Document MJbLQrDXYM4D155zJ6wdeyJO9

October 1, 1959 Mr. J. R. Sabina E. I. Du Pont De Nemours & Company Incorporated Organic Chemicals Department Petroleum Chemicals Division WiImington 98, Delaware Dear Mr. Sabina: Having just received your letter of September 28, I am stopping in the middle of a pressing job to take notice of your decision to discontinue your agreement to support our work on the inhalation of lead at the end of this year. My reason for doing this lies in the fact that the information which we are obtaining seems to me to be of the greatest significance to the tetraethyl lead industry, and I would like for many reasons to have co-operative interest in and support of this work. Let me say at the outset that I can recognize certain reasons why the enthusiasm of j'our group for this work may not be great at this time. Among such reasons, I dare say, is our failure (my own, largely) to supply you with reports which would enable you to recognize the precise nature of the problem under investigation and the progress made in solving it. There are other aspects of the matter which might well promote a degree of dissatisfaction. On the other hand, I can say that, while the communications between yourselves and the laboratory have been poorly maintained at this end, the work has progressed, and when we have been put to the necessity of meeting situations and coming up with answers, we have not been found lacking. As it happens I recently completed a manuscript for publication in the Proceedings of an International Symposium held in Prague last April. ^ Knowing some of the issues that were involved in this Symposium, and believing that our findings in this field would influence judgments in a matter in which I had been involved for many years, I went to the meeting (at my own expense) and this article will appear in the Proceedings. I was urgently invited to come and to present this subject by one of my foreign colleagues (the President of the Symposium) who had visited the Laboratory and had seen and learned in some detail about this work. For the same reason I am appearing before the Advisory Committee to the California State Health Department in connection with the standard to be set for lead in the air by the California legislature in its next session. The results of our inhalation experiments to date are the most revealing facts that are available, >and it is here that their significance comes into play. What we have been'attempting to do is to provide information toward the inevitable adoption of a permissible limit of lead Mir. J R. Sabina 2 October 1, 1959 concentration in urban atmosphere. We have moved along in this direction in a pedestrian manner, but the facts derived from the experimental data are unassailable. The most Important aspect of this problem as it relates .to TEL and the exhausts of automobiles, is the accumulation of data that will enable us to extrapolate from 7^ hours per day on 5 days of the week to 24 hours per day on all seven days. We are now designing experiments that will fulfill this requirement, .and I hope within a year or eighteen months to have accomplished a good part of this. The work, I believe, will not lack for support, but both my Judgment and my feelings indicate that the main support should come from the TEL industry. I should not be able to bring myself to make these comments if I had given you and your associates the opportunity to appraise the progress and the pertinency of our work in this direction. Since 1 have, in some sense (by reason of my preoccupation with doing rather than reporting) neglected to communicate with you at the proper time (and in the proper manner), I am doing so belatedly in the hope that it may not be too late, and in the belief that my personal feelings with respect to the admission of my shortcomings, should not hinder me from expressing my considered judgment in this matter. I should be doing you a disservice, I think, were I to remain silent on a point of personal and professional pride. I am sending you herewith and now, (as I was about to do for another reason,)a copy of the manuscript to which I referred above. This is the first article in which any of the data of these experiments have been made public. I have .reported verbally at three different meetings on the methods and certain of the general results. This article which describes two of the experiments partially will give you a good idea of the volume and character of the results. These experiments deal with one aspect of the problem, chiefly.. The other experiments bring in other factors, but show especially well the role of the size of the particles upon the handling of the contaminated atmosphere in the respiratory tract. I am not urging you in this communication to reconsider your action and to continue in your support of this work. Rather, I am giving you the opportunity to exercise judgment concerning the quality and applicability of the work to the practical problem at issue here, as I have failed to do previously. If after having had this opportunity (which can be pursued further If you wish) you and your associates continue in your present view of the matter, I shall leave the matter there. With respect to the program of investigation which may be worked out by" or with the Public Health Service, I have no present knowledge of the intentions or views of the Surgeon General or his staff. X would hazard a guess, however, that the general approach will not depart far from that of the past, and that, in the long rim, it will be up to the industry to support and to carry out the bulk of the work. Moreover, whatever any 0003288 Mr. J. R. Sabina -3- October 1, 1959 one else may do, the industry should, I think, have information that will enable it to arrive at its own judgments and arrive at its own conclusions. Sincerely yours, R. A. Kehoe, M. D. P.S. I take this opportunity of saying that the report of the investigation in California is being assembled as rapidly as we can do it, so that the next move in this matter can be made with reasonable promptness. R. A. K. RAK:ss Enclosure k ' f 0003289