Document xzr5rnjBMNr0pxDKeN0Gp4Job

FROM H A SIUKEH ROCKDALE WORKS ,January 22 1968 -t-- CCTTFTDEWriAL RE: POIROCM CRUCIBLE REPAIRS_____________________________________________________ Attached is a copy of the newspaper article referred to in our letter of January 12 concerning employees who uso^asbestos-lumnite cement) in crucibl and trough liner repairs. Dr. Richards is prepared to talk to this employee as soon as the necessary arrangements can be made. H. A. SEMKEN HAS:S Attach 0 ALCOA ARCH 18744 r 4S63-RCV BOOM 11-66 _i % *t miles from the nation's . _iujiuav. j->cc. Puzzle to Doctors largest asbestos ' plant, one No state lists the disease in that employs 5000 workers. its workmen compensation In the past three years, no | laws, so nobody afflicted with, Dy THOMAS O'TOOLE Washington Host disease brought on by years fewer than 19 cases of it can be paid damages for his of breathing asbestos dust. Mesothelioma passed through affliction. Even now, the first ( WASHINGTON -- A fatal Dr. Selikoff also found that Middlesex General. Only two test cases are in the courts, cancer of the chest and 45 c( the mean had died of of the 19 were not workers at abdominal cavities is cropping lung cancer, a rate 6.6 times the nearby asbestos plant, one up among the nation s higher than that in the normal a woman who apparently where they may conceivably . stay tor the next five to 10-. years. asbestos workers. So tare that 20 years ago it ' wasn't even in the medical textbooks. The cancer is adult male population. Even, inhaled asbestos dust in more surprising, he found five, laundering her husband's deaths due to Mesothelioma ( work clothes, the second a This incidence of more than spinster who lived one block The fact that nobody knows how much exposure to asbestos cart bring on the disease has created called Mesothelioma, and 1 peicent," said Dr. Selikoff, from the plant. .controversy, too. seems almost peculiar to "is strikingly high for a tumor A relatively "new" disease. Most laws stipulate that people exposed to asbestos. Ironically, those stricken with the deadly disease which is generally considered to be extremely rare." Dr. Selikoff then launched a Mesothelioma is also one of the most difficult diseases to confront modem medicine. asbestos workers be in an environment where there is no include a nurse whose lather follow-on study of 507. It is almost impossible to* more than five million worked in- an asbestos plant consecutive deaths among treat. Middlesex General's Dr. particles of asbestos, dust per and a man who handled asbestos for no more than a month while he insulated the plumbing in his own house. Mesothelioma was first asbestos insulation workers throughout the whole Northeast. Again, to his surprise, he turned up 10 deaths due to Jfesothelioma. Maxwell Borow says that ever, the most potent anti-cancer drugs have no effect on it. About all that radiation treatments do, he says, is one cubic foot of air -- a regulation that many in the asbestos industry fought years to get approved. But with Mesothelioma, the spotlighted in 1960, when South African doctor found 32 cases among the people living and working in the Cape of Good Hope asbestos fields. Alerted to the problem, .thissame doctor turned up 57 more cases in the next two years. Nobody knows how many Americans have had Mesothelioma. Even today doctors have trouble spotting it -- whether they're trying to diagnose it in a person still alive or pin it down at an autopsy. In three separate studies in the last three years, doctors in three states have turned up About the same time, the Pennsylvania State Department of Health began a. blind study to find how remove some of the fluid that builds up in the lungs from the disease. Mesothelioma might be 'The disease is 100 percent affecting the mere than 5000 fatal." Dr. Borow states, "and asbestos workers scattered usually takes less than a year about the state. after diagnosis to run its To 162 hospitals in the, course." j Southeastern part of the state Nobody knows why it they sent a questionnaire, attacks some asbestos asking the hospitals to report workers and not others, or all Mesotheliomas diagnosed jvhy some victims of the between 1953 and 1903. disease get it after an Back came 42 documented ; apparently mild exposure to cases of the disease, only 11, asbestos. The University of of which could not be traced Michigan School of Medicine to asbestos exposure. cites one case of a man who Ten victims of the disease was exposed to asbestos for turned out to be men who about a month while he disease might be brought on by exposure to as little as one- tenth or one-hundredth that limit. "We're really over a barrel on this one," states one doctor, "Because we don't know how much exposure causes the disease, we don't know what to recommend." Despite obstacles like these, research has begun in a handful of places to find out more about the -ailment. Mount Sinai's Dr. ScLi'-tcif is now constantly monitcruig the 1500 members of the As^rstcv Workers Union in metropolitan Xe-v York. Tne Philadelphia local of Hr.- some 71 cases. Oddly, 11 of them worked in asbestos plants. insulated his house. Six years >, union has started a similar appeared to have had no real . exposure to asbestos. The ' other 60 could all be traced to asbestos contact, either because they worked with it, lived with people who did or lived in neighborhoods where the air was heavily laden with asbestos dust. The first American study was one run in 1954 by Dr. Irving J. Selkkoff of New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, who began the study to see it . cancer in any way affected . the lives of t'ne asbestos insulation workers in the New ' York Metropolitan area. Tracing the lives of G32 members of Lie asbestos workers union who were on the union rolls before Jan. 1, : 1943, Dr. Selikoff found that , 255 of them had died by Jan, '. 1. 1963. Some of what he found did not surprise him -- that 12 of the 255 died of asbestosis. a . long-known but decrcasingiy Eight were people who lived . later, he. was dead of program with Hahr.eman near asbestos plants most of Mesothelioma. Hospital to uncover more their lives. Three were Even the nature of the information. members of families who had . disease is little understood.^ one cr more asbestos worker . While it's generaiiy known that : Middlesex General's Dr. members -- a three-year-old the disease attacks the lining Borow says that he is in the girl whose- father was an of the chest and abdomen,, process of setting up a asbestos engineer, a nurse nobody knows bow it gets. traveling exhibit to bring whose father had worked for there. attention to the disease. He's 35 years in an asbestos plant When asbestos dust is doing it with. a 3500 dollar and a woman with two sons inhaled, the fibers get trapped grant from the Papermakers who worked as asbestos in the lungs, where they form Union, which represents the insulators in a shipyard. gummy deposits. This, asbestos workers in the New Of 10 deaths which seemed explains how asbestosis gets Jersey plant Dr. Borow "questionable" asbestos started, and perhaps even studied. exposures, two turned out to lung cancer. One theory is It wasn't easy getting the be almost bizarre. One was a that the gummy substance money. Dr. Borow went to 40 Swiss cheesemaker, who that builds up around the i organizations before he got it worked almost his entire life asbestos fiber lodged in the _ including the American around a large boiler covered with Asbestos insulation that lung can elsewhere in cause cancer the body. But ' Cancer Society Health Sendee. and the Public flaked off at the touch. how docs it do it? Nobody Any attention the disease Another W3S a worker in a brewer}', where it turned out that beer is filtered through knows.__ __ .! Because it is such a rew and little understood disease. gets might come none too soon. More than 1 million tons of asbestos is consumed these pulp filters made essentially of cottcn fiber and asbestos. The most convincing study Mesothelioma is also erratics some serious social and economic problems. days in the US, with mure than 3000 separate uses being reported for the fast-growing is the most recent one -- fiber. fatal (due to antibiotics) conducted by a team of ARCH 18745 io_ i;,u7