Casualties of the Workplace I - Some Nonserious Violations

Our plain-English summary of Casualties of the Workplace I - Some Nonserious Violations, by P. Brodeur (1973).

The study

• Author: P. Brodeur
• Published: The New Yorker, October 29, 1973
• Our copy: from Johns-Manville's own medical library. The article is still under copyright, so we describe it here rather than post it.

In plain English

This New Yorker article, the first of a series, is investigative journalism, not a scientific study. It describes an amosite asbestos pipe-insulation factory in Tyler, Texas, owned by Pittsburgh Corning, which stopped production in February 1972. The author called five company and government surveys between 1963 and 1970 virtually meaningless, because they never described what the dust might do to workers' health. It also reported studies by Dr. Selikoff and others. In October 1971, a NIOSH inspection found that a hundred and seventeen of a hundred and thirty-eight air samples exceeded the recommended standard of five fibres longer than five microns per cubic centimetre of air. That inspection also found that seven of eighteen workers employed over ten years met at least three of four criteria for asbestosis. The inspectors wanted radiologists to review the X-rays before a definitive diagnosis. Company records showed eight hundred and ninety-five men had worked at the plant. Federal inspectors later proposed fines totalling two hundred and ten dollars. The author argued that the plant's story showed ignorance, laxity and lack of communication in government asbestos policy.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Investigative journalism (magazine article, first of a series) drawing on company, government and union documents, interviews, and studies by other researchers; not an original scientific study
• Who was studied: Workers at the amosite asbestos insulation factory in Tyler, Texas, opened by UNARCO in 1954 and sold to Pittsburgh Corning in 1962. Production stopped in February 1972. Company records showed eight hundred and ninety-five men had worked there at some time.
• Exposure: Airborne amosite asbestos dust in the manufacture of amosite pipe covering. The fibre was shipped from South Africa, and the product had an asbestos content of almost ninety per cent.
• Main results:
  • The author described five separate studies and inspections of the Tyler plant between July 1963 and January 1970. The author wrote that they reported dust and fibre counts but never what the dust and fibres might be doing to the workers' health.
  • In the NIOSH survey of October 1971, a hundred and seventeen of a hundred and thirty-eight air samples taken in the Tyler plant exceeded the recommended standard of five fibres longer than five microns per cubic centimetre of air.
  • The NIOSH team, comparing notes with Dr. Hurst, found that seven of the eighteen workers with more than ten years of employment at the plant met at least three of four criteria for asbestosis.
  • The NIOSH team also observed reduced pulmonary function in some workers employed at the plant for less than five years.
  • As reported in the article, a mortality study by Dr. Selikoff, Dr. Hammond and associates of men from the related Paterson factory was followed to June 30, 1971. It found twenty-five lung cancer deaths where two or three would have been normal.
  • After a later federal inspection, Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials listed the violations at the Tyler plant as nonserious and proposed fines totalling two hundred and ten dollars.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the Tyler plant's story was evidence of a tangle of ignorance, laxity and lack of communication in government policy toward occupational asbestos exposure.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • According to the article, the NIOSH team wanted the X-rays reviewed by an expert panel of radiologists before making a definitive diagnosis of asbestosis in individual workers.
  • According to the article, the NIOSH team made its asbestosis determinations without seeing the workers' X-rays.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Amosite, Pittsburgh Corning, NIOSH.

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