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FILE NAME: Rogers Corporation (ROG) DATE: 1968 Dec 30 DOC#: ROG005 DOCUMENT DESCRIPTION: Letter to Rogers Corp. with Comments & Copy of New Yorker Article Discussing Safety Issues j). L. Monroe / li. H. F e n n e r/' File q\ Deeeaber JO, 1968 /! r,\* P p | i | ............. $ | | f I f |i I ft . i ft Kr. C. K, Gorman, A ir. 'urch. Kogers Gorp. iiogers, Goan. OC-2G'j, i/ear Kr. Gorman: i.copy o f the Hew fo rk er a r t i c l e o f l e s t October we discussed a t our la s t v is it is attached Regarding d u st c o n tro l, here are e x tra c ts from l e t t e r s w ritten by J-K vironB ental Control bept.s "fieapirafcora fo r protection gainst fib e r dusts should --- - - b e b u r e a u o f K inesapproved fo r protection against to x ic d u sts, not s ig n ific a n tly more to x ic than lean Bureau o f Mines Schedule 21* or 21b). Our own p lan t people seem to p refer HoA tflTSTFO.. 77 Other manufacturers of approved resp irato rs include American O ptical and Willson. '* ------------ " I u n d trstm d ^ th a t'..^ u r-(^ g w wishes to take every o!t JW * * a- , of M to r ia ls containing a s - . 'oail& iliipiiifcffi?^^ Oootrol equipcobcentration . pi OwiWMwat- ' .* *1- iipwujp,.eat^blishea TUI* v ' toxic Mb- BteutoOo' which r o p m o i t ' Maitttip M wader whiefc i t i s believed th a t e arly 11 worker say be repeatedly ex- CRM C-ELS-Rogers-M icro-000035 jf I7^** posed, day after day, without adverse effect 'he newly 0 proposed ?L7 for asbestos fiber is 2 Billion particles par cubic foot (2 Mi-j-OF) or 12 fibers per ee (12 f/co). I Aebgftos fiber daft concentration sew assured in accordance w*#* teefa^ues by states Public health 8 Sean&ft 2$ deyl^^eiflLoB o f *9&&gtM. Quires collection o f particle count under a MM#F Si is de*is3d by ugw*ae-.^ t l r ' w W n s and ^q&ant fib aenut under a ky> pbuar light ulffi^Kopi 1&if# techniques art described in de tail in literature available fro* the U. s. P, H, S. Zf addi tional infomation as to saugllrig and analysis is raqulred, It can be obtained from: Hr. Howard Ayer Cbipf %yironantal activities P ifld Studies Occupational Health Frogram dept* at Health, Question < Welfare lOlV'lirOadway O inclnnnti, Ohio A5202 A competent, experienced dust control engineer should be eaploysd $ by your concern to design the dust control system, including the I hoods1 duct work, fan and collector. Itiis^eSS^tii^ithatKyour- < histscontrolW 'i^et'tff'eaploySashii?h;'affi'crdircy?duE t"ic'6M ^tbBSt:Ei;ir e a ` 5 fentiextarnal^af^l^^c^dUBt^cntaaljiatioai^ I Very tru ly yours, H. A. Hoisclair HAB/sv Attach. t, . C R M C -ELS -R o gers-M icro-0 0 0 0 3 6 TI53911115 T A REPORTER A T LARGE THE MAGIC MINERAL by Paul Brcdeur REPRINTED from THE NEV YORKER hint tf OCTOBER 12 1968 T153911117 mous industrial importance because of its unique and astonishing physical prop erties. I t appeals to be highly combusti ble, yet It can withstand the fiercest heat. I t seems as perishable as grass, hut by virtue of being almost Immune to the forces o f corrosion and decay under almost every condition of temperature and moisture (and of bong resistant as well to the action o f most acids, alkalies, and other chemicals) it Is just about indestructible. I t looks extremely frag ile, yet Its fibres have a tensile strength equal to that of piano wire. Apparent ly as light and feathery as thistle- or eiderdown. It is actually as heavy and dense as the rock from which it is extracted. In one sense, then, it Is a fibre of stone. I n another sense, how ever, It is a xmneralogkal vegetable whose fibres arc so soft and flexible that they can be carded, spun, and woven as easily as fibres o f cotton o r flax. Asbestos b the only mineral that can be woven Into doth, and its fibrous structure Is, ff anything, even more amazing than Us remarkable ability to withstand heat* I n fact, if It were not for the electron microscope, the extent to which asbestosIs fibrous would be dif ficult to believe, for there are approxi mately a million individual fibrils lying side by side in a linear inch of chrysctilc asbestos, whereas only thirty-eight hun dred glass fibrils, such as those found in various insulation materials, or six hun dred and thirty human hairs can be aligned along the same distance. More over, in addition to their extreme fine ness, high tensile strength, unusual flexibitityjSpmnabilityjand resistance to heat and the elements, asbestos fibres pos sess great powers to adsorb and to filter. Small wonder, then, that when asbestos, winch had been known to the ancients as "the magic mineral," was, in effect, rediscovered less than a hun dred years ago in the age of industrial expansion, It was put to work. Since that time, die demand for asbestos has risen almost as fast as the stuff could be mined from the earth and milled from its host rock. I n 1879, when the world's first commercial as bestos mine was opened a t Thetford, in the Province of Quebec, only three hundred tons of the mineral was pro duced. By 1910, annual world produc tion had jumped to thirty thousand tons; by the middle thirties, it had in creased to five hundred thousand tons; and today the total output is more than four million tons a year. Up until a few years ago, asbestos was often called "the mineral of a thou sand uses" by those who sold it, but this label has become obsolete, especial ly in the United States, where it is estimated that asbestos may have as many as three thousand different in dustrial applications. T he United States is tile largest consumer of asbestos in the world, importing nearly a million tons a year, mostly chrysotile from Canada, and since fully ninety-five per cent of this amount it used In combination with other raw materi als--such as Portland cement, asphalt, and vinyl and other plastics-- asbestos is present as an invisible and anonymous ingredient in a myriad of industrial products, many of which are never identified as containing asbestos even though it may constitute up to fifty per cent of their content. T h e asbestos*cement industry, which is the principal consumer of the min eral, makes shingles lor roofing and riding, sheets for exterior and interior walk, insulation board, clapboard, cas ings for electric motors, pipes to carry water, sewage, and gas, and numerous other products. Asbestos textiles are used not only m fireproof theatre cur tains but also in lagging and other in sulating wrapping, in conveyor belting and safety dothing, in pot holders, ironing-board, covers, draperies, rugs, and motion-picture screens, as filters m gas masks and in the processing of fruit juices, adds, beer, mol medicines, and in mailbags, prison-cell podding, air plane fittings, stove and lamp wicks, sparkplugs, and fire hose. The electri cal-equipment industry has depended for years on asbestos yarn and rape for insulating conductors ranging from fine-gauge wire to heavy cable, and woven asbestos friction materials-- such as brake linings and dutch fac ings--are found in cars, trucks, trac tors, power shovels, hoists, and other industrial machines, as ure nshestosctotii packings, seals, and giiskets. As bestos papers and felts are used for roofing, for piano padding, for lining stoves, heaters, filing cabinets, military helmets, and the mufflers and hoods of automobiles, and they also arc found in armored cars, carpets, and car tridges, and ns boiler jackets and radi ator covers. Asbestos millboard, which is a heavier version of asbestos paper, is used for acoustical ceilings, as plas terboard And fireproof wallhoard, and in electric switch boxes, safes, table pads, stove mats, ovens, and dr}* kilns. Vinyl nnd asphalt floor tfin enntain anywhere from thirty to fifty per cent, by weight, of short asbestos fibres, and the fhior-tfle industry has bec<vne the sccund-laigcsi user of the mineral. Since the development of phen ol-formaldehyde resins in 1909, as* bestos has been used in large quantities as a reinforcement and filler by the plastics industry, nnd today there are countless plastic products that contain asbestos, ranging from fiying-pan han dles to rocket nose cones. Asbestos is also an ingredient of many {Mints and sealants, of compounds used for roof coating and road buOdtng, of putties, caulking, and other crack fillers, of c lap used for pottery and sculpture, of artificial snow, of plaster and stucco, of fireproof insulation sprayed on struc tural steel, anil of vndcrciut//ifi prayed on Autwnuhib hndis. As ii result uf these multiple nnd miscellaneous applications, utiir-au* htw become practically ubiquitous in nmdtrn society. There Unut an automobile, airplane, train, ship, mfaili?, nr engine of any sort thut dues not contain as bestos in some form nr other, and has found its way into literally every building, factory, home, and farm across die land. Anti, because its mi nuscule fibres arc eminently respirable, asbestos has also found it* way into the lungs uf man, where, by remaining as indestructible as it dun in nature, it can wreak terrible havoc, THE adverse bhdngiral effects of asbestos were uliwrvrd as early as the first century by the Greek geog rapher Strata and by the Raman nat uralist Pliny the Elder, both of wiuun mentioned in pasting a $icbnr-,i nf the lungs in slaves whoe occupation was to weave asbestos into doth. Strata and Pliny wore calling attention for the first time in history to a J mm c that would one day he known m nsbest sis-- a form i*f pruMwiiistoninris ( the general term for all dint ibV.ws of the lungs) caused hy the inhalation ( fine fibres and particles <4 asbestos--hut the ancients were much ton awed hy the magic of the mineral n< be t-iuicnrtied with the pnsriblllty that it might con stitute a health hazard. Iiulivc], thrir attitude toward aritrsto* sometimes lirdcred on veneration. Strabo anil Plu tarch noted that the "perju-iunl" wiVfct used an the sacred and ineMinguadiiiIde bm ps of the vestal virgins wen* mailr of nshcHiLS and Pliny dcsirihnl asbestos cloth, which had hrrn inn! for ccntitritt in crcmattuiu, as the ran* and costly "funeral dress uf Jongs/' Ii was generally assumed in nariritt limes that asbestos was uf vegetable origin--Pliny called it "linum worn," and TI53911119 lungs of autopsed asbestos workers, many of which contained literally bfl. lions of them, that they quickly came to be called " asbestos bodies." T h e most important investigation of this period was conducted by D r. X. R . A . Mcrewether, a medical in* spcctor for the Factory Department of the British Home Office, Between 1928 and 1929, he examined three hundred and rixty-three asbestos-textile workers out of an estimated total of twenty-two hundred asbestos workers employed in Great Britain a t the and found that ninety-five, or slightly more than twenty-five per cent, showed evidence of suffering from pulmonary fibrosis. He also demonstrated that die inci dence of fibrosis increased in direct pro portion to the number of years of ex posure, reaching eighty-one per cent in the group of workers who had been employed in the industry for twenty years or more. As a result of Mere- wether's report. Parliament passed leg islation in 1931 that made asbestos a compensable disease, required improved methods of exhaust ventilation and dust suppression in asbestos-textile factories, and instituted periodical medical exami nations for workers engaged in par ticularly dusty processes in the asbestos- textile industry. After fills promising b unt of activity, however, progress in die field of asbes tos was depresingly slow, for, as things turned out, the doctors had only begun to scratch the surface of a prob lem of bewildering complexity- Many investigators assumed that the new reg ulations would prove effective in con trolling the disease, thus failing to ap preciate the fact that, once inhaled, asbestos,which is virtuallyindestructible, continues to react within the lungs for a lifetime, and to heed the warning of Mcrewether, who, when asked if two years of exposure was sufficient to cause asbestos in a young girl, replied, " Yes, f she lives long enough." Moreover, techniques of dust sampling were primi tive and inaccurate, and dust levels varied so greatly-- not only from fac tory to factory but from area to area within a given factory-- that it would have been almost impossible to establish criteria upon which to recommend a safe level of exposure, But as time went by, the generally lowered dust levels that did result from the regula tions of 1931 appeared to be slowing down the attack rate of the disease, a t least in G reat Britain, and the life ex pectancy o f the average asbestos-textile worker was further increased by die advent of antibiotics, which drastically reduced the death rate front infectious pulmonaiy diseases that often had to be feared as a complication of asbestos. T h e totally unforeseeable consequence of all this was that asbestos workers, in stead of dying of asbestos, began living long enough to develop asbestos-in duced cancer. T h e first published suggestion of an association between asbestos and ma lignant disease was made in 1935 by D r, Kenneth M . Lynch, professor of pathology at the Medical College of South Carolina, who described the case of a fifty-seven-year-old asbestos weaver who died of asbestos and in whose lungs cancer was also found. Because the regulations of 1931 required Brit ish coroners to conduct autopsies on men who had been suspended from work with asbestos on account of pul monary disability or w hen their length of service rendered it Hkely that their occupation was a contributory cause of death, pathologists In Britain were able to investigate the suggetted link between asbestos and lung cancer much more easily than their counter parts in the United States, where few states had w o rk m e n 's compensation laws covering dust diseases, and where there were no specific regulations rc- quiring post-mortem examinations of asbestos workers. The British investi gations were not made the subject f official comment until 1949, however, when Dr, Mcrewether, who was then Chief Inspector of Factories, published a view o f data chat had been accum ulated from 1924 to 1946, which re vealed that lung cancer was present in thirty-one out of two hundred and thirty-fivt deaths chat were caused by asbestos!* or in which asbestos's was found a t autopsy. This was an inci dence of slightly more than thirteen per cent, and Merewether found it highly signifiant, for lung cancer, ac cording to its Incidence in the general population, should only have been pres ent in approximately one per cent of the cases. A t die time, no formal chum of an association between the two diseases was made, but during the next few years an increasing amount of evidence began to establish one. T hen, in 1955} Dr. Richard 8. Doll, director of the Statistical Research Unit of the British Medical Research Council, completed t study of a hundred and thirteen con secutive autopsies of men with snore than twenty years of exposure in a large asbestos-textile factory, which showed that the extent to. which they had risked lung cancer over the whole period was eleven times as great as that of men in the general population of .England and Wales. From then on, many doctors were convinced that a causal relationship between asbestos exposure and lung cancer had been demonstrated, although almost no pan* of the vast asbestos industry either acknowledged die relationship nr found It advisable to aid the independent re searchers who were investigating it. to human health presented by asbestos were limited to the relatively small group of heavily exposed workers en gaged in making asbestos textiles. The trouble was chat very ftw Mtidfoi had been made of the tens of thnusmdl u[ workers engaged in other branches 1 the industry, which was then expand ing a t an em/mnu* rate all over the world, so that no one really had any way of knowing whether there was any danger from muderate nr light occupational exposure--or, for that matter, from indirect, nun-ucciipatiunul exposure. Such studies were under way in a number of enuntrfes, however, and when the results began to appear, in the late fifties, it became evident that site hazard posed to man by asbestos had once again been underestimated. The most dramatic development was the discovery of an association between exposure to asbestos and mcsuthelhtma, an nlmost always malignant tumor nf the pleura, which is the delicate mem* bianc that encases the lungs, or uf the peritoneum, a similar membrane tli.it lines the abdominal cavity* Previously, mesothelioma had been an rare that it was considered a pathological rtirinsuy. It was found in only one nut nf every trn thousand autopsies, it was not listed in most medical books, and it was not even ended separately in thr W orld Health Organization'* Interna tional Classification if Diseases. In 19S6 and 1957, however, rixtrrn cases of tills rare tumor--tantamount tn an epidemic-- were ifiagmacd at the Pnruraoconitsu Research Unit in Johan nesburg, South Africa, by a purimlngist named J . Christopher W agner. Tw o rircumstances led D r. W agner and his associates to suggest that asbestos might play worn: part in the mysterious outbreak: asbestos bodies had hern found a t nutnpty in the lungs of the very first rase, and trn of tlx* rare* had come frunt a hiepital to which patients suspected <if suffering from tuberculosis were referred from a TI53911121 lioma (hat had been confirmed by au asbestos insulation that flaked off on topsy o r biopsy in London Hospital. contact, a salesman who had mixed and T o no one's surprise, thirty-one of the applied asbestos-cement insulation to seventy-six patients had -worked with boilers in his home, and a fourteen- asbestos, but eleven of those who had year-old boy who a t one rime had died had simply lived within half a helped his father saw up and install mile of an asbestos factor)', and nine plasterboard during an extensive re- 1 others-- seven women and two men-- modelling of their house. were relatives of asbestos workers. From an epidemiological point of *. Most of these women had washed their view, the investigations that tended to * husbands* work clothes regularly. T he support the findings of W agner and investigators learned that one of the Thomson were weak, because they husbands, a docker, had come home Jacked a defined population as a base " white whh asbestos" cveiy evening against which the data could be meas for three o r four years, and that hi? ured. O n die other hand, the presence wife had brushed him down- Both of asbestos bodies in the lungs of such a of the men in this group, when boys large percentage of consecutive autop of eight nr nine years, had had sis sies in so m any widely distributed dries ters who worked in asbestos-textile o f the world was sufficient to Indicate factories. One af the sutets had been that asbestos fibres were probably being employed as a spinner from 1925 to inhaled by a majority of urban dwell 1936, nod had died of asbestosis in ers everywhere, and the association 1947, at which rime it was determined between asbestos and mesothelioma a t nn inquest that "she used to return was striking enough to suggest that a from work with dust on her clothes." history of exposure to the mineral H er brother, who had apparently sus was likely to be found whenever a tained nu other exposure to asbestos in positive diagnosis of the tumor was his lifetime, died in 1956 of a pleural made. As a result, epidemiologists were mesuthdiuma. forced to revise their idea that asbestos Further corroboration of Wagner's was only an industrial hazard, and to findings came from southeastern Penn give serious consideration to Thom sylvania, where D r. Ja n Liebcn, then son's prediction that H might prove head of the Divenun of Occupational to be 'dangerous for untold numbers Health ac the State Department of of unsuspecting people in the general Health, in Harrisburg, investigated the community. backgrounds of forty-two people who had died of mesothelioma between 1958 and 1963 O f the forty-two pa tients, ten proved to have had definite IN October of 1964, in order to re view the data collected in the post nnd to discuss the problems awaiting nrcupntmnnl exposure to asbestos, three solution in the future, the New York were relatives of asbestos workers, eight Academy of Sciences sponsored an in either lived or were employed in the ternational Conference on the Biologi vicinity of an asbestos factor)*, and ten cal Effects of Aabestos,at the Waldorf- others were discovered to have had at Astoria. T h e conference enabled more least some minor exposure to die min chan four hundred scientists from all eral. T h e ten people with minor over the world to discuss the immense exposure included a self-employed ly complicated epidemiological and maker of Swiss cheese who used a five- clinical problems that had appeared m hundred-gallon boiler covered with the forty years since D r. Cooke de scribed the first clear case of asbestos, and its planning was largely the work of one of its co-chairmen. D r. Irving J . SeKkoif, who is head of the Divi sion of Environmental Medicine at the City University's M ount Sinai School of Medicine, director of its Environmental Sciences Laboratory, and a pioneer in die field of modern asbestos epidemiology. Like many of his colleagues a t the conference^ D r. Selikoff became inter ested in asbestos in a roundabout way. A native of New York City, he in terned a t Beth Israel Hospital in New ark; did his pathology at M ount Sinai, where he has heen a member of the staff since 1947; and became a chest physician a t the Sea View Hospital on Staten Island, specializing in tubercu losis. In 1951, he participated in the basic research on isoniazid---the anti biotic drug that, by effectively killing tubercle bacilli, has provided a cure fur tuberculosis-- for which he received the American Public Health A u a o V tern's Albert Lasker Award in Medi cine. In 1953, D r. Selikoff founded a medkaj diiric in Paterson, New Jersey, where, by chance, seventeen of his early patients were men referred for chest-disease consultations who worked in a local factory that had been mak ing asbestos-insulation materials since 2940. W hen the factory dosed down in 19S4, the seventeen men went into other work, and at chat point D r. Seli koff decided to continue his observa tion of these patients with X-ray ex aminations and pulmnnary-function tests in order to determine the history and the natural course of asbestos in men who would not be subjected to further exposure. A t the time, D r. Selikoff was chiefly interested in asbestos because, as he has explained, "I was still unconvinced of the relationship between asbestos and lung cancer. T here wasn't much data, and what there was scarcely seemed to indicate that it wuuld prove tie he much of a problem/1As things turned out, he changed his mind. In 1954, all seventeen men from die Pntvrfon factory were able-bodied and Wurfc* iog. By 1961, however, su uf them were dead, and today only six itf iftnn are alive, O f the eleven who died, four were victims of lung cancer, three of other cancels, one nf meynthclinma, and two nf ashettnw. O f the six who are still alive, two are di&tbM because of respiratory insufficiency caused by fibrosis of the lung, and uitc h.w re covered from surgery fur raurers id the lung and larynx. Dr. SrfikoiT shook his head in describing tin* fan* of these patients, but us early as 1961 their ranks had hern thinned out sn drastically that, as he Said, " I wav forced to the awful realization nf wliat could happen tu nun win were uciriipattonally exposed tu asbestos/* After the company that owned the factory said it was unable to make its employ ment recurds availably, he wrote tu several other large ashtatus manufac turers in the United Staff*, inquiring about the health experiences in their phnts, and was unable to obtain in formation from any of them. Mean while, he and Dr. Jacob Chun* chief pathologist at Barncrt Mcmui&d Hirtpi'tal, in Patcivm, who had been find ing as-btttosns and lung wnccr in u large umber of workers from the Pat erson factory, tik their data to Dr. Roscoc P. Handle, Commissioner f the New Jersey State Department nf Health, and Dr. Handle applied to hr* United States Public Health Service for funds to undertake a study of the Pat erson factor)* and te make a sutrwiilr survey to determine how many people were being occupationally i*XfK<Kil t< asbestos. However, the request W.1X denied fur luck of resources. Since D r. Selikoff already knew tltut TI53911123 found radiological evidence of asbestos s in folly half of the eleven Hundred and seventeen men T he extent of the fibrosa varied directly with die dura tion of exposure. O f three hundred and forty-sot m en whose exposure had be gun less than ten years before, only ten per cent showed any abnormality, and of three hundred and seventy-nine men who had been exposed for between ten and nineteen years more than half still had normal X-rays; in neither group was there any discernible evidence of cancer. On die other hand, D r. Selikoff found that among three hundred and ninety-two men with more than twen ty years of exposure three hundred and thirty-nine had developed asbestos, which bad by that time become mod erate or extensive in more than fifty per cent of the casesj he aha found that eleven of the men had developed can cers of the lung o r pleura. Aided by yearly grants from the Health Research CcunoJ, D r. Selikaff has maintained a dose watch on the asbestos workers1 health, paying particular attention to those men with more than twenty years of exposure by examining them once or twice a year. As a result, he has been able to detect symptoms of illness in many of the men much earlier than they might have been detected and to observe with great ac curacy die mortality experience of the three hundred and seventy whom he found in 1963 to be survivors of the original six hundred and thirty-two members of the union in 1942. I t con tinues to be disastrous. Between Janu ary of 1963 and March of 1968, fifty deaths would normally have been ex pected to occur among these men. In stead, there were a hundred and thir teen. Fifteen of them were caused by asbestos, and, as with the earlier study, the rest of the excess turned out to be caused by cancer nf various kinds. T w o or three bronchogenic cancers would have been normal, but twentyeight occurred, and where the actuarial tables predicted only two astro-intes tinal cancers there were eight. A n un expectedly sharp rise in the num ber of mesotheliomas was observed. I n the earlier study, there had been only four in two hundred and fifty-five deaths; between 1963 and 1968, However, thirteen of these rare tumors were found in a hundred and thirteen deaths. D r. Selikoff suspects that die latent period for mesothelioma m ay be longer than that for either asbestos o r lung cancer, but so far he regards the heavy increase of mesothelioma am ong the insulation workers as something of a mystery. D r. Selikoff and D r. Hammond found special significance in the fact that all twenty-eight bronchogenic carcinomas occurred among asbestos workers who smoked cigarettes regu larly. None were found among eightyseven men who never smoked ciga rettes. D r. SelikofF and D r. Hammond have reservations about these data, which suggest that asbestos workers who smoke cigarettes are ninety times more likely to die of lung cancer than men who neither work with asbestos nor smoke, because they are based upon the experience of a relatively small number of people. T h ey do con clude from it, however, that a n im portant co-carcinogenie effect eats be tween asbestos exposure and cigarette smoking and in a recent artide pub lished in the Journal o f th e American Medtcnl Ajrocudton they recommend " that asbestos exposure be minimized, that asbestos workers who do nor smoke should never start, and that those now smoking should stop immediately." I t has been suggested in some quarters that asbestos fibres, which are known to he highly adsorbent as well as vir tually indestructible, may retain the substance known a$ benzo [a ] pyrene from cigarette smoke for long periods of time in lung tissue, thus tending to produce lung cancer by a synergistic effect. No one knows for sure, however, and D r. Selikoff will not hazard a guess about die m atter until more informa tion is gathered. He expresses certainty about the effects of asbestos exposure only when he has epidemiological proof. He knows, for example, that one out of every five asbestos-insulation work ers who die in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area dies of lung cancer, and that almost half of the three hundred and sixty-eight deaths he has recorded among these men in the past twenty-five years have been caused by cancer of one type or another. Last March, dong these figures before a House subcommittee on labor, he warned that "if they are projected to the country as a whole, and if no im provement in the health hazards these men face is achieved, w e may look for ward to perhaps six thousand deaths from lung cancer and to perhaps fifteen thousand deaths from o n cer in general among men in this single asbestos trade alone." Considering that the total membership of the International As sociation of Heat and Frost Insulators and Asbestos W orkers is only eighteen thousand men, and that there are about the same number of non-union asbestos workers, Jus prediction has staggering implications. I R E C E N T L Y spent several days with D r. Selikoff in the Environ mental Sciences Laboratory a t Mount Sinai, where he has assembled a team o f thirty men and women to work on various aspects of the asbestos problem. T he rooms include laboratories for his tology, pathology, electron microscopy, chemistry, and mineralogy, and among the imposing array of equipment they contain is an electron microprobe that is capable of identifying particles of in finitesimal size. D r. SeliknfPs office It large and modem. Its walk are lined with shelves and cabinets containing hundreds of bound volumes of research papers and reports on asbestos, and nt one end are a large conference table and a blackboard. T h e place give! an immediate impression of rather cold efficiency, but this is tempered to a great degree by the affability of the di rector. As we talked, D r. Selikoff, a large, soft-spoken man in his early fifties, was frequently interrupted by telephone calls and by questions from staff members, but he generally re sumed--often with an enthusiastic " Where were w ef"-- and rattled off statistic about asbestos disuse the wny some baseball fanatics recite the butting averages of blg-lcague ballplayers. On the day of my first visit, howevrr, Jic received a call from a doctor in New Jersey who informed him that a lung cancer had just been diagnosed In an other of the insulation workers. Dr. Selikoff told the physician that the pa tient's list X-rays showed moderate asbestcuis, that he had had more titan twenty y ean of exposure, and that he smoked a pock of cigarettes a day. W hen he hung up the phone, he was visibly upset, and fell silent. A few moments later, he told me that be had taken more caDslike that than he cared to remember. 41 don't relish the rule of Cassandra, but I feel we've got tu fnrge ahead on this problem as quickly os possible,** he mid. " There are ahititi thirty-six thousand insulation work ers-- uniun and nun-unfwn---in dir United States. All in nil, including asbestm-textilc workers tint! people en gaged in manufacturing other asbestos products, there arc probably more limn a hundred thousunu workers who arc regularly and directly exposed. The hazard would he serious enough if this were the only group at risk, but it's ob vious that the problem extends further.