Dust diseases and the legacy of corporate manipulation of science and law

Abstract

Background:

The dust diseases silicosis and asbestosis were the first occupational diseases to have widespread impact on workers. Knowledge that asbestos and silica were hazardous to health became public several decades after the industry knew of the health concerns. This delay was largely influenced by the interests of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife) and other asbestos mining and product manufacturing companies.

Objectives:

To understand the ongoing corporate influence on the science and politics of asbestos and silica exposure, including litigation defense strategies related to historical manipulation of science.

Methods:

We examined previously secret corporate documents, depositions and trial testimony produced in litigation; as well as published literature.

Results:

Our analysis indicates that companies that used and produced asbestos have continued and intensified their efforts to alter the asbestos–cancer literature and utilize dust-exposure standards to avoid liability and regulation. Organizations of asbestos product manufacturers delayed the reduction of permissible asbestos exposures by covering up the link between asbestos and cancer. Once the decline of the asbestos industry in the US became inevitable, the companies and their lawyers designed the state of the art (SOA) defense to protect themselves in litigation and to maintain sales to developing countries.

Conclusions:

Asbestos product companies would like the public to believe that there was a legitimate debate surrounding the dangers of asbestos during the twentieth century, particularly regarding the link to cancer, which delayed adequate regulation. The asbestos–cancer link was not a legitimate contestation of science; rather the companies directly manipulated the scientific literature. There is evidence that industry manipulation of scientific literature remains a continuing problem today, resulting in inadequate regulation and compensation and perpetuating otherwise preventable worker and consumer injuries and deaths.

Keywords:

• asbestos
• mesothelioma
• state-of-the-art
• corporate corruption
• MetLife
• industry knowledge

Notes

I By the 1950s, Lanza was retired from MetLife but served on the IHF board of trustees and was a member of the IHF Research Advisory Council. He was a professor and later Director of the Institute of Industrial Medicine at New York University from 1947 to 1960, and maintained an official affiliation with MetLife until at least December 1948.²⁹ He still actively consulted for the companies and lobbied on behalf of continued use of asbestos. He was involved in the firing of Vorwald by Saranac Lab in 1953 and fired Dr. W.E. Smith at NYU for his interest in industrial carcinogens, particularly asbestos, in 1956.²⁹ W.C. Heuper of the National Cancer Institute wrote to NYU in 1955 complaining of Lanza’s influence on his research on chromates and cancer: Due to these lobbying activities of Dr. Lanza, not only my field studies have come to an end since 1951 but there was for some time serious interference even with my experimental work in the field of occupational cancer because I was not able to continue for some time my cooperative work with the Mutual Chemical Company on blood reactions in chromate manufacturers. It was only after a long delay that I finally succeeded in reactivating this problem… It is my belief, however, that through the intervention of Dr. Lanza, not only the interest of American industries with cancer hazards to workers employed in these industries, but of the American people at large, and of the American medical profession, was seriously damaged.^{(W.C. Heuper (National Cancer Institute) to W.E. Smith (NYU) August 24, 1955.)}

II There were a few pre-1971 exceptions where the federal government adopted a TLV in specific circumstances. A 1952 addition to the Walsh–Healy Public Contracts Act included a 5 mppcf asbestos TLV that applied to workers for government contractors with Federal Supply Contracts. The Department of Labor adopted the 5 mppcf standard for employers by 1960 (under the Longshoremen’s Act). These were not enforced. ²²

III Each copy of the report was numbered (we have “restricted copy 27”) and the companies’ practice was to ask that all the drafts be returned.³²

IV A few weeks later, another physician George Trimble wrote to JAMA and contested Johnstone’s assertion.³⁵ Johnstone rebutted Trimble, citing an absence of epidemiologic evidence.³⁶

V Between 1970 and 1974, ACGIH only had a notice of intent to change the TLV to 5 f/cc.²⁹

VI As elucidated in Borel v. Fibreboard Paper Products Corp. 493 F.2d 1076. No. 72-1492, September 10, 1973 “..the manufacturer is held to the knowledge and skill of an expert. This is relevant in determining (1) whether the manufacturer knew or should have known the danger, and (2) whether the manufacturer was negligent in failing to communicate this superior knowledge to the user or consumer of its product. The manufacturer's status as expert means that at a minimum he must keep abreast of scientific knowledge, discoveries, and advances and is presumed to know what is imparted thereby. But even more importantly, a manufacturer has a duty to test and inspect his product. The extent of research and experiment must be commensurate with the dangers involved. A product must not be made available to the public without disclosure of those dangers that the application of reasonable foresight would reveal. Nor may a manufacturer rely unquestioningly on others to sound the hue and cry concerning a danger in its product. Rather, each manufacturer must bear the burden of showing that its own conduct was proportionate to the scope of its duty”.

VII Scientific doubt continued in a new form in the 1990s when the defendants began to use scientists to argue that some forms of asbestos (whichever asbestos form they used) had not been “proven” to cause mesothelioma.^57–59

VIII In the case of joint compounds, Kaiser Gypsum actually studied contemporaneous exposures (in 1974) and found that they exceeded the OSHA PEL.¹¹⁸

IX As an example, see New York Times reports on Zyprexa: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/business/17drug.html?pagewanted = all