Document DDdexzjd7ZDvY7aY0DqxgJZBa

C-C.; T^L-.C-rAU^ _\ * O.M FAv/^^iro i (L.a J<^uto*4-Asbpstos, long known as .<--a life saver, is now recognized as the leading industrial cause of cancer. ew /' 1s V O Pttr'j l 0 JT. ^ . C C- A'footff? t?c*sn "DlCwC /4oc< As company towns go, Manville, New Jersey (population: 15,000), has much to be thankful for. Besides deriving its livelihood from the 2,225 jobs pro vided by the Johns-Manviile Company --the nation's largest manufacturer of asbestos products--the town enjoys a number of fringe benefits. In the late 1950s Johns-Manviile donated $100,000 for a high school building. Over the past three years it has given another $100,000 to Somerset Hospital in nearby Somerville. The company has also picked up the hill for a large part of Manvillc's $125,000 worth of ambulance and rescue vehicles, and it has donated some $250,000 worth of pipe for the town's new sewage system. Town gar bage is dumped at the company's refuse site, a service worth another $100,000 a year. On a smaller scale the company is an easy touch for everything from building materials for the new Veterans Bruce Porter, who specializes in writing about environmental subjects, teaches journalism at Brooklyn College. For merly he teas Newsweek s urban affairs etlilor. BY BRUCE PORTER of Foreign Wars hall to the $10,000 needed for beer and hot dogs at the annual volunteer firemen's picnic. But now, it turns out, Manville citi zens have been paying a high price for such largess. The incidence of lung cancer among Johns-Manviile employees is four times the national norm. Meso thelioma--a form of chest or abdominal cancer that accounts for only one out of every 10,000 deaths in the general population--has in the last eight years claimed the lives of at least fifty-eight Manville residents, most of them work ers in the Johns-Manviile plant. Asltestosis, or "white lung"--a severe scarring of the lungs caused by inhaling as bestos fibers over the course of many years--is another disease that plagues the company town. Beginning as a mere shortness of breath, asbestosis develops into a near paralysis that makes breath ing and bodily movement increasingly difficult. In the end tfie victim's lungs function so marginally that, if the in dividual docs not suffer death from respiratory illnesses such as pneumonia, he will eventually suffocate. One Manville resident who is only too welfacquainted with asbestosis is Ceorge Smith--"Smitty" to his friends --who moved to New Jersey twenty years ago from a Pennsylvania steel town. He was thirty-nine years old at the time, and he was active and healthy. "I was always off hunting or fishing," Smitty told me. "1 couldn't stand not to be doing something, you know." A year ago last fall, after seventeen years of making asbestos-lined sewer pipe in the Johns-Manviile factory, Smitty came down with asbestosis. "I didn't know what the hell it was," he recalled. "It was just a little shortness of breath, vou know, and l`d always been as healthy as a horse all my life. The last doctor I'd seen was when 1 was born. At first I thought it was just something that would pass, but then it started getting worse and worse, until one day I came to work and I could barely move. I -didn't think I'd make it through the day." Smitty is now virtually immobile. Unable to work, he sits all day in the kitchen of the J & J Delicatessen across George Smith, a victim of asbestosis: "God help the man who ties up with anything like this" the street from the plant. At night Smittv hobbles back to his room above Marx's Tavern--a one-block journey that takes him nearly twenty minutes Itccausc lie must stop In catch Ins lirratli every three steps. Ilis Itody is thin ami frail, ami when he talks the words rattle nut of his mouth in a series of laiarse lielehes. "liven if my friends would take inc, 1 don't think I could fish anymore, liecause if I got a bite I couldn't do anything about it," Smitlv said. "I'm finished. I can't work. 1 can't do anything. God help the man who ties up with anything like this." While the effects of nsnoslos-reJaled diseases are, in themselves, fearful, the piospeet of the loll they may lake In Mam (lie in the near inline is even move so. In the nest few ycnis, physicians who bate studied the prolileiu predict, the iiumlier of deaths resulting from as- liestos-rclalcd diseases can lie expected to reach ncar-cpidcmic proportions. This is so because the gestation period for asbestosis and mesothelioma ranges between twenty and forty years. Hence, workers who joined the plant in the late 1930s ancl 1640s are just now be ginning to suffer the consequences. A study of 689 Johns-Manville employees that was released last May showed that out of seventy men and women wlm had worked at least twenty years in the plant's formerly wry dusty tex tile division, some twenty-four of them, nr 3-1 per cent, had died. This death rale is nearly triple that of a similar group in the general population. "The next five or ten years are going to be rough in Manville, I was told by Dr. Irving J. Sclikoff, director of the Environmental Sciences Laboratory at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and the scientist who conducted the study, "Itccausc u kit of people are going to he dying, and mi fur no one knows what to do ilium! It," l>r. Solikiill adds: "What Is tragic is lluil this Is u inaii-ioadc disease. It is lint ii visitation from heaven. It was preventable. The se rious situation that now exists is a rec ord of failure on the part of us all-- scientists, industry, and governmental authority. And industry is correct, in my opinion, in pointing out that what we're seeing now is a result of our mistakes in the past. Having said this, I would urge the most intense efforts to enst that we do not continue to make th< mistakes. Too many men and won have died of our blunders already.' Perhaps no other mineral is so wov into the fabric of Amrricau life as axliestos. Impervious to heat and lihrc --it is the onlv mineral that eau woven into clot It--aslteslns is spun ii fireproof clothing and theater enrtai as well ns into such household item: noncombustible drapes, mgs, pot In ers, and ironing-board covers. Mi into slurry, asbestos is sprayed c girders and walls to provide new bu iugs with (irepriMif iiisnl.itiitit. It is u III floor tiles, tooling fells, mid ill n pliislcilioanls iiihI w.illliojids. Aslic Is also no lngicitifiil ol pl.islcr and s co mid of many paints and ptillii-s. ' "mineral of a I lions.mil uses"--an ol Iclc nickname: the present omul sta at around 3,000 uses--is prohablv p ent in some form or other in every hr school, office building, and factor -the country. Used in btake linings clutch facings, in mufflers and gasl in sealants and caulking, and extern Open spraying of asbestos on construction sites has only recently been banned in some Eastern cities. 1y used in jiliipx, jisIn*sIos is also a com ponent of every miHlcrn vehicle, includ ing space ships. Ah estimated five million people-- men and women employed in asbestos plants, insulation workers, constnietiou workers, steamfitters, carpenters, tile setters, and the like*--daily breathe in significant amounts of asltcslns fillers. Doting World War II some 1.5 million Amerieam winked in the shipbuilding (ndnsliv anil wete thus mvitpnlinniilly e\|MiMtl |o asliesliK filters. An estimated 5.25 million of these |teoplc an* still alive. Medical scientists fear that the Seventies will bring the first big wave of asliestos-induced cancers among this segment of the population. In a study published last March in the Journal of the National Cancer In stitute, Dr. Merle F. Stanton, a scien tist at the National Institutes of Health, ranked asbestos second only to rigaretle smoke among the known causes of cancer. Dr. Stanton's study points up the fact that asbestos fibers {rose a threat to the health of the gen eral public. It is a threat that most pities and towns and federal agencies, like mosl asliestos-pmdnets manufactur ers, have lieen slow to recognize and slow to respond to. For years tin* sight of flurries of iisIm*sIok fillers floating down from construction sites was comnmnplacc in American cities and towns. It was not until February of last year that New York City banned, outright, the use of aslteslos in sprays used to fire- Iiroof buildings. And New York wits a cader in this field. (Last Dcccmlicr the I'aivironinental Protection Agency--fol lowing the example set by New York, llosloii, Philadelphia, noil the state of Illinois--look the first legal steps In ward baiming ioiisI met inn site spray ing and "the visible emission of asbestos particulate natter'' during repair and demolition of buildings throughout the nation.) How many New Yorkers were lueathing the .slull in? Two years ago' Dr. Sclikoff and his associates at Mount Sinai studied lung tissues from 3,000 consecutive autopsies performed at three different New York hospitals; they found traces of asbestos in 48.3 per pent of them. The air in New York may not be typical of that in other cities, but the statistics stand as a warning. The fibers to which the general pub lic may be exposed do not come only in visible blizzards or invisible swirls in big pities. Each time a car mechanic airhoses out a brake liousing, he spreads asbestos filters through his garage. Each time a do-it-yourself or professional carpenter saws up wallboard or plasterltoard containing asbestos, he releases filters into the air. So ubiquitous is asbestos that one tends to forget it is there at all. Last fall the New York City Department of Air Hcsonrees tested several brands of pow dery papier-mache mix widely used in elementary schixd, and found that some samples contained 50 per cent or more asbestos. The United Stales is the world's fore most consumer of asbestos. In the span of years from 1005 to 1900 American manufacturers purchased almost onethird of the world's output of asIwstns--an average of 800,000 tons per year. Jnhus-Mauville is the giant of America's huoming, $ I-billion asbestos manufacturing business. According In Matt .Swetouic, secretary of the Asbes tos Information Association, an industryfunded data distribution center with heafli|uarlers in New York C.'ily, JohnsMnnvillc inaunlaeluies between 35 and 40 per eetil of the nation's asbestos fiber. In 197 J the $700-million corpora tion netted 842.7 million; last year it netted 855 million. Of the country's 400 aslicstns-pmducts plants, which em ploy a total of 31,000 men and women, Johns-Manville owns fifty-five, the largest of its plants being the one in Mnnvillc, New Jersey. (In 1912 Henry W. Johns, Jr. and Thomas F. Manville established their first asliestos-products plant in what was then called the town ship of llillslxirough. Soon the plant was receiving so much freight addressed to Johns-Manville that railroad men nick named the place Mnnvillc. In 1929 this name was formally adopted by the com.pany town.) Located some forty miles southwest of Now York, Manville is a plain, pre dominantly I'lilixli-American town huili mil mi cillicr side of n king mail street punctuated bv ll single linllh light. Most of tlic huuM-s llinl line I hi side streets are jnist-World War II biin gnlows nod Cape Codders, each will its small front lawn and backyard. Tin tall factoiy stack and the sprawliii) complex of dingy old and spanking nev buildings of the Johns-Manville plan dominate the scene. I went to Manville, not because tlv asliestos plant there was Johns-Man snlle's biggest and longest established but because the town's working popnla tion had been studied more closely tha> that of any other asbestos compan; town. I went also because 1 had rcaabout the conditions that bad Ion; prevailed at the Manville plant, ant which had been shown to l>c the cans of the local plague, and Ix'cause I h.i heard of new jvilicies that proniisti great, ifjalc, improvement in those ism dilions.' I saw Manville, New Jersey a a laboratory in which to study the pile nomenon of a group of biisinessmn and industrial workers trying to cnpi with (ho painful discovery that llici loug-chrrished means of livelihood Ins . lethal side to it. It is a phenomenon that 1 suspect, has occurred, anil will repeat silly* occur, in the course of this cenlor ill which industrial progress alnai seems lo outstrip man's knowledge the full liuioan conseipieoees n( sue progress. For. once oil thr move, ii ditslry is usually too preoccupied I pause, look hack, mid help out. F.vidcticc that asbestos libers cam long damage was on hand rs-cit iiefoi Johns and Manville started op ope at ions in New Jersev. Ihit. as Paul lln dcur observed in "The Magic Mineral an article published in The Sew Yorh in 1968, "coyness on the part of iticlti In', timidity on the part of labor, an obtuseness on the part of the medic profession often combined to make ear investigations into the health of asbesti 23 An electron microscope reveals asbestos fibrils found in the air of an asbestos worker's home. ttmlits meaningless." Then. in 1028 mill 1020. (lie chief incdiriil inspfvlor ill tin* llillish llinne Olliiv's fiirtni v de partment esiiitifneil iislestns.|<\\|llii wiiilm mill IiiiiiiiI that mure Ilian 25 per cent iii them showed evidence id suffering frinn uslrcstosis. In 1931, on flip basis of tlie inspector's findings, Par- liaincnl made the disease compensable and. among other measures, instituted periodical checkups for workers engaged in particularly luizardous processes in the industry. Next, in 1955, Dr. Rich ard S. Doll, director of the Statistical Research Unit of the liritish Medical Research Council, completed a study of 113 consecutive autopsies of men who had been occupationally exposed to asbestos for more than twenty years. Doll's study showed that the extent to which they'had risked lung cancer over the wliole period was eleven times ns great as that of men in the general pop ulation of England and Wales. Brodeur observes in his pioneering article on this subject: "From then on, many doc tors were convinced that a causal re lationship lietween asbestos exposure and lung cancer had been demonstrat ed, although almost no part of the vast nsliestos industry either acknowledged tlie relationship or found it advisable to aid tlie independent researchers w1k> were investigating it." The health hazard posed by asbestos came 1ionic to Manville in 1963, when Dr. Maxwell Borow, a local physician, found that seventeen townsmen had died of mesothelioma within the span of three years. Four years later Borow asked Johns-Manville for $3,000 to finance a display to educate both work ers and the medical profession at large on asbestos-related diseases; his re quest was turned down. Borow sub sequently approached the workers' iMbon. Local 800 of the United Paper- makers and Papcrworkerx; the union organized the collection of the needed monev. Why had Johns-Manville declined to help out? "It. was our opinion." Jack Soli iii, the corporation's vice-president in cli.ugi- uf euvirniiiiiciilal alfairs, cx- pl.iini-il In ini', "llial in 1007 iIiitc was a iiii-iI tu Ii'iiiii iuuii* a I mu I uu'xnl Ill'll- niini Im'Ihii' ii iclalluiislilp with iislii'.slu.s mild hr iifllmicil nr ilrnlril." Besides. Solon added, since 1030 the company hud already spent some $2 to $3 million N .* 54/ ` vV * f ' i --*,* -KM * " \ r\\^f. tl: * f .__________ on new dust-control equipment and, as a result, considered the Manville plant a safe place to work in. Men and women who worked at the plant in the Fifties and Sixties, however,, failed to notice that tlie new equipment made any ap preciable difference. "There were times when the air was so thick with aslicstos dust in some places that you couldn't even see," I was told hy a textile divi sion worker who has been with tlie com pany for thirty-two years. "Sometimes it was even impossible to breathe with a respirator because the filters would get so clogged with asbestos." (Respirators are generally unpopular among asbestos workers. The wearer sweats and his eyes smart. For workers who have car diac or pulmonary problems, breathing through an ordinary respirator adds to the strain on their lungs and heart. Air-cooled respirators that supply air to the wearer arc bulky and costly.) Even outside the factors' the air was frequently foil of the potentially deadly fibers, hi tlie Lost Valley section of town--an area downwind from the fac tory--the fiber fallout would get so thick that homeowners had to hose the stuff off their houses. Directly in front of the plant conditions were even worse. "When I'd direct traffic there," Sgt. George Kalman of the Manville police recalled, "there were days when it was like we were having mhiw (lurries ill July. I'd lake oil my Iml, and ll would he mveieil xvllli this while ilusl." Meanwhile, cxmninatTmis by com- pnnv doclnrx were carried mil only oner every two years--a schedule that wax iiMTcnscd to mice a year in 1972. .Such infrequent elieckiip* may have Ihto suffieienl In nionilor ii slmvly developing case of iisIm-sIiim's. bill llicy wrrr l**w useful as a (nraiis of eite|iiiig n victim of a xwilliv developing tamer, partic ularly mesothelioma, a disease that nor mally proves fatal six mouths to a year after the cancer shows up in X-ray pic tures. (To jump from past decades to an illustration from the went past: in December 1971 Daunv Maciborski, a forty-nine-year old ex-marine who had worked for Jolins-Manvillc for thir- Sf years, checked in at the company ispensnry for his biennial physical anil was given a clean bill of health. A few weeks later, however, he felt a strange sensation in his abdomen---as if his stomach were "getting bigger," ns he put it---and went to see a private phy sician, wlm in tum sent him tn Dr. Borow. Borow's tests showed that Ma ciborski had a malignant tumor of the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity--in other words, mesothelioma. "I knew what it was because everybody at the plant knows about nsliestnsis and mesothelioma now," Maciborski told n reporter for the S'rw York Post. "I wasn't surprised nr shocked alKiut it .... -I just asked IDr. Borow), *l!mv long have I got?'" Macilxirski died last Septemlier. He lasted as long as he did liecause he was willing to go to tlie doctor every two weeks to have up to eight quarts of fluid pumped out of his abdomen. Johns-Manville paid Macilrorxki's medi cal expenses, and, as provided by New Jersey state compensation laws, it is paying bis widow $76 a week--a sum that will drop to $72 this June, when her eldest son will turn eighteen.) Why, throughout tlie Fifties and Six ties, did men and women continue to work in the plant if conditions were so hazardous? Tlie answer would seem to have as much to do with psychnlngv as xvitli economics. "It's funny." says Ches ter Hac/.knwski, a forty-one-year-old machinist and union shop steward at the plant, "but the only people who seem seared of this stuff eninc from out side the comminuty." To llac/kiiwski, who 1ms winked ui the |>l.ml since lie was elglilcrn, Ills juli Is ii wiiv nl Iffi* lliiiLhe Is mil iiImhiI Iii glse op jnsl lieeiiusr of ii fesv "scare slmies" in (lie Iiress. "yon und 1 cim work ju u place 'or thirty-five years, mid maylie win get 29 An asbestos-induced mesothelioma may take up to forty years to develop. Here, an X-ray photograph of normal lungs. cancer or something and I dnh'l--wfms In say? Dr. Iloniw says lie's qn export nil this iiieMitlielinma nr whnltver it's called. How dn I know? Maylie l*ni fatalistic, lint I'm n ('allmlic, mid I lignie vnn die when it's lime In die." One thing ll.ic/.kowski dues knmv is that lu* svimid liml it diilicnlt In leave his jnli at the Jnlins-Manvillc plant. As a liist-clavs iiiaeliinist. lie earns $-1.21 an Ilnur, lias ii live-week vacation, and is <>iiI illel In a generous hospitalization ptugrain. "Wliere else could 1 get all these lienefils?" Ilavkmvski asks. Hav.kn\vski'sattitude--fatalism mixed with a sense of iicing pretty well olf where he is--is oim> soured liy the town's oflicliils. most of whom nsirk at tlie plant, tun. Mnnville's mayor is a liielMiy sii|vm'\or. A ma|nrily of the tnetnlierx of the local laiard of health, whose duties include seeing to it that the tosvn's air is fit to breathe, are also employed bv lohns-Manville. Last spring, when the town belatedly de cided to ascertain whether asbestos fibers were still sifting down on Manville. it seemed only natural that the board should ask the company to do the monitoring. The air w>as found clean. Indeed, by 1972 Johns-Manville had taken a series of steps to clean up its facton*. thereby improving the quality of the town's air. Much of the impetus for improvement came in the form of a 158-day strike in the winter of 196970. The main issues involved in the strike included such conventional items as overtime pay and job security, but it' wasn't until the union brought the issue of health into the talks that it found real clout. "It was then," I was told by Wilbur Ruff, former plant man ager at Manvjlle and now the factory's director of community and employee relations, "that they started getting a lot of sympathy in the press." Finally, the company agreed to admit union representatives to the plant's environ mental committee, thus allowing them to examine fiber counts made in the factory, and to let workers see their own company-kept health records. Two powerful nudges, felt bv the entire industry, came later in 1970 and in 1971. In December 1970 Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which established the Na tional Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (niosh), a body charged Meanwhile* mnmi put togrtlirr a x rial advisory group of medical revnr <*rs l<> look into the filmr-cutml prohli Until the liodgMin-ap|Miiiil-d Advix .<r' *t'.. > >J r v > \ (lommillce tin Axlmxtos Dust mid miish jimml ri'tuiiiiwudi'il lowering count to two fillers. Tim Arthur JJ. . tie panel, on the other hand, eoiielin that the five-lilier cuniil was safe . Iliat bringing (lie cihiiiI dmvu would prohibitively expensive for all iiu trialists concerned. Then, in June, ( days were xct aside for public lieari at the Lnlmr Department's offices Washington, D.C. Predictably, Dr, SeilkofT argued llu' lowest possible count. (So, Inn the last few inoollis ol his life, Danny Macilmrski. svlaise ap|M-ain * -- ii at the hearings one Johns-Manville with concluding environmental and ficial I talked to referred to as lun medical research necessary to develop been "in had taste.") Dr. Seliknff po safe industrial standards, and empow ed out that, ss-hile researchers ki ered the Labor Department's Occupa that a worker must be exposed to I; tional Safety and Health Administra doses of asbestos dust before he i tion (osiia ) to promulgate and enforce tracts asbestosis. they also know these standards. Shortly after the act considerably less exposure can ct became effective, in April 1971, Local mesothelioma. (As far back as the e S00 in Manville filed a complaint which brought inspectors in. Violations were found and citations issued. 1960s medical researchers in such flung parts of the world as Johan burg, London, and Pittsburgh, v Then, in November 1971, under the coming up with reports on large n provisions of the newly effective act, bers of mesothelioma victims who the industrial union department of the had no direct occupational exposur apl-cio requested then-Secretaiy of asbestos: wives of asbestos wor Labor James Hodgson to promulgate who had inhaled fibers when shaV emergency standards for asbestos dust out their husbands' work clotl and Tower the acceptable fiber count people who had simply lived wit from five so-called long fibers per cubic half a mile of an asbestos factor} centimeter of air to two. (A long fiber fourtecn-year-old boy whose only c is one greater than five microns in tact with the .fillers occurred when length.) The afl-cio request claimed helped his father saw and install pin? that five million American workers were board.) Lowering the filler count wi being exposed to increasingly dense reduce the incidence of asbestosis. t concentrations of airljome asbestos fi lint it would not necessarily solve bers and that the situation called for problem of asbestos-related cancers prompt action. Hodgson took his time. tins point, Sclikolf was aide to cite Early in 1972 he appointed an Advi dencc from bis just completed stud sory Committee on Asbestos Dust and the 6S9 Manville workers. It den hired Arthur D. Little, Inc., a consult strated that, under usual factory' ing firm with a libera] reputation, to dilions, as the incidence of asbes Erovide advice on tbe economic feasi- declines the incidence of cancer r ility of lowering the filler count. In his survey of workers in the fonr (Arthur D. Little, Inc., assembled a liigh-fibcr-count textile division, foi braintrust consisting of thirteen ex stance, SclikofT found that .19 per cci ecutives from tbe shipbuilding indus the workers' deaths resulted from ns try, twelve executives from the asbestos tosis, 24 ner cent from various typt industry, and eleven doctors, most of -cancer, whereas in nreas where the fi whom had previously served as con count was comparatively low (the sultants to the asbestos industry.) not as low as counts recently achi< 30 Once active, mesothelioma spreads swiftly. This X-ray photograph shows a lung covered with cancerous growth. at the Manville plant). Mich as Ilie com pany's research laIntrailin' nr its inainIcnancr sitop. cancer uccnnntcil for -H) per ivnt n( the workers* ilenlhs. msIh*xImis (nr approximately 5 jut cent. ("What was hHp|K*ning." 1 was told hv Or. William J. Nicholson, an associate of Si-liLiifPs at Mount Sinai, "was that, without iislicslosis. these |Hiip1e liveil longer, which gave I linn time In die lium i-iiiuvr. also emisiil hv iisltcstns.**) A mismi I {Hiiut niitile Iiv Seliknlf was that |Im< iiitiiti(<iiing Iri-liniqiies useil to uwvilatu I lie filter isiiint set l>y llie l)e- {Hirlmeul of IjiInii' reisml only lung II- hms, iiltluingli shorter fillers are equally <si|iahle of euiisiiig cniiivr. Moreover, In a collie-centimeter sample of air con taining the ailmissahle count of five ton}; filters lltcrc may lie Uni to 100 times as many short fillers. And it is these uncounted ones that remain in the air the longest. (In a recent con versation 1 asked Dr. Selikoff what these figures meant in terms of the immlicrs nf fillers an asliestos worker can lie asked to breathe in the course of an eight-hour work day. Each of us respires approximately one million cubic centimeters of air in an hour, he ex plained. Thus, in eight hours men and women assigned to sections of an asbes tos plant where the five-fiber count ob tains respire some forty million fibers. If the so-called short fibers are taken into account, the numlier of fibers respired daily rises to around four billion.) \\1nle Dr. SelikofT and other medical researchers stressed health factors at the Labdr Department hearing, asbestos in dustry spokesmen emphasized economic considerations. Henry U. Moreno, JohnsManvillc's senior operating vice-pres ident. asserted that tu achieve a two-fiher-enunt level in all nf its asliestos fac tories would cost nlxmt $12 million in capital expenditures, plus some $5 mil lion in additional operating expenses each year. This would mean, he said, that the company would simply have to close down the dustier operations in the Manvdle plant and fire 800 employees --all but killing off the economic life of the town. Nor, he argued, would the effects of a txvo-fihcr standard stop there. Other asbestos companies would be forced to Jay off workers; they svould have to begin buying asbestos materials from abroad. "It is obvious," said Mo reno, "that the overall effect of lowering the present [standard] to two fibers tier cc. would lias'e a very substantial effect .on our nation's economy." In July Hodgson--rebuffing both his Advisory Committee on Asliestos Dust and the kiosk panel--agreed to allow tlie exposure standard to remain at five fillers for four more years; only in 1970 would the standard be lowered to the safer-sounding count of two fibers. Jolms-Manville welcomed Hodgson's decision. "The new occupational health standard for asbestos issued today," declared a company notice to stock holders, which came out the same day ns the Labor Secretary's decision, "will hnve no tangible effect on sales and earnings of Johns-Manville Corpora tion." The release went on to say that between now and the department's 1976 deadline company officials would have to study the "economics and ox'ernll profitability" of the Manville opera- Asbestos Fiber Countdown The chart below shows percentages ol as bestos-liber-count samples obtained at work stations representative ol all those in lull operation al the time at Johns-Manville's Manville, New Jersey, plant during lour years for which such counts are available 19GS 1967 1971 1972 Less than 2 fibers 15.6 9.8 14.0 91.0 2-5 fibers 24.8 13.7 27.2 9.0 5-12 libers 51.3 25.5 43.9 More than 12 libers 6.3 51.0 14.9 (Figuttt pioviflrd by Sheldon Stmueit ol he.ith end eifonmcml .linn lo> ihe Afl-CIOi indusl'id union dcp.nmenl) linn Ix'forc deciding whether it would meet the reduced exposure standards or close down much of the plant. (Apropos of Johus-Maiiville's priorities, it might Ik* noted that, while the company ex pressed qualms alioiif spending more money in make its factories safer places In work in. it recently spent $25.9 millinn In transfer its eur|Mirate headquar ters from New York City In n pristine Milling twelve miles outside Denver.) Dr. Selikoil look n different view nf Ihwlgson's four-more-yenrs division. Ivslimiiting that snmr 1011.000 men mill women will enter iislieslos.ielateri In dustrie* In-lore the filter iihiiiI is low ered in 197(1. he predicted that 20.000 nf llieiii might Ik* expected In die of lung cancer. 7,01)0 of riM*solheliuma, and an other 7,000 of other cancers and asliestusis--a high rate of death from these diseases that could, and should, have been lowered. 1972 proved to be a paradoxical year in Johns-Manville history. In'Washing ton, as we ha\*e seen, one company spokesman after the other had pre dicted dire financial results not just for the industry hut for the entire econ omy if the fiber count xvere lowered Back in Manville, hosvewr. company engineers were bringing the count way down without causing a dip in the dividends. At the hearings Sheldon Samuels director-of health and environmental af fairs for the afl-cio's industrial unioi department, had told spokesmen for the industry this could be done; the spokes men had insisted it couldn't. Fiber-count statistics provided by Samuels [see box] are revealing in a number of ways. Not only do they make dramatically clear how vastly the situation at Manvilli improved in 1972; they also indicat' that controls were slack well into tin supposedly safe Sixties. With 91 per cent of the plant nov operating xvithin the standard set fo 1976, tilings are looking up at Manville Even such critical observers as Di llorow and Dr. Selikoff say that the; are impressed by the changes made Still, these tardy improvements arc sma' comfort lo people like Smitty. win "can't do anything." Nor shall the benefit those Manville citizens who i the next few years will suffer from hav ing worked at or lived near the plan virien conditions were far more hazard ous than they are today. 3