Document zQqbzaLOq1v9q7pY1KGgvnpR3

FROM H. A. SEMKEN ROCKDALE WORKS TC *t----- January 22, 1968 COOTTDEHTIAL RE; POTROCM CHUCIBIE REPAIRS Attached is a copy of the newspaper article referred to in our letter of January 12 concerning employees who usa^asbestos-lumnite cement) in crucibli 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 EAS:S Attach 0 ALCOA ARCH 18744 48)<acv tOOM 1* { Puzzle to Doctors miles from* the nation's largest asbestos ' plant, one that employs 5000 workers. ........... No state lists be disease in its workmen compensation In the last three yean, no | laws, so nobody afflicted with By THOMAS 0 TOOLE disease brought on by years fewer than 19 cases of ` it can be paid damages for his Washington Fast of breathing asbestos dust. Mesothelioma passed through affliction. Even now, the first WASHINGTON -- A fatal Dr. Sclikoff also found that Middlesex General. Only two test cases are in the courts, cancer cf the chest and 45 cf the mean had died of of the 19 were not workers at where they may conceivably abdomirv:; cavities is cropping lung cancer, a rate $.6 times the neari>7 asbestos plant, one stay (or the next five to 10 up ar.:>tg the nation's higher than that in the normal a woman who apparently years. asbestos workers. adult male population. Even inhaled asbestos dust in The fact (hat nobody knows So rare that 20 years ago it more surprising, he found five, laundering her husband's how much exposur* to ' wasn't oven in the medical deaths due to Mesothelioma ( work clothes, the second a asbestos can bring on tli: textbooks. ' The cancer is "This incidence of more than spinster who lived one block disease has created called Mesothelioma, and 1 pet cent," 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 include a nurse whose father worked in. an asbestos plant and a man who bandied asbestos for no more than a month while he insulated the plumbing in his own house. Mesothelioma was first spotlighted in 1969, 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,. this same 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 . 71 cases. Oddly, 11 of them appeared to have had no real . exposure to asbestos. The which is generally considered Mesothelioma is also one of asbestos workers be in an to be extremely rare." Dr. Selikoff then launched a the most difficult diseases to confront modem medicine. environment where there i> no follow-on study of 307. more It is almost impossible to1 than five million consecutive deaths among treat Middlesex General's Dr. particles of asbestovdust per asbestos insulation workers Maxwell Borow says that ever one cubic foot of air -- a throughout the whole the most potent anti-cancer regulation that many in the Northeast Again, to his drugs have no effect on it. asbestos industry fought years surprise, he turned up 10 About all that radiation, to get approved. deaths due to Mesothelioma. treatments do, he says, is But with Mesothelioma, the About the same time, the remove some of the fluid that disease might be brought on Pennsylvania State builds up in the lungs from by exposure to as little as one- Department of Health began a. the disease. tenth or one-hundredth that blind study to find how Mesothelioma might be affecting the mere than 5000 asbestos workers scattered about the state. To 162 hospitals in the, "The disease is 100 percent fatal." Dr. Borow states, "and usually takes less than a year after diagnosis to run its course." I limit. "We're really over a barrel on this one," states one doctor. "Because we don't know bow much exposure causes the disease, we don't know what to recommend." Southeastern part of the state Nobody knows why il Despite obstacles like '.heso, they sent a questionnaire, atta.cks s.ome. ..asbestos research has begun in a asking the hospitals to report .uf handful of places to find out all Mesotheliomas diagnosed why some victims of the more about Uie ailment. between 1953 and 1903. disease get it after an Mount Sinai's Dr. Sclxvif is Back came 42 documented apparently mild exposure to now constantly monitoring the cases of the disease, only 111 asbestos. The University of 1500 members of the As*a-$ic< of which could not be traced Michigan School of Medicine Workers Union in to asbestos exposure. cites one case of a man who metropolitan New- York. The Ten victims of the disease was exposed to asbestos for Philadelphia local of th - same turned out to be men who about a month while he worked in asbestos plants. insulated his house. Six years 1 union has started a similar Eight were people who lived later, he was dead of program with Hahneman near asbestos plants most of Mesothelioma. *' Hospital to uncover more ' 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 1964 by Dr. Irving J. Selkkoff of New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, who began the study to see if . cancer in any way affected . the lives of the asbestos ' insulation workers in the New Y'ork Metropolitan area. Tracing the lives of C32 members of the asbestos workers union who were on the union rolls before Jan. 1. : 1943, Dr. Sclikoff found that i 255 of them had died by Jan. 1. 1963. . Some of what he found did not surprise him -- that 12 o? the 255 died of asbestosis, a long-known but docreasingly their lives. Three were Even the nature of the information. members of families who had one cr more asbestos worker' members -- a three-year-old girl whose' father was an asbestos engineer, a nurse whose father had worked for 35 years in an asbestos plant and a woman with two sons who worked as asbestos insulators in a shipyard. Of 10 deaths which seemed "questionable" asbestos exposures, two turned out to be almost bizarre. One was a Swiss chcesemaker, who worked almost his entire life around a large boiler covered with Asbestos insulation that flaked off at the touch. Another was a worker in a brewery', where it turned out that beer is filtered through pulp filters made essentially of rotten fiber and asbestos. The most convincing study is the most recent one -- disease is little understood."t: While it's generally known that ;: the disease attacks the lining of the chest and abdomen,, nobody knows bow it gets. there. .: When asbestos dust is inhaled, the fibers get trapped in the lungs, where they form gummy deposits. This! explains how asbestosis gets started, and perhaps even. lung cancer. One theory is , that that bthueildsgumupmyarosuunbdstantchee.'1. asbestos fiber lodged in the : lung can cause cancer elsewhere in the body* But how docs it do it? Nobody _: knows.__ .__ :' Because it is such a new and little understood disease. Mesothelioma is also crraiira some serious social and economic problems. ' Middlesex General's Dr. Borow says that he is in the process of setting up a traveling exhibit to bring attention to the disease. He's doing it with a 3500 dollar grant from the Papermakers Union, which represents the asbestos workers in the New Jersey plant Dr. Borow studied. It wasn't easy getting the money. Dr. Borow went to 40 organizations before he got it -- including the American Cancer Society and the Public Health Service. Any attention the disease gets might come none too soon. Store than 1 million tons of asbestos is consumed those days in the US. with more than 3000 separate uses being reported for the fast-growing fiber. fatal (due to antibiotics) conducted by a team of ARCH 18745