Document VG1xm8ELr5np77baZyLezbzRq

FILE NAME Newspaper & Magazine Articles NMA DATE 1972 May 21 DOC NMA062 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION NYT - Manville Breathes Easier Asbestos Dust Fear Eased Manville Breathes Easier Asbestos Dust Fear Eased By LOIS MAPLESSpecial to The New York Times New York Times Current file May 21 1972 ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times 1851 - 2002 Pg 92 Manville Breathes Easier Asbestos Dust Fear Eased By LOIS MAPLES Special to The New York Times MANVI Jersey RL esiL denE ts of this Central Jersey Industrial town of 13,000 are breathing easier these days the air along Main Street is more contaminated by car fumes than by asbestos dust Asbestos dust became a prime health threat several years ago when local doctors linked it with lung cancer and the rare mesothelioma cancer of the chest or intestinal cavities remains Yet asbestos remains a way of life to most residents It is a livelihood to 1,800 workers in the Johns ville plant around which the town is built It is here that the company makes asbestos shingles pipe and other asbestos products But asbestos is also a threat Statistics revealed recent- ly in Department of Labor hearings in Washington raised the quiet threat to serious alarm Joseph Patero Mayor of Manville felt called upon to answer the alarm Mr. Patero is a foreman in the M plant as well as parttime Mayor just Can we die by just breathing the air in our town his constituents asked him Police Monitor Air The Mayor determined to set up a system of monitoring units throughout town preferably with the aid of the state in order to ascertain the amount of asbestos dust in the air A quick trip to Trenton found state authorities un- willing to cooperate as an impartial third party on the basis that no minimum standards for asbestos particles in environmental air have ever been determined Mayor Patero appealed to T. J. Klein Associates Michael Kassick a patrolman in Manville with the device used to monitor the pollution in the air M which lent him two large monitoring units and several small personnel units to be worn by policemen as they walked their beats and di- rected traffic on Main Street When filters from the units were analyzed by a borough health officer carbon monox- ide fumes from Main Street traffic and the town's Rustic Mall Shopping Center were so dense it was impossible to find the asbestos particles Subsequent monitoring of the air continued to show that exhaust from cars posed more of a health threat to Main Street shoppers than stray particles of asbestos Dr. Maxwell Borow of nearby Bound Brook a leader in the research of asbestosrelated cancers agrees that it is no more dangerous to shop on Manville's Main Street than on the streets of any other choked town He has discovered only three cases of asbestos lated cancer among people who were never plant work- ers One was a woman who inhaled asbestos dust as she shook it from her husband's work clothes before launder- ing Another was a woman who played as a child on the M dump where asbes- tos refuse was discarded Dr. Borow has been unable to trace the third case history Waste Is Covered Now asbestos waste is being covered immediately with earth to prevent the wind from whipping fibers through the air The level of asbestos dust within the plant is another story however Both union officials and Dr. Borow are fighting to lower the allowable level of asbestos fiber in the plant from five fibers per cubic centimeter of air to two fibers and eventually to zero fibers Also working to this end is Dr. Irving Selikoff director of the Environmental Science Laboratory at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City Proposed new standards set by the Occupational Safe- ty and Health Administra- tion of the United States Department of Labor would lower the level of asbestos dust to two fibers effective June 7 M officials have protested that such a level is both technically and economically nonfcasible and that to force them into such a standard along with proposed new warning labels on solid asbestos products would serve only to force the company out of the asbestos business J. M. Ruff the local plant manager estimates that this would mean the loss of about 800 jobs and a million payroll to Manville timers admit there is no doubt but that plant dust standards have vastly improved through the years Some can remember the as- bestos clouds so heavy as to make visibility across the room impossible Those days are gone thanks to constant pressure from workmen and cooperation of the company However the effects of those days are only just now being harvested since the incubation period for the cancers appears to be about 20 to 30 years Dr. Borow presented statistics showing that 50 per cent of all asbestos workers would die of can- cer of some form Two out of 10 will die of lung cancer one out of 10 will die of mesothelioma one out of 10 will die of gastrointestinal cancer and one out of 10 will die from some other form of cancer he said Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner Further reproduction prohibited without permission