There is incontrovertible evidence that asbestos exposure causes asbestosis, mesothelioma, and other life-threatening diseases. There is also irrefutable evidence that, since the early 1900s, the asbestos industry has been fully aware that there is a definite link between asbestos and cancer.

Additionally, there is compelling evidence that the asbestos industry chose to protect its profits rather than release this information to the general public. Some of this evidence can be found in what is known as “The Sumner Simpson Papers.”

The Saranac laboratory is hired to investigate the effects of asbestos dust

The Saranac Laboratory, located in the Adirondack Mountains region of upstate New York, had been investigating dust since the early 1920s. In 1936, several asbestos companies jointly funded Saranac to conduct research to they. They subsequently renewed their annual contract with Saranac Laboratory for the next ten years.

Part of what Saranac discovered was that there was a link between asbestos exposure and cancer.

In January 1947 the companies that financed Saranac’s research met.

It has been found that the companies decided that “there would be no publication of the research of experiments without consent”, and that whatever was published “would not include any objectionable material”. They specifically referred to “any relationship between asbestos and cancer.”

The conglomerate that funded Saranac agreed that “the reference to cancer and tumors should be removed” from the report. Consequently, when Saranac’s report on his dust experiments was published, the evidence that asbestos exposure was linked to cancer was suppressed.

The Sumner Simpson Papers

From the 1930s through the 1940s, Sumner Simpson was president of Raybestos-Manhattan, Inc.

In 1935, in correspondence with a Johns-Manville Corporation attorney, Vandiver Brown, Simpson, commenting on the asbestos industry, wrote “the less asbestos is talked about, the better off we are.”

Simpson also lobbied commercial industry publications to follow the dictates of asbestos industry decisions. The editor of Asbestos Magazine wrote Simpson a letter in 1939 in which, referring to asbestosis, he said: “He has always requested that for certain obvious reasons we not publish anything and, of course, his wishes have been respected.”

In 1941, Vandiver Brown, who had become a corporate officer for the Johns-Manville Corporation, wrote: “I felt that there was a considerable probability that some subscribers would not like an article on this subject in the trade magazine of the asbestos industry. -Attitude similar to that which has been evidenced from time to time by members of the industry. “

The corporate cover-up continued for decades.

How did the asbestos industry feel about its workers?

How the industry felt for its workers was probably best summed up in a 1966 paper written by Bendix Corporation’s Director of Purchasing, EA Martin. In it he said:

“My answer to the problem is: if you’ve had a good life while working with asbestos products, why not die from it? There has to be some cause.”