What Asbestos Companies Knew or Should Have Known

Asbestos exposure has been the greatest tragedy ever to hit American workers: it kills approximately 10,000 Americans every year. Some companies that once made asbestos-containing products sometimes claim that they were unaware of the risks of asbestos and did not know that their products would kill and injure people. They argue that, if they did not actually know about the dangers of their products, they should not be held responsible for the harm their asbestos products caused to generations of Americans. But according to the law in most states, manufacturers have a duty to the public to know the risk of their products and take measures to protect the public from those risks.

The law says that manufacturers are treated as experts on their products. They are assumed to know anything that the scientific community knows relevant to their products; they are expected to test their products, and they are required to make their products safe or to warn about the dangers so consumers can take steps to protect themselves. Manufacturers are in the best position to investigate potential dangers of their products and to make them safe. But if they were responsible only for the dangers they actually knew about, there would be no incentive for them to investigate and recognize hazards in their products. They would be better off knowing nothing, and the people injured by their products would pay the price. Companies cannot be allowed to profit from ignoring potential hazards of the products they sell to the public.

So what was known about the risk of asbestos and when was it known? In 1898, British factory inspectors recognized the asbestos exposure was a health risk for workers. More than 100 years ago, in 1906, a London physician found asbestos fibers in the lungs of a worker who died from pulmonary fibrosis—scarring in his lungs. And in 1912, scientists used animal studies to show that asbestos inhalation causes pulmonary fibrosis. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 1918 the “unusually high death rate” among asbestos workers.

By the 1920s, asbestosis was receiving increased attention from scientists. A series of papers appeared in British Medical Journal in 1924 on asbestosis—the disease named for the mineral that causes it. In 1930, two scientists, Drs. Merewether and Price, published a historic report on the asbestos textile industry and found a “definite occupational risk among asbestos workers as a class.” Highlights from the Merewether and Lewis report were republished in two prominent medical journals, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and Lancet, including the astounding finding that “80% of asbestos workers employed for 20 years or more develop asbestosis.”

In the 1930s, scientists began to connect asbestos and cancer. Following the publication of several articles between 1933 and 1936 connecting asbestos exposure with cancer, German physicians identified lung cancer as an occupational disease of asbestos workers in 1938. And by 1945—more than 60 years ago—it was accepted by the medical and scientific communities “in all countries” that asbestos is a carcinogen. In 1955, an important study showed that asbestos exposure increases a worker’s risk of lung cancer ten times. The link between mesothelioma and asbestos was reported in 1960.

Finally, in 1964, Dr. Irving Selikoff presented a now famous study of insulators at a well-attended conference in New York City. This study broke through the scientific and medical community and brought the scientific information about the health hazards of asbestos straight into the popular press. By that date, however, there were already over 700 articles in the medical and scientific literature on the health effects of asbestos.

Despite what was known about the dangers of asbestos exposure, world-wide asbestos mining and production grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s until it reached a peak of 45,000,000 tons around 1980. Maybe even more shocking, world-wide asbestos mining and production in 2000 was more than 20,000,000 tons—higher than it was in 1960.

The truth is, many asbestos manufacturers knew a good deal about the risk of asbestos exposure but tried very hard to keep that information private. Some companies paid for scientific research but claimed ownership of it to prevent its publication, for example. Some companies “requested” that any information on the hazards be kept confidential and not published. Other companies decided to take what Johns-Manville called an “ostrich-like attitude which has been evidenced from time to time by some members of the Industry”—in other words, choosing to hide their heads in the sand and ignore the risks their products could cause. But none of these companies was innocent.

Asbestos workers and their families understandably were not looking for articles on asbestos in JAMA and Lancet, but the asbestos companies were, or certainly should have been. With more than 700 articles available in the medical and scientific literature before 1964, it would be bad policy indeed to reward companies for ignoring this evidence, to the extent they did or could. And the law will not reward companies for taking an “ostrich-like attitude.” Companies owe it to the public to look for information on their products, to know the dangers, and to make those products safe or warn consumers of the risk. The question we should ask is not simply what did the manufacturers actually know, but rather what did scientists and experts know? What should the manufacturers have known to satisfy their duty to the public?

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