Document a4o3x3LNeZ7D2LKo125N1ORya

FILE NAME: ALCOA (ALC) DATE: 1941 Sept 25 DOC#: ALC061 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: Letter s a ia / rftA N C IS C .F S A R Y s i in te re R ALUMINUM RESEARCH LABORATORIES POST OFFICE S O X 772 oSjtefaJ // Sept. 25, 1941 Dr. Leroy TJ. Gardner Saranac Laboratory Saranac Lake, N.Y. Dear Dr. Gardner:- Rferring to our correspondence about the possibility that alumina dust or lime dust would aggravate a tuberculous condition, I thought you would be interested in the following portion of a report from our last St. Louis plant covering their experience in. this connection: nAs I said in my letter to Dr. Walker, our sta tistics were not conclusive, but we felt that we had a lower ratio of respiratory diseases in those depart ments where Bauxite or Alumina dust was prevalent than in other departments such as the Machine Shop or Electric Shop. Specifically, we had one case of an employee who worked in the Bauxite Department for about fifteen years. He was off for six weeks with pneumonia, and on returning to work was x-rayed, as is our custom. This x-ray disclosed what was diagnosed as old arrested tuberculosis. We immediately put him in the Plant Pro tection Department where his work was very light and conditions as nearly ideal as we could make them. After just two years in the Plant Protection Department, the tuberculosis became active and the man finally succumbed to the disease. Here was a case of a man working in the Bauxite dust for fifteen years, with an old, arrested tubercular condition and two years after he was taken out of the dust, the disease flared up." In your letter of September 3rd, you mention "...our experience with hydroxide of aluminum on non-virulent tuberculous infection and of the stimulating effeet whieh we had observed in guinea pigs". Have you published these results and, if so, could Dr. L e r o y U 0 G a r d n e r OATS S e p t o 25, 1 9 4 1 Sheet Ne. 2 y o u g i v e me e i t h e r a r e f e r e n c e to the p u b l i c a t i o n o r send m e a reprint? Am I correct in m y interpretation that when yon speak of the n stimulating effect" you are referring to an effect similar to that of s i l i e a 3 where the presence of the dust stimulates the non-virulent bacteria so that they become virulent and produce an infection? I think you are quite right in the letter which I r e c e i v e d t o d a y , in. y o u r s t a t e m e n t that the a l m a i n o n (aurine= triearfaoxyi acid) method is v e r y tricky, and certainly there does seem to be some serious difficulty in getting a dye which is suitable. Th e m e t h o d i s 5 o f course, purely empirical,, but wh e n y o u have the right dye it seems to work very well in d e e d . I hope you mill be able to get a suitable dye from Tales, FCEhL Sincerely yours, Director Aluminum Research Laboratories A L M I M J M C0MPAI OF AMERICA