Position Paper on the Health Aspects of Asbestos (1966)

This document is a Johns-Manville Corporation position paper, not a research study. It relied largely on quotations from earlier studies and expert statements. It noted that about 95 percent of asbestos used in the United States was chrysotile. It quoted a 1958 study by Braun and Truan that reported a lung cancer rate for proved cases among Quebec asbestos miners of 25.3 per 100,000. The comparison rates were 22.5 per 100,000 for the rest of the Province and 20.8 per 100,000 for adult males in Canada. It quoted a rat experiment by Schepers in which animals exposed to chrysotile alone developed no pulmonary neoplasia, while about one quarter of those exposed to beryllium alone did. It quoted the company's medical director, Kenneth W. Smith, as saying no chrysotile fiber was identified in brake lining dust tested at the company's Research Center. The authors concluded that suggestions linking asbestos to lung cancer had been neither confirmed nor disproved, and should be regarded with scepticism at that time. They acknowledged that no definitive study of American asbestos factory workers had yet been published.

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From J-M's medical library

This copy comes from the Johns-Manville medical library. It was among the papers J-M kept in its medical library without an index entry.