had devel who had died before incurring twenty op'd among how many persons ex years of exptisurc.--an excess of twen posed. fn doing so, it furnished the ty-five per cent. The. reason for the first incontrovertible evidence that in excess was not hartl to find. The fact dustrial e\|xisurc to asbestos was Iiavs- that twelve of the deaths were at ardmis; it estahlislied sound methodolo tributed to asboscosis 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 tlic or trachea were to be expected, there world. were actually forty-five. And where In October of 1964, in order to nine 'or ten gastro-intestinal cancers review the data that had already were to be expected, there were twen been collected and to discuss the prob ty-nine. Since die death rate from lung lems awaiting solution, the New York cancer was known to be more than ten Academy of Sciences sjmnsored an in times as high among cigarette smokers ternational Conference on the Bio as among nonsniokers, 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 than four hundred of tlic asbestos-insulation workers into scientists. In addition to the statistics account if their findings were to have provided by Dr. Selikoff and Dr. Ham solid validity. It was, of course, im mond on the incidence of ashestosis possible for them to ascertain this infor- and cancer in the insulation workers, ttion with accuracy in the cases of tlte there were dozens of rqx.rts on the .rfn hundred and fifty-five men who occurrence of disease in people exposed had died, so, for purposes of calcula to asbestos. Some of the most alarming tion, they assumed that all six hundred information was provided bv Dr. J. G. and thirty-two men had Tlioiiison, of South Afri smoked a pack or more of ca, who reported finding cigarettes each day, and what appeared to l>c as they demonstrated that bestos bodics--in haled even if tin's line! been the fibres that hate Iteen al case it would have pro tered by the reaction of duced a lung-cancer death lung tis-uc, and coated 1 rate only three ami a half with a colloidal substance times that of the general rich in iron--in tlte lungs male population. Cigarette of one in bun- |>eople smoking, therefore, could coming to nutopst at ran not explain the fact that in dom in Captown. Al- this group of asbestovin- thougli asbestos lx lilies are' sulation workers the rate ivgul.irh seen in the Imiss of deatli from lung cancer was seven of asliestos workers, ibis discotcrt~ io- times the expected rate. ilicated that a-lvst..- was hi-cuinuig a Because "f tills Sttid\'s nbjectivitl, c<>inmon contaminant in the cniiiniimi- its scope, and its thoroughness, it hail tt at l.ogc. I here- was also a report a "real impact on the medical com that me-**tlieh*m i u.i- ufihctiii',: peojile munity. The findings were iv|xirted to who h.ul had oui\ minor exposure- to tlii- annual contention of the American .ishesto-. I hi- tumor, u hich take- I rum Medical Association ill June of 196.1-- [t'entt t.. I..rn \ ,-.i i -- to d\ tv lop, "as a month before the Industrial Hlgiene |itvti..u-n -.. iv;11 t!i.:t it "a- known to nidation began its mriii of the oviii' in ..iil\ ahoui ,.n.- in ten th.mi-sIIk! . ,ler plant and theV We IV published deaths in tli, g.n. ial |s.pula lion. B' the tn the sprint; of 1964 in the /'/ / time >) tlie intv i nati. :ial , otif, i em e, //:* Ann runti .Vlrttn'nl A i>fn'uittnn, It how v. v i i^^g^vijis heino found incii.is^. was the first .stiult e'er made that had tngl' iffifoMrin ft.*ple wlio were o- taken a lart:r itunit:!) tin.up of asbestos possd to a-h. sin. |,| tl,e-ir "oik but also uorkers freon a |s>iiu lai enough hack in p.-opi. who li'ed in the 'iiinitt >*l tit Mint- i-.ll..... a ........ . ... tiC'll ,sli. ................. where ashestos priHlucts were manu factured, or who simply lived in tlic same Imusc with workers who came home with asbestos dust on their clotltes. Perhaps the most striking confirma tion of this came from London, where Dr. Muriel L..Newhnuse, 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 factory, 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 or 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 ashestosis in 1947, at which rime it was determined at an in quest that "she 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 IWARCO factory in Pater son died of mesothelioma, and so did the engineer who first developed the amusite pipe covering manufactured by the company for the Navy, as did his daughter, whose only known exposure to the mineral was that she sometimes played with samples of asbestos prod ucts her father brought home for his family to examine. As a result of such incidents, scientists were forced to re vise their idea that asbestos "as oitlv an industrial hazard, and to oiec serious consideration to Dr. Thomson's predic tion of danger to untold numbers of (teople in the general cominunii'. Such I consideration proved to he well founded, for since then the pre-si ne. of .i-hist." bodies in the lungs of -t.iihii in ui'lein dwellers In- heen confirm. .1 In -tudis made in Miami, London, Bill..-:, 1'irtsburgh, and New York Citi, wh- rev in a recent investigation coii.h.v ted In l)r.^ .'\rtllItr M. -I..ailger, the chief mineralogist at the~ \fount Sinai I' nvimnmcntal Sciences f.ahoraton , clectron-microscope examination of re pic-' 5 sen'tative samples of tissue showed chrvsotilc asbestos to be present in the lungs <>f .1 hundred and four out of a hundred and twenty-eight people com ing to autopsy at random in three city hospitals. Tltv attitude 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, tle executive director of the New York Academy of Sciences, on Octo ber 26, 1964, just after the Conference on the Biological Effects of Asbestos ended, by lawyers representing the As bestos Textile Institute--an association of ashestos manufacturers that includes the Johns-.Ylanville Corporation, RayHestos-Manhattan, Inc., and Uniroyal, Inc. The letter began by stating that all member companies of the institute slut red 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 modifications, can cause I 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 suhjccts 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 1966, the Academy sent out thousands of ctipies of its report of the conference to 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 dozens of newspaper stories concerning new and alarming data that had leen develojx-d ahout the perils of inhaliim asbestos. As a result, it seems high!) prohahle that hy late 1967 the in dustrial-health officer of any responsible compain engaged in the manufacture <>t asbestos produus would have been given pause In- the kind of report that Dr. Grant received from Destefano in September of that tear eoncerning the levels "f asbestos dust in the J yler fac tory. ft fart, considering JJSjjj^^Gyant's credentials, anv other response*would have lx-en astoni'shiii", for in addition to In in" medical director of the Pius es! consultant to Pittsburgh Corning, lie was a member of the American Medical Association, the American In dustrial Hygiene Association, and the American Academy of 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 branch 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 en countering health problems as a result of their exposure to asbestos. Dr. Hurst immediately set about designing a study of the workers, which included physical examinations, questionnaires. X-rays, and pulmonary-function tests. On. February 3, 1967, having received ap proval from lus superiors at the Texas State Department of Health, in Austin, he wrote Dr. Grant that the study could be conducted at a cost to Pitts burgh Corning 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. Cralley, who was as sociate program chief for field studies and epidemiology in the Public Health Service's Division of Occupational Health, in Cincinnati. Dr. Grant ex plained that the Public Health Service had been interested for suite time in doing environmental and medical stud ies of the asbestos-products industry, and .hail recently agreed to include Pittsburgh Coming's plains in Tvler and Port Allegany in the etivirou' mental study. According to Dr. Grant, the Public Health Service did not then have sufficient funds to perform the medical study hut hoped to receive ad ditional money for that purpose in Juli. "For this reason, I would like to hold i off until full on making a final deci sion on your proposed medical studi," he wrote Dr. Hurst. "Our manage ment is wtalli interested in accompIMiing tile iiiedic.il study hut would like the U.S.P.H.S. to accomplish it as pa it oftheir total study. If U.S.P.H.S,. Can't dS^hcTlieilic.il Mlidyfrffey would TftaTTo consider your projioeil furtlterT" An environmental survey of the 1 'f \ m .i . .. i : t . * t . ' . ighty-two samples "f air in'the factory, factory. It is known, however, that two vas conducted on March 20, 1967, by years later he died of mesothelioma. nginvvrs sent there by I)r. Cralley. S-fowever, more than a year passed be- r Dr. Cralley's people got around INCE the primary responsibility of the Division of Occupational i firming Pittsburgh Corning of the Health was to protect workers from csults of the survey. The report was occupational disease, the omission from - Lated March 27, 1968, and it was its rcjairt of any concern for the health ent to J. W. McMillan, the works of the workers at the Tyler plant seems nanager of the Tyler plant, with puzzling, to say the least. Part of the upies to Dr. Grant and Dr. Cralley. trouble undoubtedly stemmed from the In many respects, McMiilan must have roundabout manner in which the Oc ound it a baffling document. On the cupational Health people had to go >nc hand, it informed h'm that when about their business, for at the time they wenty-seven of the air samples col- had no legal authority to enter and- ected in his factory were analyzed by a inspect factories and no enforcement tandard method, dust concentrations power of their own. To gain access to xceeded the threshold limit value of five factories, they had to he expressly in nillion particles per cubic foot "in a vited by state departments of Ialwr, lumber of locations." On the other or by the few state departments of land, it indicated that when the air health that had rights of access, or, amples were analyzed by a new method as in the case of Pittsburgh Coming's n use in Great Britain (and soon'after- Tyler plant and the other asbestos eard adopted in the United States), as- plants they were studying, by the com icstos-fihre counts were considered high panies that owned the factories. Since n forty-four of the fifty-five other sam- the Occupational Health people usually ileS. (The fact was that in five of the had to go hat in hand to industry in amples the asbestos-fibre count was order to initiate their asbestos field went}' to thirty times the range that studies, they appear to have felt a vas considered high by the British Oc- certain constraint about using the in upational Hygiene Society. Moreover, formation they gathered. For exam vith the exception of Pittsburgh Corn- ple, in making arrangements to gain i plant in Port Allegany, where as- access to plants atul take air samples, umios-dust levels were also very high, field-studies engineers invariably gave he over-all asbestos-fibre counts ill the oral assurance to plant management Tyler factory were ____________ that the identity of indi ar greater than those vidual factories would he ncasured in any of kept confidential anti mac thirty other as- would be released only >cstos-products facto- to the appropriate state ies that had been sur- agencies. In practice, cyed by tlie Division however, the Division of if Occupational Health Occupational Health al luring the previous most never forwarded hrec years.) In spite of interpretations of the his, the report made no health consequences of nention that a hralrh its findings to state agen lazard might exist at cies, and in most cases he Tyler plant, nor it didn't even send them "* :id it advise the works the sampling data--the nanager of the factor) re|>ori on the TvWr 0 improve the ventila- plant being no excep ion svstem or to insti tion and that, in effect, ll te- better housekeeping practices---or, prevented any |x>ibilitv of action to tdeed, to correct any condition that remedy am health lia'/anU. The pledge ni<r|\t have led to the excessive fibre of confidi ntialiti, ol course, precluded mints it tlescrihed. Instead, the re- am po,'ibi:iu that the data cnlleiled ort concluded hr telling him that in rfit* 'iiriei' uoulil lie made known `tour cooperation in the. Modi i> 'in- to tin- uorkei' whose health was beiti'c e appreciated and the data gamed a Hi cted. or to the unions representing r. iour plant are of coii'iderahle v.il- them. ,\ |oii oi. r, in order not to em ie." It is not known whether the works barrass management oi make workers nanager had the benefit of am medi apprelu tile gm eminent engi al interpretation of the rcpoit. Nor is neers w h*R?sk. air samples during the ^ : known whether he had any other environmental snivels not onlv were 1 at of ascertainin'.; the dimensions of forbidden In di-cii" tile nature of their le health hazard that i soled in hi' acriiifies with ant ivoikers tb.-i en countered but were also instructed' not to wear respirators, which would have afforded them some protection against the hazard of inhaling asbestos dust. As a further extension of this solici tous policy toward industry, the Oc- eu|ia:ioiin) Health people were careful not to alarm management hy re|*rtin in writing the existence of health haz ards in any of the aslxstos factories they surveyed or by recommending im provements in Ventilation equipment ami housekeeping procedures to reduce the levels of ashestos dust. In short, they simply took air samples, anal) zed them, and reported fibre counts, with out drawing any inference as to what 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 he helpful to examine the attitude toward asbestos disease held bv the jvople who were in charge of the as bestos field studies at that time. As it liappens, I spent several hours one afternoon in March of 1968--a week or so before the report on the Tyler plant was sent out--discussing the as bestos problem with Dr. Cralley ami Mune of his associates in the Division of Occu|iatiiiiial Health. At the time, I was lookin" into the hiuloio'cal effects of asbestos, and I had flown out to Cincinnati to see Dr. Cralkv at the suggestion of Dr. Murray C. Brown, who was then chief of the Division uf Occupational Health, with offices in Washington, D.C. Dr. Crallcv, who received a Ph.D. ill industrial hygiene front the State University of Iotva. had joined the Public Health Service in 1941. At the time of our meeting, lie had been in charge of epidemiolouy ami field studies for ilu- Division of Occupational Health for nearly four years. He was a fellow of the Ameri can Public Health Axsociaiion, a past chairman of its Occupational Health Section, a past chairman of the Ameri can Conference of Governmental In dustrial Hlgieitists, a member of the > Committee on Ashesto'i' and Cancel ! of the International Union Acaiu'i Cancer, and an adjunct .i"i'tant pro- h "or of environinent.il luahh at tin L'niiersit) of Cincinnati. , ,\l the bem'imfng of "III ii.ulil-;- tion. Dr. Cr.iilei cxpl.iim d ili.it tb. a-- K-sto'-lield-siuihV' program bad tv. i omjioiteiits - ait elil iroimn nl.il ii.nn. which had h, en i.ikiii" Jo-i countTM in a'lv'UaxTCSCtilc and *fi ionon-mati iiul* plant' -nice 1964--nnd a nodical-' piil - miolo^ical uant, which would -* >*n a. - -III t X- IMl Il'imiinli.ni 7. ^ Oare-function tests, and blood tests to . five thousand njrii who worked in these factories. He Ih1 nut tell me that his engineers had already conducted ("nvirnnment.il <rvv)> of Pittsburgh Cuming's insulation plants in Tyler and Port Allegany, perhaps In-cause the initial focus of the field-studies pro gram was into other areas of the aslvstos-products imlustr)', and these two surveys were exceptions. According to Dr. Cralley, the.purpose of the fivhl studies program was to establish criteria } for a possible lowering of the threshold ; limit value for asbestos. It would take ! many years to develop these criteria, I however, for Dr. Crallev's medical I studies of the asbestos-factory workers 1 were designed to proceed from the time j of first examination, rather than to re construct the events of the past, as Dr. Sclikoff's 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 would 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 asbestois," he told me. "Then we'll try to determine what level of exposure carries with it no discvrnihle health hazard." When I asked Dr. Cralley if this twenty-yea r- froin-now evaluation would take into consideration the de velopment of lung cancer and meso thelioma, he replied that it would not--that he was interested only in nsbestosis. I then asked him about the medical studies indicating that meso thelioma could occur with minor ex posure to asbestos, and lie shrugged and replied that in his opinion the asso ciation between mesothelioma and as- ^ liestos was not proeid. At this point. Dr. William S. Lain- h.iri, assistant chief of field studies in charge of the medicnl-enxironmental team, who was sitting in on mir talk, explained that since the main j'uij'tvse of the program was to trace the natural! history of ashestos disease, little would' lie knots n about the ineideiiee of hints < cancel* or me*oth< lioma iimil the fixe thousand men under studs w* iv ivexmiini*d in future sears. "Ids alls, tsv'd like to take a hum'll of tss eiits-s earolds, put til* in Into an aslv-los plain | ssllei'e \se klluse the exact dust Keels, and oltseise them for the next rifts S.ai', * *I until tiles die," ft,* said. "Of sours. , ss. * .'ii'* do that. \\\ lias*.* t*> devise studies that are practical, For this rettson, we estimate that it will take 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 T asked about the high rate of asbestosis, lung cancer, and meso thelioma that ss'.is already afflicting workers in the asbestos iiulustrs. Dr. Cralley told me that such diseases were the result of exposures sustained over the past twenty years or so, and that because great improvements had been made in ventilation systems and indus trial-hygiene procedures in the mean time, he expected to find much less dis ease in the future. VNhen 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 chest disease to some ex tent, and that you can get chest disease even from digging in your garden. With the means we now have at hand, we can only nssitntr that asbestosis and other diseases are related to asbestos ex posure. Our first priority, therefore, is to Study our 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 asbestosis and cancer liad afflicted great numbers of asbestos workers since the turn of the century, it had taken so long for the government to begin studying asbestos in earnest. Dr. Cral ley said he didn't know. "All 1 know is that the first real interest came from industry," he told me. "Thee asked for our help hack in 1964, and tlu-v have cooperated with us magnifieeutle." Since it was my understanding that the asbestos indiistrv had iiyuo* been . particularly eager to have its *rperatinu> scrutinized, T was surprised to hear this, and asked Dr. Crallev wlfat segment of the industry had made the ivqui st for help and cooperated x* ni.ignifieenth. "The Ashestos I extile Institute,'' he replied. wh-it .V h v inUM jMctntjun i IMF to | lilCi Up n tht r.n it* r !ci$uvh :ip] 1 * K' 1 i t* tiit {)!>!>! in ..f iibhir-xt*tiiM*; m- h\ tilt' .Itl mnixi i ;t i* ii s f the iu-UI- 111* f.ict rcm.im- tii.it iluriiiti tin fiisi v Fit ^4pi*K*ed no ne>m- pfh,,\aissisIfant i*aill tuiipi-nipriTMo^iri;ruin. of dust level- in uslvs(,t. faitoi'M-s. **r iMi.xi m et enm * in* .Mur* f**i th*' uork- . ers who were exposed to the dust. In deed, almost all the meaningful data about dust levels in asbestos factories which were acquired hy the program between 1964'and 1971 simply ac cumulated in the files of its Cincin nati offices, as dhl all the data on the medical examinations of asbestos work ers it conducted after 196S. h'or its part, the ashestos industry seems to have been quite content with this quiet state of a flairs. On the one hand, it could state publicly that, with its assistance, the United States Public Health Serv ice was investigating the p<issih!e haz ards of industrial exposure to ashestos. On the other hand, it could rest as sured privately that, hecause of the -long-term nature of these studies, no information would be forthcoming for many years, and that, hecause of the pledge of confidentiality, none of it would find its way into the hands of anyone who might seek to remedy any hazards that were found in the mean time.* As for the Tyler plant, it seems to have Seen considered a kind of fluke by almost everyone concerned. By March of 1968, the medical study of the work ers in which Pittsburgh Corning was supposed to he vitally interested was either forgotten or held in abeyance. Dr. Grant never did anything further about the study that Dr. Huist had de signed, and Dr. Cralley and his associ ates in the Division of Occupational Health never got around to conducting their study. Meanwhile, as the health situation at the Tyler plant was going from had 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 Fehruary 1.3, 1969, still another safetyand-heahh inspection of the factory was conducted, this time hy industrialhygiene engineers from the Dallas re gional office of the United States De partment of Labor's Wage and Labor Standards Administration. The De partment of Lnhor inspectors were au thorized to enforce the industrial-health regulations of the \\ alsli-1 leaky Art of June 30, 1936, which had been amended to apply to conip.inKs holding federal contrails in exce-- of mi ib*"is.oid dollars. T liei ft him ,1 a iitmib* i "I oiiN.iu-faciorv conditions in tin* plain, j in*, Indio*', .-main, a MihM.uid.ud wiiiil.i-i lion xesiem and incon-i-ti nt u-** 1,1 i respirators by th** woikei-, and lb*' proceeded to lake ail* sampl. - in -ix u_* a STf^the plant UPtfVTerntine (lie .-isIh-m*'ilu-i 1*. eel-crBy that time, in "-fit*- **l ii" . fool-di.m-mg of (lie Dii.Mi.ii **f OxCii- ! (XiitiMi.iJ' Health, the Ainiiieuti Con minimum specified ventilating range.'' ference of Government.-d Indu-trial Instead of rcinspecting the Tyler plant Hygienists had proposed tli;it the thresh to make certain tint the company had old limit value lv lowered from five complied with these recommendations, million particles per cut'ic foot t ilx- Iniwev'er, tlx- Department of Labor -t-"*d:ird th.-tt had been in elfen for jx-ople simjdv took Pittsburgh Com i than twenty years) to tun mil ing's word that approved respirators lion particles per euhie foot, the first of would he issued to its employees and a series of downward revisions tln-v that the ventilation system would he im were ti> consider---each an admission proved. Indeed, nobody from the De that previously recommended guidelines partment of Labor visited the factory had allowed workers to inhale concen again until N'ovembcr of 1971. trations of dust now- deemed harmful. For its parr, Pittsburgh Coming (The two million particles were con asserts that by May of 1969 the wear sidered the equivalent of twelve as ing of approved respirators was re bestos fihres longer than five microns quired for till employees in the Tyler x-r cubic centimetre of air--five mi- plant--an assertion that is denied by rrons being one-five-thousandtli of an most of the men who worked there-- neh, and a cuhic centimetre of air and that the ventilation system IvaU been x-ing an amount equal to what might duly studied with an eye to improving vr contained in a small thimble.) Tlx- it. During 1969, the company did in Department of Labor inspectors, Imiw- deed engage the Services of I)r. Mor ver, not only lind no equipment to ton Com, professor of occupational neasurc asbestos-fibre counts in terms health at the Graduate School of Public if the proposed conference standard Health of the University of Pittsburgh, iut analyzed the air samples tlx-t took who visited the Tyler and Port Al n terms of a standard applicable not to legany plants and proposed some engi ishestos, a known carcinogen, hut, neering controls to bring asbestos-dust ather, to noto.\ic nuisance dusts, such levels in them down to recommended is wood dust and chalk powder. As a limits. Hut if any significant improve estilt, they failed to realize that even ments were made in the ventilation lx- new standard for asbestos was living s\ stem of the Tyler plant, they were weeded dozens of times over in the clearly not sufficient to bring the dust ' ' plant, and contented themselves levels within such limits. In [amtarv of i iui recommending that Pittsburgh 197(1, engineers from Dr. Crallcy's Jorning ixsue respirators to emplot ees group at the Division of Occupational corking in dusty areas of the plant. Health--which by then had become the Vliat seems especially inmic Bureau of Occupational Safe bout this is that hack in the ty and Health--returned to rties, when I'N'Alit'O was the factor)' and took seven (H-rating its Paterson fac- teen air samples, and these iry--the one upon which the showed the average airborne- "yler plain was modelled-- - asbestos level to be more than ot only had it paid its cm- double the pro(iscd twelve- loyees five cents extra an fibre standard. In keeping our to wear respirators, with earlier practice, how diich tllev were obliged to ever, the engineers chose not o hv insurance underwriters to point out the existence of uv wav, hut it hail also iv- am (inssilil,- health hazard in audlv pointed mil to tlx- tluir ivpiri to Pittsburgh inkers that wearing respi- Corning, nr m make am itnrs was a precaution that -houkl al- r* v'ommeiulalion.s for lowering aslirstn':- :io lx- taken in anv a-br-to- factort, diiM levels in the Tvler plant. Nor did id had tliivatelied to fii\ men \eli> the) forward their findings to the Texas fused to wear them. State Department of Health or to am As for the inadequate leinilaiioii -i-.- tliei ageiicv with enforcement powers. m, the Department of I.ah.u in-p. e- Thu- did the liui'eaii ot Occupational u- ri-coinmeitded in tlv. n upon Saf.'tl and Health add to the series of wlnelt w.iS -ellt l>> lames H.-Uieier, \iitu.dll iileaninules- -miei- that had ie |iu siih ill of Pntslnir^li ('nniirj. 1 tom b n k ill [ult of I 96 J, when Pitt-- e C hail* si'.. V.m 1 lorne, wlii*ha*l I'n fit I' Cm iiiiu; eimnoeil the ludu-trial -i-..tly liemme the m.ina^er f the 11\giiiie l'iiu:id.-ition of America t" \kr plat'll) th.it the imnpain "make i-valit.ile the .i-he-to->-ilust lia'zaid in the -tud i of the piesi-m s\ s|, m ufili pro- Tiler I'l.i^g^Juring tho-e -i\ and a ional ailvi-i i\- .uni come up to >t.nul half \eat-, pit rate -Indies and l'd, <*i pn x hi ijn.ilihid pi.*..) that the in-jn'i limis of the f.icioi'i had heeii mii- is. lit -iM.m is ..pi I'.itni", e-iilnii the diii l. d, and inure than a hundii d miii- pleS of air hail been gathered ami trans(xirted to laboratories in v'arious parts of tlx- country, where they had been counted, weighed, assayed, and pains takingly analyzed hv industrial h\gientsts, who, de|xnding on what stand ard they were using, had reported their findings in terms of dust particle* |vr cuhic foot or dust weight per cubic metre or fibre counts per cuhic centi. metre but never in terms of wltat the dust ami fibres that the workers were inlialing might be doing to tlu-ir health. BV this time, however, some prelimi nary data concerning the mortal ity experience of the men who had worked in the I'XAt-CO factory in Paterson were being developed, and what the data revealed might have led one to anticipate a most unhappy fate for many of the workers at the Tyler plant. With the aid of a gram from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which had become concerned about the potential asbestos hazard to the general public, and wanted accurate data concerning it, Dr. Selikoff had Set up an ashcsios-citn- tro! program in Paterson in 1968, and had begun to trace the sixteen hundred and sixty-four men who had been em ployed at the Paterson plant between 1941, when it opened, and 1954, when Union Asbestos closed it and trans ferred its operations to Tyler. This was a laborious process, for Dr. Selikoff 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 had managed to trace most of the nine hundred and thirty-three men who had worked at the factory for at least a year between 1941 and 1945, and who, if they were still alive, had passed the twenty-year mark since their initial exposure to nslxstos dust. Tlxv were :i!m> able to collect death certificates for almost all of the four hundred of these men who had died. A* in the case of the insulation workers in New 'i mk Local I 2 and Newark Local 32, the iv-ult- were alarming, for, even though the -tinly was incomplete, the ili.nh o r- tificates showed an exti aordiii.-.i d\ In11 frequency of death re-uhin-j fi..m a-- hi-Mo-K, lung cancer, g.i->ro-m:i-tina! iaiuer, and mesuihelinm.i. .Meanwhile, Dr. Si!ik..if nl i.*n- tinueil to maintain a ck.-e uat.h *oi tlx insulation vi'oi'ki i'-' Ixahh, paling par ticular attention to tho-e nun with uii.re fliSrr- nu-mnW-'" * xpni.nie, whom he i xaniiffed .nxe or mice a liar. He w is Din- al'le io.kt.it .-imp- '..IVv >lf lltli'W III ( tIt much earlier than they might have been !f detected- otherwise, .uni i "Wm with great accuracy the mortality experience if tlie three hundred nml seventy men , \vhom he ha<J found in 1963 to he surriors of the original six hundred ami iirtv-tw<> mem hers of the union in 1942. The death rate continued to he disastrous, Between January of 1963 and March of 196.3, sixty deaths would normally have been expected to occur among these men. Instead, there were a hundred and thirteen. Fifteen were caused by asbestosis, and, as with the earlier study, the rest of the excess turned out to have been caused by cancer of various kinds. Two or threebronchogenic cancers would have been normal, but twenty-eight occurred, and, where the actuarial tables pre dicted only two gnstro-intestina! can cers, there were eight. In addition, a sharp rise in the number of mesothe liomas was observed. In the earlier study, in which none had been ex pected, there had been four in two hundred and fifty-five deaths; between 1963 and 196.3, 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, Jnhannohuig, South Africa, which was attended by dozens of scientists from all over the world--among them Dr. Brown, the chief of the Bureau of Occupational Safety and Health, who had Seen designated a vice-presi dent of the conference, and Dr. Cralley, who had become director of tile Bureau's Division of Epidemiology and Special Services. By this time. Dr. Scli koff and other scientists had developed rcliahle data to show that the insulation workers whose disastrous mortalitv ex perience he had documented Jlad de veloped ashen.ims or cancer hv work ing in areas of asbestos dust whose levels were considerably h.low the twelve-fibre standard proposed h\- the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. Armed with this j data. Dr. Sclikoff recommend..d to tinBureau of Occupational Safety and Health in Ocioher of 1969 that .-111 in terim level for asbestos he st at tun fibres pi r cubic centimetre a M.iml.ird that Itad also hem reeomnnndi d h\ the Hisii-.lt Occupational H\givin- S-niitv, d hail been adopted Ilf Hit' Map Mi's . Il'j'ectorate of h at lories. Dr. Sclikoff pointed out that Midi a standard was intend, d only f..r the prevention of ash. Moms, and n.<t of cancer, which tniulil w. he win tali d with cspoMuv levels 1>. |.*t\ t!..iw- r.'.iiliina m a'h. Mom's. B\ way of emphasizing this possibility, he pointed nut that among the insulation workers there were as many exec-- tleatlis resulting from mesothelioma afrom asbestosis, and twice as many ex cess deaths resulting from lung cancer. In spite of the alarming data supporting Dr. SeliknfFs recommendation for .; lower level, the bureau's asbestos ex perts appear to have been unconvinced that stich action was necessary. A year later, when the bureau finally got around to proposing a standard for as bestos, it settled upon the twclve-fihrc standard. .As usual, the Bureau of Oc cupational Safety and Health was lag ging far behind, for by this time--the autumn of 1970--the, Conference oi 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 air containing asbestos dust. In fact, most experts in the field readily acknowledge that there may be hun dreds, if not thousands, of these smaller fibres, or 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 micro scope, the extent to which ashestivs is fi brous would he difficult to believe, for approximately a million individual fi brils can lie side by Mile in a linear inch of rhnsotile asbestos, whereas about four thousand glass fibres--such as those found in various insulation ma terials--or six hundred human hairs can be aligned along the same 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 ant length must be inhaled in order to in duce scarring of the lungs, cancer, and mesothelioma. Win', then, count unit ('tines longer than five microtis- win., it. in effect, constitute only a fim portion of the total: The ri.'Nut is Mitlpli that the average induMrial-bvgi.tic lalxiratorv is equip;>eil with an ordinari pha-ecomr.iM optical mici'.-'Cope, capable ..: 11'olvittg ..nit rel.itivelt large parti. U. wheria. in.M particles small. 1 than fit. microns can often Iv s. .-n unit In . 1. c| ti'i.11 microM-i.pv, telndi i- e\p. n.it. and not read ill .uailahle. II. tic.-, eU"i tliougli recommended M.m.laids ..I two, file, or twelve fibres greater than fiie itjfessnr? in`length p. r coliic e. itfjrnrli-e,- - or ihimhlefuj, of air mttrht .i.iualh r. tl. ."t a loindred, nr i Veil a thousand, a-ls st.M fibres pet thiml-l. Ini, !i inntinrds have continually Ik-cii justi- event occurred that showed some prom ed in the uf economic feasibility, ise of overcoming the ignorance, laxity, 'leer convenience, and wishful think- and confusion that had so long en- ig--in other words, in tin- liojx- that t elujx-d tlie asbestos problem and other .fuming only the larger particles would occupational-health problems. On De t t serve as an index for measuring cember 29th, after two years of prod u .ontamiiiafion of the air Ik-ing ding from industrial unions, led by the tidied. As for how these patently and l/nited Steelworkers of America and ilmittedly inaccurate counts of fibres the Industrial Union Department of er thimhlcful van he translatetl in tlie A.F.L.-C.I.O., Congress jiassed :rms of the lungs of aslk-stos workers, Public Law 91-596--the first compre- sltould be pointed out that in a aor hensive occupational-health legislation tal eight-hour working day a normal it had enacted since tile Walsli-Hcaley 'orkcr will breathe in and out about Act of 1936. Known as the Occupa ght cubic metres of air. Since each tional Safety and Health Act of 1970, abic metre contains a million cubic Public Law 91-596 sought to "assure . rntiinetres, or a million thimblefuls, safe and healthful working conditions te worker is breathing in and out for working men and women,." and ight million thimblefuls of air each under its terms the federal govern ay. Thus, an asbestos worker toiling ment was authorized to develop and i an environment that is supposed to set mandatory occupational-safcty-and- Jtitain, say, only two fibres greater healtli standards applicable to any busi tan five microns in length per thim- ness that engaged in interstate com 'eful of air can in fact be inhaling merce. The Secretary of Labor was aywhere from eight hundred million given tbe authority to promulgate im t eight billion asbestos fibres and fibrils proved standards, and to enforce them i all sizes each day. No one knows by conducting inspections of factories >r sure how many of these inhaled and other workplaces and by issuing lrticles may subsequently be exhaled, citations amt iinjxwing penalties if the .it recent studies of the aerodynamics standards were violated. The Depart : asbestos fibres suggest that as many ment of Health, Education, and Wel ; fifty per cent of the fibres may well fare was made resfxinsihlc for develop : " *ained in the lungs. Not that any- ing criteria for the establishment of the :eds aerodynamic studies to prove safety and health standards, including tat the lungs will retain vast numbers regulations for dealing with toxic ma f asbestos fibres. That lias been proved terials and harmful physical agents and tyond a doubt by Dr. Laager, of the. fur instituting education and training fount Sinai Environmental Sciences programs to produce an adequate sup aboratory, who, using elec- ply of manpower to carry on microscopy to analyze out the provisions of tlie Act. ing-tissuc specimens in nu- So that the department could ipsies of ashestos workers, perform these functions, the is been able to calculate that Act provided for a Na ; many as a hundred tlum- tional Institute for Occupa .nd billion to a million bil- tional Safety and Health, in ashestos fibres and fibrils called XIOSH, which re id accumulated over the placed the Uureau of Occu tars in the lungs of some of pational Safety and Health, icm. However, even as late and which was also given au-_ the autumn of 197'', no thorite to enter factories for le in the Uurenu of (Ku1- ins|K Ctions and investigations, itional Safety and Health or, for that hut, since tile Act did nm go into c)It>Vt otter, in the imle|k-ndeiir tnedieal cmn- until April 2N, 1971, and since MOSlt mnity (let alone in the boardrooms of iliil not hegm it- opeialious until June e asbestos industry) was talking about .loth uf that tear, little or nothing was iv hazard in terms of human lungfuls dune ibiiin" the next ft tv mouths to ie- ' literally billions upon billions of 'ilte the problem of industrial exposure bestos fibres. Kvertone ums talking to :i-lt< -to.. | in', ih-lat was ili.benrten- out it, as almost evertum- srill is, tng to in...m iraili-union |K-uple and t<> tl"- vuplivmi'tiV terms of tbimbleful' mil' |'i mil in iin dual lesearebel's, who : containing two, five, or, at the bad boju d foi quu k action on a new as- .it most, a tlo/eii fibres, fn tin's \v.i\ bi-lo. standard. Ilnutter, the husiuesi- ul a few needles become tbe metaphor a--usual attitude lli.it bad characterized o' imleeil, the meilicallt and sClelt- gotemmi-^g^Jtyt -toward tin; opera- he.illv ae'eipted definition of --a ull'de it"s of iln aslt^sto. infiiusirv for so lone it star k. was about to he slt.tUeted hi a series of \l t! i nil of 197b. bouetii, .ill di-i losiiies that, fittingly w,,u|,| have their apotheosis in the ret elation uf the atnKtnus working conditions that had prevailed through the years at the Ty ke plant. 11 THE new turn of events got start ed on May 20, 1971, when in dustrial hygienists from the Meadvillc office of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources sent Pitts burgh Corning a report cm some recent inspections they had made at the com pany's insulation plant at Port Alle gany, a small town in the northwestern part of the state. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania hat! not yet adopted the standard of twelve fibres per cubic centimetre, so the hygienists who in spected the Port Allegany plant were using the long-outmoded standard of five million particles per cubic foot, which is 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, the 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 than twenty-six million particles, which meant that there may have been ap proximately a hundred and fifty fibres per 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 tin's process to he repeated elsewhere. Tile Pennsylvania inspectors, however, gave the company sixty days to improve the ventilation system and institute let ter housekeeping practices to reduce dust levels at the factory. While Pittsburgh Coming's man agers were mulling over this unex pected situation. Some personnel changes were taking place at XIOsII that would soon cause them additional problems. Having reached retirement age. Dr. Crnllcv was about to leave the Division of Kpidetniologv aml Special Services, which was being ivoreaiti'/eil into the Division of Field Studies and Clinical Investigations. A number uf position- in tbe new division-had opened up, ainoitu them that uf clii-f nmlical officer, ami it vva- filled mi full I-t, I with the appointment of a thirtt -v ear-old J doctor named W ij.lt.mi M. Johnson. A native uf Olean, N\vv York, Dr. [ulm- eon" was qTFfinylit up'in r.Xjf.1 n.K Lake, graduated from l!ie"St:infon! Cnivii- sitv .School uf .UiiliAiie in 196S, m- ...I u Ci 1 ' P York ;it Buffalo, anti Itad jtisi com V pleted a t'vo-unr training program in iVi'ii[':iti`>iial health nf tile Harvard decided to make it and tiilicr* ashvstov prodiicts factories their first order of business. School of Public Health. Hv had de In the meantime, pressed by the cided to fultili his military obligation by deadline given hy the Penns) Iv.niia state putting in a two-year stint with the inspectors for cleaning up the Port Alle LTnit< tl States Puhlic Health Service, gany plant, and aware of Or. Johnson's and, as things turned out, it did not concern ahunt conditions at the Tyler take him long to Ivoune immersed in factor)', Pittsburgh Corning nude a his job there. Within a few days of Or. move to head off some of the pressures Johnson's arrival at the N'JOSII offices that were building up against its asbestos in Cincinnati, one of the engineers who opcrn.ions. On August 3rd, the compa Had Iven conducting field studies un ny fileil an application for a variance der Or.' CralleV told him about the en i from occupational-safety-anil-health vironmental sublets of asbestos factories ; standards with the Assistant Secretary that had been in the files for several j for Occupational Safety and Health of years. "That engineer was particular : the Department of Labor, in Washing- ly concerned about the situation at the - I ton. Under the terms of the Oecupation- Tyler plant," Or. Johnson has re 1 al Safety and Health Act of 1970, the called. "And when I started digging Secretary of 1-ahur could grant a vari through tile files myself, 1 realized he ance to an employer if he determined hail good reason to be, for it was plain that the employer "has demonstrated as day that there was an incredibly seri ous health problem down there. At hy a preponderance of the evidence-that j the cunditions, practices, means, meth that point,- I went to Or. Crallei and ods, operations, or processes used or asked hint whom I should see about the projxised to he used hy an employer situation. He suggested that I get in will provide employment anil places of touch with Or. Gram, Pittsburgh Coming's medical consultant. How employment to his employees which are as safe and healthful as those which ever, when I called Dr. Grant, on July j would prevail if he complied with the 1.1th, he told me there really wasn't I standard." Pittsburgh Coming's appli- much of a health problem at the'Tvler i cation for a variance was signed and plant, because the place was so dusty submitted hy F. W. Holman, the vice- that people didn't sta\ around there president in charge of manufacturing long enough to get sick. He also told and technology---who told the Tyler me that there were no plans to im- Cnuri'i-'l'iiiti't that lie knew of no proic tile factory's ventilation si stem, Specific Pittsburgh Corning employee and that the company planned to con- suffering from significant illness as a u-rt from asbestos to mineral wool in result of working with nslwstos. In the the near future." - application, Holman stated that the Since Or. Johnson had receivnl con threshold limit ruble for asbestos was siderable instruction at Harvard in the exceeded in some areas of the com effects of asbestos exposure, he was less pany's Tyler and Port Allegany plants, than reassured hv his conversation with that the coinp.'tnv had been unable to Or. Grant. During the next two weeks,1 comply with the required standard be lit: gathered as niucli information as he. cause of tile imatailabilitv of effective could about eonditious at Tvler and ventilation equipment, and that the in Port Allegany; then he di-cussed the' effectiveness of the available equipment situation thoroughly with Or. fo-epli K. * Wagotn r, who had arrived at XIOSII mi ( had-htciunc particularly s'gtiificaiit -mvc the reduction of the standard for asbes August 1st to replace Or. Crallei as tli-' tos from twelve fibres per cubic Centi rector of the new Diii-ioii ol Kirld metre t`> live. The (ait ih.'U such a re Sunlit s and Clinical fniv'liuaiious. Dr. duction in tin ortitia) stamlaitl had not Wagoiur had r,ceiiid his Doctor ol 1 taken pl.-tci hut fi.nl mih been puMi'li.'il Science tlteive ill rpiiJeniioJiiet and hm- as a |U'"|h.s. ,I i banur bi the C "lift fence slatisiics from th, Harvard S> In ml of of I It eienisis sii';e, s|s that Pittsburgh I'ulilic Health ill lO/H, and had sp. nt Coniine's man.i:;eis , libel iii-iv af- till I ears as ail pidi mi"|ie>is| ttllll ill. dieted with a bn! t ast- of n.-rti . of y Puiilit lleallh Seiiue's National Can- were tn me t*. ob..i.ie tbe f.n'l l)i.:l id' Institute, IV here lie It a- ill'll urn. II- neitbt r fat loi i ua- in t.mipb i:. t ii.n tal in ill.- lotto sti'tigeli to if. I. lop and with tlu olisol. le -'aitd.iit! ol ln> I' i'- iiisiinni standards ho tf\,- pi'.o, t tioti of iloll pal tK'll ' p*'l' tide, loot, l_el .ilolle oianiom mini rs, n ho Here oceii|MOau-., the til t lie-Ill'll 'luiilai'tl it-. It. aill e\|lost d to I'atlioa. Ill.' tll.'slT^rpif - t^fre trpplh :1s in tor'TPno i on e uNit ' was as s*.(a,iis|v tfisimfi, ,| ahout th.- oil to - n that a' ol Inn-', 1971. the pot. ntial he.dih ha/aid at I I It r as Dr. )..|.ii'.-n m as. and lo'jt lli. r the ' u < ni. n I'omp.ini bail s|i. m n- ailv I'.io Inui- ilittl lb..ii. m.I ............... 12 : development i>f a-mineral-wt*,] substi- Grant's visit to Tyler on August I/tit Tun- fur .tJhMos, that it would begin was to give the workers there an edu- to use miiieial U-ool in some of its op- rational talk on the health hazards of eratioiis in August, and that it hoj>cd to asbestos exposure, which Pittsburgh < inake a complete cot.version to mineral Corning had already claimed to have vool at the Port Allegany and Tyler done in its application for a variance, plants by the middle of 1972. As for tiled two weeks before.) On August the steps the company had taken to pro- 24th, Dr. Johnson telephoned Dr. vide working conditions as safe and Grant, in Pittsburgh, to tell him that ltealthful as those which would prevail the Division of Field Studies and Clini- if tlie government sund-tnl for asbestos cal Investigations wanted to examine had been complied with, Holman suited the workers at the Tyler plant. Dr. that Pittsburgh Coming had supplied Grant replied that Dr. Hurst, of the approved respirators ami had required East Texas Chest Hospital, had just workers to use them; that it had also finished giving the Tyler workers med- purchased and was experimenting with ical examinations, including X-rays and new respirators; that it had provided pulmonary-function tests, and he sug- | dust-collection and ventilation appara- gested that X10SH might widj to defer itus; that it had expanded its program of its study of the men 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 ami Dr. Wagoner derided to will continue to provide health educa- hold off for the time being on their cx- 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 anti how they the Port Allegan)- plant. . (At that can protect themselves." In a sworn point, they had no idea that almost five affidavit attached to the application for years before Dr. Hurst liad outlined a a variance, Dr. Grant stated that he proposed--and rejected--medical study had knowledge of the matters set forth of the Tyler workers for Pittsburgh in rlie application "so far as said appli- Corning. ) On September 7th, in order -ation states that the applicant has pro- to make arrangements for the survey led for its employees health education of the Port Allegany workers, Dr. programs that explain to said employees Johnson went to the plant, where he the health hazards associated met Dr. Grant for the first with asbestos exposure and time, and heard him give a how thev can protect them talk to the workers on the selves." ` health hazards associated with Hack at the Division of asbestos. According to Dr. Field Studies and Clinical In Johnson, Dr. Grant indicated vestigations, in Cincinnati, in his talk that the levels of several weeks were to pass asliestos dust at Port Alle before Dr. Johnson ami Dr. gany were not high enough Wagoner would learn of to he considered dangerous Pittsburgh Coming's appli to health. Dr. Grant also cation for a variance. Mean claimed that the dust levels while, on August 9th, Dr. were considerably lower than {ofinson called Horace Adri the ones tli.it the insulation, an, chief of the inilutrial-hv- workers studied by Dr. Seli- gieiie program of the Texas kotf had been cx|>oseii_ to. . State Department of Health, in .Austin, ( Aciuafk , Dr. SelikofT had deuion- and told him of the extraordinarily high strao-d tha t the insulation workers were dust levels that had been found ill the e\|sseil (i. h eels of aslu -t.i,. dust far he- I T\!er plant. Adrian told Dr. fidim-on hue the tu.lee-hluv standard.) In ad tli.it lie had never veil c'opiis of am dition, 1) i. Cirmi implied that ug.uetle iilsjiei ti"hi of the 1 i ler plain indeed, smokiioj -a a. an uupori.uit f.u tor in the j lie gm< Dr. {, I 1 .11 tin impi ""Sin ih-1> ! .pm nt of :isVs(osis, although Miei that he did nm Ln-m I lie f.:et"ll , x- |i u d it i a- a:, .itaflahls iiuluate a viiy 1 I-led and he would look into the u'n.i- limn, <1 e11 t of Mo.uette -.moling on i a-. 11111cI."Iv as |.... ilili . A vv\,k lit* i, lung -i n'i:;e. ( Dr. Gram m.n hi'-*' \ .'.urian inhumed Dr. |ohit'n:i th.it he mi'iit'A tpi, t. >1 some slinks conducted was going to Tv U r the next dn\. Au In Dr. S likoli .uid Dr. Hammond, , gust 1 7th, to conduct a ualk-thiottgh w hi. h u'uricCis u siirxev ci( t!ie f.u tort and to iiti et Di. siiioke vig.uVlies inn eight times the Giant, wlm also planned to he there, risk d* mg of lung earner as cigaiv lie (As it turned on*, th, pmp. I. of Dr. sin,il, I, jo g, ii, i.i|t and niiietv-iuo times the list ,,f men who /uitlu r work with asbestos nor smoke. I Hut what J)r. Johnson fouml most disturbing of all was Dr. Grant's assertion that, in addition to smoking cigarettes, a man wtuilil have t< undergo from twenty tu thirty years of exposure to asbestos hvforc vxfierieiichig any adu rv effects. Later that tiny, Dr, Johnson made a point of telling Dr. Grant, in the pres ence nf union officials, that radiological evidence of pulmonary fibrosis had been found in men with less than ten years' exposure, and that there was strong medical evidence to support the helief that lung cancer and mesothelioma could occur at exposure levels far below those that could cause ashestosis. This encounter with Dr. Grant seems to have marked a turning point in Dr. Johnson's dealings with Pittsburgh Corning, for, he has explained, "I came away from it feeling that Dr. Grant had grossly minimized the haz ard of working with asliestos, and I assumed that he had probably done the same thing at Tyler on August 17th." Dr. Johnson's mistrust of the com pany's intentions was heightened a few days after tin's, when he discovered that Pittsburgh Corning had filed the appli cation for a variance with the Occupa tional Safety and Health Administra tion; he believed tin- application to be not only self-serving but downright false in its claim that the company had undertaken to inform its employees adequatelv about the hazards of work ing with asbestos. In addition, Dr. Johnson and Dr. Wagoner had other reasons to fear that no immediate action would be taken to reduce the health hazard at Tyler and Port AlK-ganv. In the mid dle of .August, tlu-v had prepared a memorandum expressing their concern about conditions at the two plants (u aIn i included data from Dr. Crallev's files about excels mortaliiv among workers in seveial large as-besto--textile factories ) and sent ii to I)r. Marcus M. Kev, the director of \kkii, which bad < t up its beadipiarn i s in Rockville, Maryland. During AugU't and Sep tember, as it happened, lluie were huge interna) problem' at Vlti'll headquarters about luuv th, iu-iiiiue should earn out in od, und. r tfie Orcup.itioual Saf, iv and Ik.din A<-t and Ii,iw it 'hmihi eo,.(dill.it, it' a. livitics with thow of the I )e|'.n ini, nt of l.abur's ( Kvupalionai Saf, tt ainl_J fe.ilth Administration, vv-liich_li.nl h,, n gi'iit..._ le'|Siii'lhllil\ for eilfor.ing health 't.nldaids under the Act. Nil ...Iillini--- tr.itiv, eri'i' eiiMi,d, with the r, 'ii uihl.givc Dr. Johnson or-Ur. Wag- ivr- any assurance something wit! In.- Join* to alleviate the condi- 'Mis-at tiic Tiler and Port Allegany - Feeling increasingly frustrated, 1. >!mx>n amt Dr. Wagoner tlecid- 1 after the encounter with Dr. Grant iat the situation was serious enough i warrant their taking matters into leir own hands. The following week, >r. Johnson telephoned Steven Wod- i, tlie legislative aide for the Oil, iiemieaJ, and Atomic Workers Inter- irional Union, and told him about ic environmental studies of dust levels the factory which he had found tried in the files, (The two men had et previously to discuss the problem : workers exposed to beryllium at .e Kawecki Berylcu Industries plant, Hazleton, Pennsylvania, where, as in re case of Tyler, the Bureau of Occu- trinnal Safety and Health had gath- cd data about health hazards associ- ed with a substance that the workers ere exposed to hut had for a number years neglected to inform the work- s of the dangers involved.) Upon arning of the situation at Tyler, /odka immediately sent Dr. Johnson letter requesting that lie make the ivieonmental data available, and, on iher 24th, Dr. Johnson sent cm off to the union's Legislative De- .rtment, in Washington, D.C. When Wodka discussed the Tyler nation with his boss, Anthony Maz- >cchi, the director of the Legislative 'epartmeiit, Maz/occhi remembered r. Sclikoff's telling him aliout a study at he. Dr, Hammond, and Dr. hurg were conducting of the mor- (ity experience of the men who had en employed at the Paterson plant, lay.zocchi quickly got in much with r. Selikoff, who, as ic turned out, had mpletcd the first part of the Study a cek or two before, and was about to esent his data at the Fourth Interna- iiial Pneumoconiosis Conference of e fnternational I.aLir Office, in icliatvst, on September 29th. When i.v/.zmehi told him about the envirun- emal data on the Tyler plant that r. {ohiison was niakiti" available t>. e union, Dr. Selikoff sent M.izzovcili e leMihs of hi-, study of the Pater-! n worfceiv. The} weie :ts alarming ihe mortality data on the asheSto*r>. Of three hundred and thit,*e men who had Keen einph>u-d the Paterson factory for a year or ore fietw.-i-ii 19 U and 1945, eight!ght had dieil hi 1 Jceemhor .5!, 1959, id fifteen could not he traced. How- r. Dr. Selikoff, Dr. Hammond, and ii .iN^Hi.ues Ji.uf man.itted to trace every one of the remaining two hun dred and thirty' men wRo were alive on January 1, I960, and liad studied their experience up to June 30, 1971. Using the standard mortality tables. Dr. Hammond calculated that no more than forty-seven deaths would normal ly have been expected to occur among these men during that clcvcn-and-onehalf-ycar period. Instead, there were a hundred and five. Fourteen of tile deaths were caused by asbestosis, 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, bur twenty-five occurred, and deaths from cancer of the stomach, the tplon, and the.rectum were three times what the 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 taken on its application for a variance from occupational-safety-andhealth standards until after a public hearing, and that no hearing could be held until the spring of 1972. Since this meant that the company would be forced to comply with existing health standards until then, and since the com pany hatl failed to prove that mineral wool could be successfully substituted for asbestos in higli-tcmperature pipe covering, the Pittsburgh Corning peo ple found themselves in a hind. In the early part of October, therefore, they told representatives of Local 4-2(12, in Tyler, with whom they were negotiate ing a new contract, that they might have to shut the plant, hut said that they,. wished to consider tin- local union's pro posals on wages, health, and safety be fore making a final ilcci'ion. \\ lien Mazzocchi and Wodka learned of the coinpam's action, the! suspected that Pittsburgc*h (Joinimr' was iisint*; the threat i of a shutdown to forte ilie local union to ininimi'/i ils demands for improved t working conditions at the f iler plant. After consulting with representatives of ! Local 4-2H2, the two men determined that a Mupt-c;>nipli.-iiicc program should j beenmy^rffct-of -tile union's contrSw' - pro|>osal on safetv ami he.alth. The} rlii-ii .submitted a formal request to Dr foluison at VtfKtl .... (let..her 7 19/1, for a comprehensive indtistri.ilhvgieiie study of the Tiler factory and a medical survey of the men who were working there. Upon receiving this re quest, Dr. Johnson made the necessity arrangements with Pittsburgh Corning and with the Texas State Department of Health, which had previously of fered to cooperate, and a survey of the plant was scheduled for the last week of the month. AS things turned out, the Xiosn injTx spertioti 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 ashestos, and for Dr. Key, at Xiostt. His letter said: Dear Mr. Hoocsox: Your department hat published initial standards in the Federal Register, in ac cordance with the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.1 understand that these are "initial" ami that modifications may be expected as a rcsti1: ..f research cri teria bring developed hi' ibe National In stitute for Occupational Safety and Health. One "standard" in the published list is so wrong, and represents such srrious hazard to workmen, that I a.liisr its urgent revision. I refer to the standard for ashrstos, which would allow workmen to be exposed to environments containing as many as twelve fibres per cubic centimeter of air. Our research in one asbestos trade--insu lation work--demonstrates that work in tile past in areas with levels of two to three fibres per cubic centimeter of air lias resulted in a very "rrat increase of deatli due to cancer and to asbestosis. Just how serious this has been may he appreciated from current statistics: at piesvnt. one in every five deaths anions* insulation u.irkers is due to Inns; cancer, one in ten to cancer of the pleura or peri toneum, one in leu to scarred lungs or asbestosis. The proposed level is much liixhei than I actually /rote exists. It is -o Inch as to ` make totally inctlectiie current eii..rts In ` both industry and labor to cmitml this mi- i happy oeeupatiiinal health hazat.l. In C ireat Ifritain, the aprh'n. ed level is /.. r limn nne-lillh the s-x.md.ird lien- pr>> ['used and levels of tvv.-lvi fdu. s p. i cubic - eentimerer tor mote than even ten min- ; Jotes vv.ndd be svdiieienf In i.-.|inie tll.it the nnikinan wear prnte.uii.- . bubin.: ; and Use an efh. ient respirat.*r. [ M r: fiRrFh K. 11 utcIlMie.ni, I'n--i.lcnt or I tile International'AV-neiation ol ll.-ai and I'rnsf Insulators and .\-he-fos W.nlejs. Al- l.-t'K ), ha- eal. iilair.i ih ( aie approximately one hundred thousand men employed Join- asbetui insulation Wort in the United States, in various unions and in various industries. Utilizing sta tistical calculations by Dr. E. Cuvier Hammond, dirretor of the Department of Statistics of the American Cancer Society, it may he predicted that, if the situation remains the same and docs not improve, there will be more than seventeen thou sand excess deaths of lung cancer among these men, as welt as almost ten thou sand unnecessary deaths nf cancer of 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 tu the unhappy toll of this serious error. I urge you, then, to recall this stand ard, and substitute one that will help pro-. j tecr workingmen forced to work with this} j dangerous material. ,; l Although Dr. SelikofTs letter did I not engender an)- immediate response | from Secretary Hodgson, it did evoke profound concern among the union of ficials to whom he 'sent carbon copies. When Dr. Selikoff returned to New I York from Bucharest, Sheldon \V. 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-htn: Committee on the Asbestos Hazard, in Washington, on October 18th, so that he mighc present additional informa tion, which the union people hoped would enable them to get some ef fective action from the Department of Labor on the problem 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 number of deaths re sulting from asbestosis among men in their forties and fifties), Dr. Johnson and Dr. Wagoner continued to express concern about the asbestos problem to their su|K-riors at XIOSII, who they hoped would take a firm stand in ad vising the Secretau of Labor to pro mulgate a tough viinrgenev standard foi asl'estui. On October 4th, feeling that the situation was getting nut of h.uul, I)i. |olui-on and Dr. W agon, r li-ited |)i\ Selikoff in New York to exchange information about the asbestos problem in general and, in partieul.tr, almut johns-.\ Jail' ille's adiestos-textile faetoit in Mainilb, New ferseV, alie* ie that e'l poration 1 lias owned anti "pvi.itol vlu Iru^vM of :i,- lu Mus-nimIo. ts f it itm.'s n ili- worlti for more than fifty years. Dr. Crallev's files had yielded up Several environ mental studies showing that excessive dust levels Itad 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 ami seventy-nine chest X-rays of the factory employees; and an incomplete mortality study showing, on preliminary analysis, four deaths from mesothelioma and at least ten other asbestos-related deaths among a hundred and eighty asbestos-textile workers. Indeed, the situation at Manville appeared to 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 simples that engi neers from Dr. Cralley's division had taken at the Manville asbestos-texnlv plant during the spring of 1971. The fibre counts showed that even then there were as many as twenty fibres per cubic 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-Manvillc factor)-, and they were anxious to know if Dr. Selikoff could give them any additional informa tion, particularly with regard to ocher cases of mesothelioma that might have occurred in Manville. As it hnpj>ened. Local 800 of the United Papermakers and Paperworkcrs Union, which represented the company's production workers, had provided Dr. Selikoff with a roster of its membership Sev eral months before, and he, Dr. Ham mond, and' one of their associates at Mount Sinai, Dr. William J. Nichol- j inn, had jusfbegun a mortality study of tile Johiis-.VIanville employees, So I)r. Selikoff was able to give his visitors de- | tails on about a dozen deaths among the ) workers which had been causer! In | nit 'otJu-lioina. On October 5th, I)r. Johnson and Dr. Wagoner went to Trenton, where ihe\ met with the commi-'ioner of the New Jer-ey Department of Lain*!- and Industry ami the deputy Commi-Mu'ivr of the state's Department of Health,' ami told tl^w^Atln-Jie.ilth^lwuril lh.it. ihi v believed to exist at the JohnSs.U.iiieille plain. \\ hen diet askr d the-* ofTiria!- to in\i etig.ite tile -ittiaiioti, iliVwc\ir, tiny lama! that the state stamlard of two fihres per cubic centi * yoTi-idcivd it t<i lx a federal problem metre and to issue a bulletin prescrib awl, in am ca-e, 'did nut possess mod ing that an appropriate label be affixed ern fibre-counting equipment fur such to each container of asbestos and as sa *t:o.k. 'J'lte following day, the two bestos products warning workers of ii took t(ie data they liail compiled (Linger. In addition, the letter asked the the John--.Uninille textile factory Secretary to get in touch with the ad t<> tlie New York Regional Office of ministrator of the Environmental Pro the (Occupational Safety anti Health tection Agency "to enable him to in Administration, in New York City, vestigate tlie necessity for invoking the unit t<> discover that the people there imminent-danger provisions of the (lit! nut |*>?sess adequate fibre-counting Clean Air Act, as amended in 1970, lo equipment, nr even know how to use protect our families and comiiiuni.ies inch equipment properly. With that, from the effects of ambient asbestos they /lew- hack to Cincinnati and got in that escapes from the workplace." touch with officials of the United Pa- As might be sup{x>sed, the Industrial permakers and Paperwnrfcers 'Union. Union Dejiartment'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 did so, however, on December 7th, partment of Labor and Industry had he declared an emergency standard fur known for more than a year--that in asbestos of five fihres 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 A Ianville phut who had become dis and a half times as great as tlie 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 had already published it Sclikoff documented his contention that as a proposed change. It is not known the Department of Labor should es what, if any, medical data prompted tablish a standard for occtqiarional c.x- the Secretary of Labor to select the five- ire to asbestos to replace the fibre standard, or why he chose t<> dis current twelve-fibre standard. At the regard the data indicating that asbestos same time, he stressed disease could occur at the fact that any stand this level of exposure. ard for asbestos expo Perhaps he was seeking sure could bo con a middle ground that he cerned unit with the hoped would he satisfac prevention of pulmo tory both to industry and nary fibrosis, and that to the union people. If little was Known as to so, he was neglecting the how low a standard responsibility placed upon might have to lie in or him by the Occupational der to prevent asbestos- Safety and Health Act related cancer, which for promulgating stand had accounted fur fullv ards that, even if they three-quarters of the entailed conflict, would . excess deatlo among assure "the greatest pro the insulation workers. tection of the safetv or (hi November 4, 1971, the Indus health of the affected employees.'*' In trial Union Dcjiartment transmitted ant case, it h a pin that lie was not through Geoige Taylor, the executive aware of the XIOSII report mi Pitt-- '-cretarv of the A.f .L.-C.I.O.'s Stand- huf"h Comings 'ivlei plant, which in" committee on safety and occupa was then slow It making its veat tional health, a letter in geuth request- tlnmiuh the hure.iucratic laht rintli, foi ii!" Secretary llodg.iii to it'e the pow- the stun of the plant eonsiitim d iiiCon- h "ranted him l>v the Oecup.itiou.-il tlot eriil'h evid'ilCv of the sm rt t.m"lc S .iei .uni 11,nidi Act of 197d to *K - of icii<>iaih i , l.ixitt, and l.n k id com an ciuef`"eiict standard "oeeinmg munication that li.nl fioiii the vert be In. indiisiiial iis.- o| adiesios. I lie letter ginning eh.irav teii/.i d government |'"1- tl* i l.iIe d ih.it tile existin'c-* twelve-fibre let toveaul m cu|iu;inn:il e\j1'e to stand.ml e 'llstitnteil "a license to jeop- aslv.sios.-^^j.-^storA of Tt ler.alv. made __ nnhzi veil Ii. .in i ireetin- restraint the a mockert "iif1 one nf the basic as-ump- ''1 livisof nnllioiis of workers," and uracil tioin behind this pi diet : that the "ov- the S.cutarv todeil.u.- an etner"eiK\ erniu-nt vould and Would (mci indu-- ny to abide by a numerical fibre stand ard, atul, hy so doing, could insure healthful working conditions ;,sIxs{ik factories. THE XIOSII inspection, which was conducted between October 26th and October 29th, included an in dustrial-hygiene survey, carried out hy engineers from XIOSH's Division of Technical Services, and a medical sur vey, performed by a three-man team from the Division nf Field Studies anil Clinical Investigations. The medical team was headed hy 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, we were met in the front office hy Mr. Charles E. Van Horne, the pLmt manager, and since it was late in the day, there was just time for a quick preliminary walk-through. The place was an unholy mess. Why, com pared with it, the Port Allegany plant looked like a hospital operating room! A thick layer of dust coated evert thing--from floors, ceilings, and raft ers to drinking fountains. As we walked through the interior, vve saw men fork ing asbestos fibre into a feeding ma chine .is if it were hay. Thev ohvumsly hail no idea of the hazard involved, farther down the line, wv came upon sniie fellows with respirators banning around their necks, who were sitting in an open doorway entinsr watermelon. 1 hale to think of tlie fibre counts on those dices of watermelon. I remem ber turning to Dr. Richard Spiesivl, one of mi assistants. `This is intolerable,' I told him. He was as shocked as I w;iv tt h tiitl m*t lake Or. [ohn^m ami .kmki.ius fmm l*n^ m realize l^iat .il uYlualh even siaiic ( ilir m.irusf.H"turinu pmct ipian- liiit-N *( iltist Wen* lvin \\ <S in ini** tlu* factn\. In .1111111it11 i*. |n*r li<ittM'k'rpin; prtuvtlm< s, tii< ilm I i.m-** ua> a !rns'-l\ inatK'tju.iit \t mild* iai\ xjsitin. Other .i-p oi- ih. pi.mi' M|Vi-.jUtii| U dV f it lil 11 It.ht vy{U./il\ ImZ- ,i rl n-. I In* ^ i.ip-^*i imliji^ m.niiin*,, ulit.i iviiisr fr*tin v.iii*tis ..p-i.tc.-n-s was m;u( itU'.ihh , w.is v sir. im.lt tlnM\ ami I.K'kiil Hiflii it ni .i|uip unnt* antfa fan m ..*i ~i fy t .1 i-..<pp*i' ( -.`mph m. il.,i i*-- ; li-pt'i! tins mil* ill* tmnwnt. .Moreover, both the -cr.-p rigtler ;mt! the feeding machine- relied Virr.a diisi-cnllccti*ii s\stm that con sisted of canvas tags inside the plant, beivcath the roof. These tag? Were p-.-" xlicallv emptied hy meclianicnl -rink-i , ami when this happened iu:g.amounts of asbestos dust were reJe:ed into the air; tlu-n, aftv r it had -cttled. instead of heing vacuumed the dt:t w;.-* swept into piles witii push broom-, The ventilation equipment on the saws in the finishing depa ament was also found to he inadequate; excessive amounts <: asbest<s dust were escaping int* the air there as well. Because of Pittsburgh Coming's ap plication for a variance, tile .VIO.-H inqlectors learned, tlie wearing of respira tors had been mandatory in all areas of the plant since August. However, in stead of bring used for emergency or backup protection, as industrial-lit gienc standards prescribed, the respirators were obviously bring employed in the Tyler plant as substitutes fo- an ade quate dust-control ststem and for prop er housekeeping. Nor did tile company have any adequate program for select ing, fitting, cleaning, and maintaining the respirators worn hv its employees, and many of the men were wearing them improperly. In addition to noting sc hazards, the inspectors saw that _..c factory's lunchroom was within fifty feet of one of the dustiest opera tions in the plant, and that workers were allowed to niter it wearing clothes that were contaminated with asbestos. The MOS1I men also discovered that compressed-air outlets throughout the plant were being used to Wow cNCrss dust off the employees --a practice that simply reintroduced asbestos fihres into tin- working environment. As a result of these multipl. de ficiencies in the ventilation system and in the operating procedures of the Ty ler plant, Dr. Johnson ami his associates were not surprised to find that, of a hundred ami lliirtt-eight air sample- taken at difft rent loi.iiioiw in the lac- tori', a hundred and -i \eiiieen r\c. cd d the recommended fit.-(line m..mi..id. (Of course, c\en if ;h. 1'ikr ;-i m; /'.(./ ob-eiVrd that -taml.n d, v..--.'k:- i' >i wearing 11-~pii.11- ~ ....ihl siili Inn iiilia.ing .11 le.isi font e.iiP" : -- !' -ins (din - nt ,:ti i v. *1.iv . 1 \\ h.il ..-l'-ni'!. ,! *ii. ill, l.i'V \ .. - ll- Ol nr,:. A | hi I- v. 1. l . d d i "mini ndi d -i.md .til, ,.i ih:m-; . . :> '! o in i he ill .iii.I.i. :;rj pi-iii". in ill' mi- .Iig d. ;u 'a:, hi, u ii. ii 1 i:. i-. I njipi is and i.' . s. i i [ ' i fin I - - r u , i, nail d, ihc in.i' n1111:n ...n. in I'aiii-'i a i huiid11 d .uni . I.*' '\ -:nm idu, - ;' | cubic centimetre of air, and the average was seventy-five. In the funning dcivtrtment, where the material was rolled on mandrels, the maximum concentra tion was a hundred and thirty-four fibres per cubic centimetre, and the average was thim-nine. In the finish ing department, where pipe covering was trimmed and sawed, the maximum concentration was two hundred and eight fibres per cubic centimetre--an approximation, for the air sample was actually tx> dusty to permit an exact count under a microscope--ami the average was forty-one. Even in the in spection and packing department, where the finished product was weighed, boxed, and shipped, the maximum con centration was ninetv-twtf 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 standard recommended by the hygienists, and ten times the level of exposure that I)r. 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 fihres per thimbleful of air really meant that, before they were required to wear respirators in August, some of these men were iuhalimt up to a billion of the longer fibres each work ing day, and many more of the shorter ones, which were not being counted In the engineers. Since asbestos-induced cancers gen erally take at least twenty years to de velop, and the Tyler plant had been in operation for only seventeen years, Dr. Johnson and his associates did not vet expect to find neoplasms among the six ty-three men Working there. However, in order to complement the X-rays and pulmonary-function tests, that had been performed in Auuiist hi Dr. Hurst, they examined the eiliploiees for rales--crackling s minis inThe chest which can occur with ashesinsis--and for finger dubbing, a thickening of! tissue at the fingertip- which nfteiij occurs with a-he-iosi-. After comp.iiing notes with Di. Hurst, tint detv r-j mini vl - even without tile benefit of tin-I X-rais, uliivli tin! well- not a||..u, J in- -it' that seven of tile ei^lileen uotkti.-| with more than ten tear- of iinplos-' imnt at the factor; met at Iv.i-: tluer ol-fouj .yiileii.i foi a-histo-i- | Tin - i i ircfnikincliitled, besides rale- .lifS-'tm- "i i clubbing, d;.-|>u-.-a. uliivli i- -iioit- ite-- of breath, anil maiked u 111v timi I-, III inability to take sufficient air into the lungs because of pulmonary fibrosis.) Reduced pulmonary function was also observed in some workers who had been employed at the plant for less than five years. Because of these findings. Dr. Johnson and his associates con cluded that the health of the sixty-three employees at the Tvler plant had been gravely jeopardized, but they wished to Itavc the X-rays reviewed bv an expert jmiiel of radiologists before making a definitive diagnosis of nsbestosis on an individual basis. As things turned out, however, they were 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 the men who had worked at the Pater son factory between 1941 and 1945, tin's was disturbing news, to say the least. It also provided a chilling corol lary to Dr. Johnson's first conversation with Dr. Grant, hack in July, when Dr. Grant had suggested that there wasn't much of a health problem 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 extremely serious occupational-health situation existed at the Tyler plant, was sent, on November 16th, to Dr. James E. Penyv, the commissioner of the Texas State Department of Health, and copies went to a number of other officials, in cluding Dr. Key, Dr. Grant, Van Home, and John K. Barto, the region al administrator for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, in Dallas. Barto received the report on Nnvemher I Slit, and acted quickly on it, for he was aware that industrial In gieiiists from the Department of Labor's Dallas office had insjx-cted the Tiler plant nearly three years before, and, even thoutrh ihev had found an inadequate ii milation -i-tem and faulty 1 I'v-j'iraton protection, bad not taken am effective action in reined; tile -iiu.i- lion, or even n-inspci ted the f.n'ioi v to re whither l,iit-l>in't;h Cornin:: had ol'lVi'trd ilu- dt feet-. On N. . mb, i '.5rd, Bar i M'lU ll S a--M.mi, V. l;tiv IKV L Holder. :i n 11 lolin 4 . Il-.vl. .Ml m- U-lll.'l] In nilMJM , 'tO v'l Ildiivi .iii- t ill. r in-j\ i tii in . f the IM. : pi .111. .V lighl be e * |H ib-iunn.iii d i jot--kin U , I In 1: lindinc' 'll) ph | *nf j|i, -tilJU ; n- 'd- I).,.:..: `K b'liiv r am Uy K infoi mrd \ ,.n II- m. i ml v i..latioiis of in i'iiJ'i.i-:'-ii.<1 --.\ r`r aiiil-J'v allli I i:l:i11.-ii- (iain*l in l.!,v _ |>!:int included tint only impro|iei- yyvariitjr of respirators but failure t<> t \amijii'.v.urkvi'-. to determine whether they I p had tin- physical capacity fur wiarfii" \ iv-.piraiiu-s inadequate housekeeping, .mil insufficient dust cmitrul. They a'mi mill till- plant manager tliat citationwould U' issued ami pcnabics imf*>sed, ami tliat tin- violations would require immediate corrective action---except extensive improvements in ventilati:>n anti tlust equipment, fur which a later datc-wouhl be set. Holder anti Boyle then rcturnetl to Dallas, where in the next two weeks, as they awaited analy sis of air samples they had taken, the) wrote up a length) report of their in spection, which was sent to Holman, the corporation's vice-president in charge of manufacturing anti 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 fur asbestos, but since the inspectors for the Occupational Safety anti Health Ad ministration had surveyed the factory under the twelve-fibre standard pub-- ished in the Frtlrrnl /?/ />'/; of Mar 29th, the)- decided it venuld be unjust to apply the new regulation f\ fust /ncto to the situation at Tyler. As things turned out, their sense of fair play made little difference, for the ob solete tyeelve-fihre standard vs as ex ceeded--in some instances, ten times over--in fortr-cvrn of the foriv-fmir air samples they had taken at the plant. Even so, the Occupational Safety and Health people failed to cite J'ittsbur"h Corning for violating any filuv stand ard, or even to list, in the citation for insufficient tlust control, the specific dust levels they hail found. Mnryoyer, al though tluir ('.muflia/t.-.- ()fila/i'iif Manual clearly compelled them to fol low Section 17 (k) of the Occupation al Safety and Health Act, which states that "a serious violation shall lie deemed to exist in a place of employ ment if there is a Substantial probability that death or serious phy~ical barm could result front a condition yvliiy It ex ists . . . tilde-- the employ, i did not, and could mu with the exetvi-e o( reason able diligence, knott of tin pi.-.tux of the violation," tin- io-p. ctoi- li-t. d the iiiliiioiiv (luy had di-cniii,d at du ll I* i plant not tinder the In ailioy of .V'iniii- Violationbin mid. i tie- caduiti of "Noo-i I urn' l ( )i!uu J \ alion-." ytliiyli, aceoidiiio t> tin it manual, applied to situation-, ``rain r< an iiilent or oycupational illness ft'till 11 * nil ti.ilatnui of a -.tandatd uniutlTr ilubly not i;ni.e death or serious pay MC.ll Imiih." )i tin- ti-'i.inoo- h.ul Ik-vh considered serious the Adminis tration could have assessed Pittsburgh Corning ns much as a thousand dollars for each one. For nonscrious violations, the Oceiqtationnl Safety and Health Administration could have assessed a penalty of anyrvhere fntm a tltuusand dollars each to n<> |yenalty at all, de pending upon the inspector's jutlgttlcnt of "the severity f the injury or disease most likely to result." Given tliis latiniyle, the Administration people under took to grant Pittsburgh Corning the benefit of every douht. For three viola tions--improper wearing of respirators, failure to 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 tlust control, they proposed a fine of a hundred ami thirty-five dol lars. The'total came to two hundredanti ten dollars. --Pai?l Bkooeur ( This is the first of * series of ssrtielrs.) t-e. io.