W. C. Streib to F. L. Pundsack on Asbestos Products in Ships, with a J-M Product and Fiber List (1970)

A five-page Johns-Manville memo of December 18, 1970, from W. C. Streib of the Research and Engineering Center to F. L. Pundsack, "Asbestos Products in Ships," with three attachments, followed in the same file by a 32-page list of J-M asbestos products. Pundsack had asked for the yearly quantities of asbestos products used in U.S. ships and shipyards from 1938 on; finding no reliable shipyard data, Streib estimated what went into ships as they were built. His table puts the total for 1938–1969 at 142,267 tons of asbestos products containing an estimated 54,081 tons of asbestos, peaking in the war years (19,384 tons of products in 1944), in Marinite, floor tile, paper, asbestos-cement, and insulations and other products.

What it shows

Streib wrote that his figures for Marinite (J-M's marine board, made at Billerica) and recent asbestos-cement were "probably quite reliable," and the rest were "our best estimates." The attachments list his sources (the Statistical Abstract of the U.S., the Maritime Administration, J-M's operating divisions) and his methods; for insulations, the Maritime Administration supplied the pipe covering, lagging and insulation used on a typical 21,000-ton ship, to which J-M added packings, gaskets, fire screens, friction materials, caulking, and textiles. The estimate gives a rough measure of how much asbestos went into American ships over three decades, and the wartime years in particular.

About this copy

Pages 6 to 37 are a different document: a typed list of J-M asbestos products by category (acoustical, asbestos-cement sheet and board, Marinite, roofing, flooring, pipe and block insulation, finishes, felts and blankets, sealing compounds, wall panels and window sills), giving for each the years made, the plants, the percentage of fiber and the type of fiber (chrysotile, amosite or both). Its dates run as late as 1986, so it was prepared in the mid-1980s, not in 1970. It shows, for example, Marinite 23 and Marinite 30 made of amosite at Billerica, and J-M's asbestos pipe blanket and turbine blanket made of amosite.