Mesothelioma Attorneys

A History of Callous Disregard

Asbestos has been known since ancient times - and so has the damage that it can cause. The first record of that damage comes not in 1897, as some sources note, but nearly two thousand years earlier. Pliny the Elder, the Roman philosopher and naturalist, suggested in the first century A.D. that slaves working in asbestos mines should wear 'respirators' made of thin animal skin to prevent the inhalation of asbestos dust to which he attributed deadly lung diseases.

Over the centuries, there has been no lack of evidence that exposure to asbestos results in lung disease and eventual death, yet the companies that made their profits from the use and sale of asbestos not only did nothing to protect their workers from the dangers, but actively hid those dangers from the general public and the government in order to continue profiting from the use of the deadly 'miracle fiber.'

It is that history of conspiracy and concealment that has prompted what some insurance industry spokespeople have termed 'obscenely high' judgments. The obscenity is not in the amount of the judgments, but rather in the callous disregard that the asbestos industry showed in their dealings with the public and their workers for over five decades. A survey of documents and testimony presented in court over the past few decades paints a chilling picture of an industry that put saving a few pennies ahead of the lives of those who worked for them and of the general public.

There are private memos, reports marked 'Confidential' and discussions of ways to "limit the damage" - not to the health of workers and their families, but to the profits of the company. Just a few selections from the annals of asbestos lawsuits show the kind of callous disregard that will cost approximately 5,000 people their lives this year alone.

The dangers of asbestos were well known as early as the 1940s, yet companies made no efforts to protect or warn workers about the dangers of exposure. In the case of asbestos exposure, the lament is not 'they should have known' but that they DID know - and actively conspired to keep the knowledge from the government, from their workers and from the public.

• In 1948, the Owens-Corning Glass Company learned from its lab department that a new product, Kaylo, produced 'fibrosis' typical of asbestosis in the lungs of laboratory animals. The lab director stated that the company "will be in a better position to institute adequate control measures to safeguard exposed employees." Instead, they advertised Kaylo as "light-weight, pleasant handling, non-irritating and non-toxic."
• In a report dated April 12, 1949, the research department of Standard Oil of New Jersey (later to become Exxon) listed contaminants present in the plant, along with their known hazards. Among them was listed 'silica and asbestos' conditions causing "silicosis, fiberosis, erythemia and cancer of the lungs." The report is stamped "Company Confidential - Not for Publication in Present Form." It was never released, and no safety measures were taken.
• In 1949, the Johns-Manville Corporation adopted a formal company policy to NOT tell company employees when their physicals indicated that they had asbestosis. Not only did they fail to warn their workers of the dangers of asbestos, they chose to conceal vital health information that might have allowed the workers to obtain treatment or prevent further damage by continued exposure.
• In 1964, the Philip Carey Manufacturing Company hired a doctor to investigate the effects of asbestos on its workers. Dr. Thomas Mancuso reported that,

  There is an irrefutable association between asbestos and cancer... There is suggestive evidence... for cancer of the stomach, colon and rectum also. There is substantial evidence that cancer and mesothelioma have developed in environmentally exposed groups, i.e., due to air pollution for groups living near asbestos plants and mines. Evidence has been established for cancer developing among members of the household. Mesotheliomas have developed among wives, laundering the work clothes of asbestos workers. Substantial evidence has been presented that slight and intermittent exposures may be sufficient to produce lung cancer and mesothelioma (Bowker, Michael. 2003. Fatal Deception: The Terrifying True Story of How Asbestos Is Killing America. pg. 171).

  The company's reaction was to fire Dr. Mancuso and bury the report.

The companies above are just a few of those that conspired to hide the dangers from their workers. The list of companies involved include such well-known names as Honeywell, Dow, Dupont, Travelers Insurance, Metropolitan Life, General Motors, Ford and General Electric. In some cases, they went so far as to neglect basic safety issues - which might have limited the harm done - to avoid 'alarming' employees and causing panic. Few companies, for instance, provided shower facilities and required their workers to shower and change clothing before leaving the plant, which would have reduced the exposure of family members.

By the 1970s, insurance companies realized that they were facing a major crisis that would cost them billions of dollars in damages. From the 1960s onward, there is memo after memo that refers to the confidential nature of any findings, settlements or information about asbestos. Nationally-known companies like Metropolitan Life scrambled to do damage control - not by insisting on safety standards being met, but by covering up the reports of damages and death.

It would be nice to believe that, once the government officially named asbestos as a hazardous pollutant and banned many of its uses, the cover-ups would end and the companies involved would cooperate in cleaning up after themselves. The indictment entered against the W.R. Grace Company in February of 2005 makes it clear that that has not been the case.

The indictment details over 20 years' worth of internal memos, studies and reports that make it clear that the management of the W.R. Grace Company knew without a doubt that their product was contaminated with asbestos and that asbestos caused mesothelioma, pleural plaques and other lung diseases.

Despite that knowledge, the W. R. Grace Company did not warn their workers or the community that they were being placed at risk. In fact, the company actively concealed the results of studies and research, edited the conclusions of reports, and refused permission for reports to be published that would have warned the community. Even more shocking is that the company, knowing that the materials were contaminated with asbestos, contributed mill tailings for elementary, junior high and high schools in the community to build running tracks and ice skating rinks - thus exposing many children to asbestos fibers in the air. Between 1976 and 1992, the company neglected to disclose the presence of asbestos in the vermiculite that they processed to the community, the government and the other companies with which they did business.

A study of Libby, Montana, where the W. R. Grace vermiculite mine is located, shows that the incidence of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases is at least 30% higher than in the general population. Reading the charges against the W.R. Grace Company in the indictment, with its dry, legal language, is an exercise in disbelief - yet the behavior of the Grace Company management team is typical of companies that used and produced asbestos-containing products.