Document XznK4j3ZXbojw0V14Rx4M8Xqd

June 20, 1974 %> Oo <:> o Mr. Lawrence E. Blanchard, Jr. Executive Vice President Ethyl Corporation 330 South Fourth Street Richmond, Virginia 23217 Dear Larry: You may well be surprised to have a letter from me in acknowledgment of your letter of April 15. As you can well believe, my letter writing, as well as certain of my other activities, is a bit erratic. However, I've been working on various things in my office, where there is such an accumulation of papers of a variety of kinds, and a surprise of one type or another to me, many of which that I find myself doing things in an entirely disorganized manner. I came across your letter of April 15 today, and since I have no recollection of having done anything about it earlier, it occurs to me that I might reply, especially so since I've just read most of the Brief in the EPA case. As a matter of fact, I read very slowly, and I 've spent most of this day on the Brief, finding it very interesting. I am not unduly surprised by the actions of E.P.A. or by the reactions of Ethyl Corporation people, including the attorneys who prepared the brief. It is a strange situation which I wish I could do something about. Now, with Kuckelshaus out of it, I wonder what will be done. I'm sure this is unpredictable, but I am sure also that the staff of EPA will be fairly inept, so far as the interpretation of experimental data is concerned. There is an aspect of the present situation with respect to the Medical Director, about which I should, perhaps, say something. Mitchell Zavon is well known to me, and in my opinion, he is a competent man. He is also one who reacts fairly strongly, and for that reason, he and his motives are suspected by some people, . including the Dean (now resigned) of the U.C. Medical College, who, I believe, succeeded in convincing Dr. Suskind that Zavon could not entirely be trusted. In consequence, Zavon who is quite active in a number of matters is no longer a member of the Staff of the Kettering Laboratory. You should know this, I believe, and so I tell you. I believe Dr. Suskind (now the Director of the Kettering Laboratory) has been misled in this matter, but whether this is true or not, it creates certain difficulties for me. I shall continue to deal with Zavon as one doctor with another trusted doctor, and I do not believe this will be unduly difficult. Much depends on how Zavon reacts, and there is no present indication of difficulty. I shall keep you informed. What I wish to do is to give every assistance to Zavon, and if he trusts me as well as I do him, all will be well, I believe. However, if Zavon has any serious fault, it is that he takes for granted a bit too many things. I shall do all I can to assist him, and if we (he and I) get along well, we cai* I believe, accomplish much. Let me make clear what I mean. N7519 Mr. Lawrence E. Blanchard, Jr Page 2 June 20, 1974 One of the members of the junior staff of this Laboratory, Stanley Gross by name, is planning with me, to help work up my data of the past 10 years, during which, I, as the Director of the Laboratory, had much too much to do in developing various facets of the work of the Laboratory and its staff to keep abreast of my own (personal) work and its responsibilities. There are many results of my experimental work on lead, which have not been studied with sufficient care to be published, and this will have to be done. Gross, who is a good man, in my judgment, can do this with me at his side, and this is what I expect to devote several years to doing. Most of this work has practical applications to problems being considered at present. Moreover, the publication of this work can be expected to establish us as the best informed persons in the field of industrial activity in relation to lead products. I shall require some financial support for Gross, who is not yet a Doctor of Medicine, and from time to time, I shall bring this matter to your attention, after discussing our affairs with Doctor Zavon. Incidentally, I shall expect to bring him back ultimately into the Staff of the Kettering Laboratory, but I shall not develop this matter with Dr. Suskind, at once. Suskind is my very good friend, and I do not wish to p-it this up to him until a suitable occasion arises, for I am in no sense anxious to exert my personal influence upon him to this end. He is a thoroughly honest person, and it is not up to me to play the "heavy" role, in this case. I hope you will agree with me in this matter, and leave Zavon and myself to act appropriately. These "inside the house," situations must be, I think, handled with appropriately careful technique. Please let me know, frankly, what you tend to think of this matter. Now, with respect to my personal plans and schedule, let me acquaint you with my thinking. I have recovered considerably from my difficulties of the ^ast several years, I believe. At present, I am greatly bothered by my visual difficulties, which, I believe, can be relieved just as soon as the proper time arrives. My eye doctor is, I believe, a very capable young man, who expects to eliminate the cataracts (both eyes), which obscure my vision, when I return to work in September. I plan to go to the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana, in August (by way of Great Falls), where there is u ranch, at the edge of the Wilderness, taking our daughter along to supply the necessary eyes in supplementation of my own greatly impaired vision. When I return home, or shortly after, I expect to get rid of the cataracts and to be substantially well, despite my age. (I was born in November of 1893.) On the delayed preparation and publication of a book on Lead, which, I hope, will clear up a number of the somewhat misunderstood problem arising out of the industrial and public usage of lead, I fully expect (with the help of Stan Gross and certain other members of our Staff) to return the thinking about lead to a more sensible status. I have been substantially out of the field (excepting for publications) for the greater part of the past three years. I expect to get back into the field shortly, and to be able to influence the thinking in it. I should like as soon as possible, to sit down with you and others (particularly Hesselberg) to consider matters of interest and importance to Ethyl Corporation, and other industrial organizations. It is clear to me that the Government of the U.S.A. cannot be trusted entirely to carry the ball in matters of Industrial and <i0 Mr. Lawrence E. Blanchard, Jr Page 3 June 20, 1974 Public Hygiene, and that industry, itself, has to exert its influence to an appropriate extent in this and other industrial matters. This is quite enough for the present, on this subject, but I shall expect in one way or another to get in touch with you in September. Sincerely yours, RAK:wb Robert A. Kehoe, M.D. Professor Emeritus of Occupational Medicine K f 0006197 La w r e n c e E. B l a n c h a r d ,Jr . Exec ut ive Vice Pr es id en t ETHYL CORPORATION 330 SOUTH FOURTH STREET RICHMOND, VIRGINIA 23217 April 15, 1974 Dr. Robert A. Kehoe Professor Emeritus of Occupational Medicine University of Cincinnati Eden and Bethesda Avenues Cincinnati, Ohio 45219 Dear Bob: Over the weekend I got a chance to plow through our final brief in the EPA case which has just been filed by our lawyers. I was sure you would be interested in this and therefore I am sending you my copy herewith. Incidentally, the brief will be printed in due course and I will send you a copy of the printed brief. Because of your cataracts, I don't know how your reading ability is and so I really don't know whether it is reasonable for me to send this on to you. It is terribly frustrating for me, after having been so deeply involved in this fight for four years, to see how difficult it is to try to explain all the complexities of our position in a brief which is limited by law to only 75 pages. With your back ground of 50 years, it will be infinitely more frustrating and therefore perhaps you are better off not to even read the brief. However, by way of explanation, as an ex-lawyer, I can say that I do have a considerable appreciation for the difficulties the law yers are up against in trying to combat the position which the EPA has taken. Generally speaking, the Court on appeal is not going to retry the case'-- rather it will limit itself to only the most glaring examples where the lower Court may have gone astray. It is an extremely difficult job to overturn an admini strative agency under these constraints and I am quite pessimistic. On the other hand, maybe somehow the lawyers can get over to the Court the flavor of downright fraud by an agency which makes up its mind before it starts looking at the evidence. K 0006138 N7519.01 Dr. Robert A. Kehoe April 15, 1974 Page 2 With kindest regards, I am LEB:ab Enel. cci Mr. H. E. Hesselberg K X 0006199