Letters on the Sixth Saranac Symposium, with Its Compensation Program and Participant List (1947)

Three letters about the Sixth Saranac Symposium, held at Saranac Lake, New York, from September 29 to October 3, 1947. Manfred Bowditch of the Saranac Laboratory told Dr. Kenneth W. Smith of the Johns-Manville Clinic at Asbestos, Quebec, that four days would go to beryllium and Shaver's disease, and that Friday would cover "current viewpoints on workmen's compensation for pulmonary and other occupational disease." Smith declined, and told Dr. Paul Cartier of Thetford Mines he would go to a Montreal industrial health conference instead. His job covered "all the aspects of safety and treatment of accidents," he wrote, "instead of devoting my time to one phase of health," adding: "In that way I cannot do as good a job as you are doing, but that is what J-M wants." The file also has Vandiver Brown's own remarks at the symposium, from the published proceedings.

What it shows

The file includes the program for the Friday compensation session. There, Vandiver Brown, J-M's secretary, was to lead the discussion of "The Management Viewpoint" after a talk by the president of St. Joseph Lead Company. Dr. Anthony Lanza of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company led the closing discussion, and Dr. Arthur Vorwald, Saranac's new director, closed the symposium. The participant list, from the published proceedings, includes Brown, Dr. A. N. Pauly of J-M at Manville, Cartier, Ivan Sabourin of the Quebec Asbestos Producers Association, and Metropolitan Life's W. J. McConnell and J. W. Fehnel. Smith's letter shows that the doctor running J-M's clinic at its largest mine had general safety and accident duties rather than a focus on dust disease (compare his plan with Cartier to review X-ray films together).

What Brown said

The published proceedings (Pneumoconiosis, edited by Arthur J. Vorwald, Paul B. Hoeber, 1950) print Brown's discussion, pages 567 to 572, after Andrew Fletcher's paper. Brown, J-M's secretary and general attorney, said management favored compensating diseases "truly occupational in character" because it capped the employer's liability and spared it "the tender mercies of a jury with advanced ideas concerning the redistribution of wealth": "the worst Workmen's Compensation Commission is preferable to the best jury."

On dust limits he asked what the "threshold limit" was, "on one side of which the concentration can be considered harmless and on the other side dangerous," and said of New Jersey's draft limit of five million particles per cubic foot: "So far as I have ever been able to ascertain, no one can state with certainty what is the maximum allowable limit for asbestos dust." He told the meeting that "Experimental work by Dr. Gardner here at Saranac" showed that "the large fiberlike particles of asbestos (20 to 50 microns in length and 1 to 3 in thickness) do the damage," and that "Unfortunately, Dr. Gardner was unable to make a report on his experiments." He hoped for one "before the end of this year." Four years earlier Brown had received Gardner's outline of that report, which described lung tumors in mice that inhaled long-fiber asbestos (February 1943); his remarks say nothing of cancer. He warned that code drafters would go on setting standards "which have no roots in experience but which take their sustenance, like orchids, from the air," and he spent the rest of his time opposing general health insurance as a step toward "Marxian Utopia."

In Johns-Manville's chronology

Johns-Manville's own chronology of what the company knew describes this document as follows:

Letter on 9/2/1947 from Bowditch to Dr. K. Smith regarding the 6th Saranac Symposium. On 9/11/47, Dr. K. Smith informs Manfred Bowditch he is unable to attend the sixth Saranac Symposium to be held September 29 through October 3, 1947. Smith writes Dr. P. Cartier on 9/11/47 telling him of his plans to attend the Conference on Industrial Health instead of the Saranac Symposium. Smith complains that his position is not as fortunate as Cartier's as he must keep up with "all aspects of safety and treatment of accidents" instead of specializing in one area. Referring to these circumstances, Smith says "in that way I cannot do as good a job as you are doing, but that is what J-M wants." - Attaching Program of Sixth Saranac Symposium and excerpt of participant list 10/3/1947

During Sixth Saranac Symposium, Vandiver Brown states that even experts cannot agree concerning what is the safe level of asbestos exposure, i.e., the TLV, in "The Management Viewpoint."

Editor's note: The second description, from a merged entry, says Brown stated in "The Management Viewpoint" that experts could not agree on a safe level of exposure. The program in this file shows only that Brown led that discussion; his remarks are not in this file.