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History of Asbestos
1890s – Asbestos, which previously had few industrial
uses, becomes a raw material for large manufacturing industries,
exposing large numbers of workers to asbestos dust for the
first time. Asbestos-caused disease often develops decades
after a person was first exposed. As a result, it was not
until the early 1900s that large numbers of workers developed
symptoms.
1918 – A Prudential Insurance Company official
notes that life insurance companies will not cover asbestos
workers, because of the "health-injurious conditions
of the industry.”
1930 – Major asbestos company Johns-Manville
produces report, for internal company use only, about medical
reports of asbestos worker fatalities.
1932 – Letter from U.S. Bureau of Mines to asbestos
manufacturer Eagle-Picher states: "It is now known that
asbestos dust is one of the most dangerous dusts to which
man is exposed."
1933 – Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. doctors
find that 29 percent of workers in a Johns-Manville plant
have asbestosis. Johns-Manville officials settle lawsuits
by 11 employees with asbestosis on the condition that the
employees' lawyer agree to never again "directly or indirectly
participate in the bringing of new actions against the Corporation."
1934 – Officials of two large asbestos companies,
Johns-Manville and Raybestos-Manhattan, edit an article about
the diseases of asbestos workers written by a Metropolitan
Life Insurance Company doctor. The changes minimize the danger
of asbestos dust.
1935 – Officials of Johns-Manville and Raybestos-Manhattan
instruct the editor of Asbestos magazine to publish nothing
about asbestosis.
1936 – A group of asbestos companies agrees to
sponsor research on the health effects of asbestos dust, but
require that the companies maintain complete control over
the disclosure of the results.
1942 – Internal Owens-Corning corporate memo
refer to "medical literature on asbestosis . . . . scores
of publications in which the lung and skin hazards of asbestos
are discussed."
1942 or 1943 – The president of Johns-Manville
says that the managers of another asbestos company were "a
bunch of fools for notifying employees who had asbestosis."
When one of the managers asks, "do you mean to tell me
you would let them work until they dropped dead?" The
response is reported to have been, "Yes. We save a lot
of money that way."
1951 – Asbestos companies remove all references
to cancer before allowing publication of research they sponsor.
1952 – Dr. Kenneth Smith, Johns-Manville medical
director, recommends (unsuccessfully) that warning labels
be attached to products containing asbestos. Later Smith testifies:
"It was a business decision as far as I could understand
. . . the corporation is in business to provide jobs for people
and make money for stockholders and they had to take into
consideration the effects of everything they did and if the
application of a caution label identifying a product as hazardous
would cut into sales, there would be serious financial implications.”
1953 – National Gypsum's safety director writes
to the Indiana Division of Industrial Hygiene, recommending
that acoustic plaster mixers wear respirators "because
of the asbestos used in the product." Another company
official notes that the letter is "full of dynamite,"
urges that it be retrieved before reaching its destination.
A memo in the files notes that the company "succeeded
in stopping" the letter, which "will be modified.”
1964 – Dr. Irving Selikoff publishes a study
of asbestos workers in the Journal of the American Medical
Association, proving that people who work with asbestos-containing
materials have an abnormal incidence of asbestosis, lung cancer,
and Mesothelioma.
1971 – First OSHA asbestos-exposure standard
issued.
1973 – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) bans spray-on asbestos insulation as an air pollution
hazard.
1978 – Judge rules there had been "a conscious
effort by the [asbestos] industry in the 1930s to downplay
or arguably suppress, the dissemination of information to
employees and the public for fear of the promotion of lawsuits.”
1979 – U.S. EPA announces intention to issue
rule that bans all uses of asbestos.
1986 – OSHA tightens asbestos-exposure standard.
1989 – The U.S. EPA bans asbestos in most of
its major uses, but in………
1991 – Asbestos companies win federal lawsuit,
court revokes EPA's 1989 asbestos ban.
1994 – OSHA tightens asbestos-exposure standard.
1999
– Florida Supreme Court rules that Owens Corning willfully
withheld information about the danger of working with the
company's asbestos products: "It would be difficult to
envision a more egregious set of circumstances . . . . a blatant
disregard for human safety involving large numbers of people
put at life-threatening risk.”
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