The Asbestos Coverup: "Let 'Em Work, Then They Can Rest In Peace"

Dr Anthony Lanza had quite an impressive career. Amongst many things, he discovered the cause of the lung disease, silicosis, and founded the discipline of industrial hygiene, making workplace environments more safe for employees. He was also a beloved teacher and researcher at New York University in the final years of his career. What a guy. But when he died in 1964, Dr Lanza's far less laudatory secret career came to light and he had a lot of haters.

Over the last 2 episodes of our asbestos series, we’ve heard about the miracle of asbestos and the horrors of asbestos. But when did we learn how bad the stuff was?

In Ancient Roman times, Pliny the Elder recommended not to buy asbestos mine slaves because they died pretty young. (Good advice I guess ??). So maybe they knew a thing or two back then. But let’s fast forward to more modern times because that’s when the health risks associated with asbestos started emerging in the academic and medical literature.

The first asbestosis death that was officially linked to asbestos exposure was in 1924. A few other asbestos-related deaths were happening around that time too so in 1929, asbestos companies commissioned our friend Dr. Lanza to run an industrial hygiene survey of several of their asbestos plants and factories.

After conducting a bunch of physical examinations and X-rays, Dr Lanza found that asbestosis was rife in the workers. But instead of gently breaking the news to them that they would die a slow, horrible death, he decided it was better to not tell them anything and instead tell the executives. Hmmm. Maybe not so nice.

Later, Dr Kenneth Smith was working at one of the big asbestos companies, Johns-Manville, and a bunch of workers with early signs of asbestosis came to see him. What did he do? Well, he told the company executives to hide the results from the workers, for their own good of course. And because he really cared about the worker’s well-being, he suggested the executives purchase a shredding machine to destroy any ‘confidential’ correspondence. Dr Smith then became the medical director at Johns Manville. He was a keeper.

So, by 1943, big asbestos companies knew that asbestosis was definitely a thing. But how bad was it? They decided to commission Dr Lanza again, but this time to do an animal trial.

The study showed that 81.8% of the mice they experimented on developed lung tumours upon asbestos exposure.

However, that study was considered inconclusive (81.8%!) and much too problematic to take to the public. Better destroy the study altogether and say everything’s fine. Just smile and wave.

A bit further down the track, the asbestos industry was forced to put warning labels on bags and crates of asbestos. And they did. In the smallest font they possibly could. And when sending crates of asbestos overseas, they just removed the warning label altogether.

It wasn’t until 1964, some 40 years after the official recorded death, at Irving Selikoff’s international conference on the Biological Effects of Asbestos that the link between asbestos exposure and cancer was firmly established.

And in 1978,18 years later, a series of documents from the asbestos companies came to light. They were described by a bunch of lawyers as being like the Pentagon papers for the asbestos industry, revealing studies they had done, what they knew about the dangers and what they had done to cover it up.

No doubt the asbestos executives regretted not buying a shredder.

PREVIOUS EPISODES MENTIONED:

SOURCES: