Document na7eMyjyz7wjV25Ne7raDJ02

FILE NAME: BF Goodrich (BFG) DATE: 1998 May 19 DOC#: BFG002 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: Letterfrom Barry Castleman B arry Castiem an, Sc.D. Environmental Consultant Mr. Tom Bevan May 19, 1998 Dear Mr. Bevan, I have received your fax and have a more general report to pass on to you, along with this paragraph on BF Goodrich. BFG, as a large rubber and chemical company, and a user of asbestos and asbestos insulation products, had access to knowledge about the hazards of asbestos prior to 1950 and thereafter. BFG was a member of the Industrial Hygiene Foundation from 1947-1951, during which time a number of abstracts on asbestos hazards appeared in the Industrial Hygiene Digest received monthly by IHF member companies. Among these abstracts was one on an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "Asbestosis and Cancer of the Lung", (Aug. 1949). BFG industrial hygienist William McCormick attended the Seventh Saranac Symposium in 1952, where leading world authorities discussed pneumoconiosis and cancer of the lung. Mr. McCormick's background employment at Willson Products as well as BFG's own manufacture of respirators would have additionally acquainted him with asbestos as a respiratory hazard prior to and after his hiring by BFG in 1946. The National Safety Council (NSC) was one of the organizations that Mr. McCormick was associated with. NSC was well known in the industrial community, which had a "Rubber Section" at least as early as the 1930s, and published a number of reports in which the hazards of asbestos were discussed. One of these was called "Compounding Materials Used in the Rubber Industry" (1938). It is my opinion that BFG knew by the 1950s that asbestos was capable of causing a totally disabling or fatal pneumoconiosis (asbestosis), and that in addition asbestos was at least strongly suspected of causing cancer. It was foreseeable to Goodrich that, absent special precautions (including worker education) to control the hazards of asbestos, there would be a general hazard in areas where asbestos fiber was used and dust created. By the 1950s, the scientific literature included many cases of asbestosis among people with "bystander" and occasional or relatively brief exposures of diverse types, and this should have been known to BFG as a longtime major user of asbestos raw material and asbestos insulation. Thus, the hazard to Mr. Gramley was something that BFG should have realized and warned him about at the time of his exposures in 1954-1959. -4 3 ^ ED 2412 PICKWICK ROAD BALTIMORE, MD 21207-6631 tel. 4 1 0 -4 4 6 -2 6 4 6 bcastle@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us fax 4 1 0 -4 4 6 -2 3 6 6