White Asbestos Controversy: Chrysophiles vs Chrysophobes Debate 1950s-2004

Chrysophiles versus Chrysophobes: The White Asbestos Controversy, 1950s–2004
Author(s): G e o f f r e y Tweedale and Jo ck McCulloch

Source: Isis, Vol. 95, No. 2 (June 2004), pp. 239-259
Published by: The Univ ersity o f Chicago Press on behalf o f The H i st o r y o f Science Society
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Chrysophiles versus Chrysophobes
The White Asbestos Controversy, 1950s–2004
By Geoffrey Tweedale* and Jock McCulloch**
ABSTRACT
In the first half of the twentieth century, asbestos was a controversial mineral because of
its association with asbestosis and asbestos-related lung cancer. It has proved no less so
since the 1960s, when another asbestos cancer, mesothelioma, was identified.
Mesotheli-oma appeared to be more strongly linked with blue asbestos (crocidolite)
than with the other asbestos varieties, brown (amosite) and white (chrysotile). This
finding triggered a fierce debate between “chrysophiles” (those who declared
chrysotile innocuous) and “chrysophobes” (those who believed it was a mortal hazard).
This essay attempts the first history of the chrysotile controversy, which shows that a
scientific consensus on the safety of white asbestos was very slow to emerge. This was
only partly due to the complexities of
scientific research. Political, economic, and social factors have militated against a speedy
resolution of the debate, facilitating the continued production and use of asbestos in the
developing world.
I N 1991 THE POPULAR MAGAZINE Science welcomed its readers to the world of
asbestos research—“a world riven by deep fissures and bitter disputes . . . where science
and the law interact in a slew of multimillion-dollar lawsuits . . . [and] where scientists
with opposing views no longer seem able to talk to each other at a scientific level.” The
journal was alluding to two recent conferences on asbestos: the first, held at Harvard in
* Centre for Business History, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, Aytoun Street, Man-
chester M1 3GH, United Kingdom.
** School of Social Science and Planning, RMIT University, City Campus, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne,
3001, Victoria, Australia.
In researching this article, we drew extensively on documents produced in legal discovery in America. Of
particular relevance is the Turner & Newall collection, produced in Chase Manhattan Bank v. T&N (87 Civ.
4436, Judge J. G. Koeltl), U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, 27 Oct.–6 Dec. 1995. A
microfilm copy of the T&N collection (as copied by Chase) is held at Manchester Metropolitan University
Business School, United Kingdom. Documents from this collection are referenced in this essay as T&N
microfilm archive, with reel/frame numbers. In addition, we had access to a treasure trove of unpublished
documents on the Canadian asbestos industry, which was generously copied to us on DVD by David Egilman,
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. We hold copies of all the documents cited in the article. Finally,
we must thank Morris Greenberg, who kindly cast an expert medical eye over an early draft. Any errors that
remain are our own; so are the views expressed. Geoffrey Tweedale has no competing interests; Jock
McCulloch was a consultant for plaintiffs’ attorneys in Lubbe v. Cape plc (2000).
Isis, 2004, 95:239–259

q 2004 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.
0021-1753/2004/9502-0003$10.00
239
240 CHRYSOPHILES VERSUS CHRYSOPHOBES
December 1988, addressed “Health Aspects of Exposure to Asbestos in Buildings”;

the second, which took place in New York in June 1990, considered the “Third
Wave of Asbestos Disease.”1
Superficially, the conferences had much in common. Both were attended by leading
scientists in the field and were concerned with evaluating the hazard posed by asbestos in
the environment, especially in offices and schools. None of the participants questioned
whether asbestos was potentially a serious health risk: it was acknowledged that inhaling
asbestos fibers could cause asbestosis (lung scarring), lung cancer (originating in the lining
of the airways of the lungs), mesothelioma (a virulent cancer of the lining of the chest or
abdomen), and possibly other cancers. Nor did they doubt that asbestos-related disease
(ARD) was incurable and often fatal. At that point, however, agreement ended. In fact,
the conferences sent the public and the scientific community widely differing
messages: according to the Harvard symposium, the danger posed by asbestos in
buildings was negligible; the New York meeting, on the other hand, flagged asbestos in
the environment as a serious hazard and warned that ARD could harm thousands of
construction workers, office staff, and schoolteachers. The discussion was polarized in
another way, reflecting these opposing conclusions: the participants at the two
conferences were so hostile that they did not attend each other’s meetings. The divisions
and bitterness were symptomatic of the fraught social and political atmosphere
generated by widely publicized disputes in America over the costs and benefits of
cleaning up environmental contamination from asbestos.
Fundamental to this hostility was a disagreement about which type of fiber caused
ARD—a reflection of the fact that asbestos is not a single entity.2 “Asbestos” is a generic
name given to a group of fibrous minerals. Two main types exist: serpentine and amphibole.
Chrysotile (or white asbestos) is the only member of the serpentine group and is mined
mainly in Russia, Canada, China, Brazil, and Zimbabwe. The amphibole group includes,
inter alia, two important commercial grades of asbestos—amosite (brown) and crocidolite
(blue). Chrysotile has been the most widely used commercial grade, accounting for over
90 percent of asbestos usage in the twentieth century. The Harvard
conference participants emphasized the ubiquity of chrysotile and claimed that, unlike
amphiboles, it neither in-duced mesothelioma nor, with proper safeguards, caused
asbestosis or lung cancer. Con-versely, “Third Wave” scientists argued that chrysotile,
besides causing asbestosis, was an undoubted carcinogen, quite capable of causing
mesothelioma as well as lung cancer.
Fourteen years later, much of the heat generated by the asbestos-in-
buildings controversy has dissipated, at least in the United States. But asbestos remains
the most controversial and feared of the industrial minerals. Most countries in the
developed world have virtually banned its manufacture, though they still have to come to
terms with its legacy of litigation, bankrupted companies, and rising morbidity and
mortality from ARD. In the United States, such has been the explosion in litigation that
there have been demands for congressional
1
Richard Stone, “No Meeting of Minds on Asbestos,” Science, 15 Nov. 1991, 254:928–931, on p. 928. The
“first wave” of ARD was caused by occupational exposure to asbestos; the “second wave” was caused by
indirect occupational exposure (such as in the construction trades); and the “third wave” is due to
exposure in the environment (among, e.g., office staff and housewives exposed to dusty overalls).
2
Asbestos fibers, after processing from the host ore, can be used in a variety of products (textiles, cement,
brake linings, insulation products) that take advantage of the valuable properties of asbestos: high tensile strength,
flexibility, resistance to chemicals and high temperatures, and high electrical resistance. See Catherine W. Skinner,
Malcolm Ross, and Clifford Frondel, Asbestos and Other Fibrous Minerals (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1988).
GEOFFREY TWEEDALE AND JOCK MCCULLOCH 241
action. Meanwhile, European countries are projected to suffer an epidemic of ARD

that could eventually kill half a million people. Asbestos remains an environmental
concern, given its pervasiveness in buildings and engineering products.
The controversy with regard to fiber type is also very much alive; the contention that
chrysotile—unlike amphiboles—presents no danger if the proper precautions are taken
is now used to justify the continued production and use of asbestos in the developing
world. With the end of world amphibole production in South Africa in 1996, chrysotile
is now the only type of asbestos available. In 2002, world production was 1.9 million
tonnes, with Russia, China, Canada, and Kazakhstan the leading suppliers. Most output
is targeted at countries in Latin America, Asia, and the Far East, which use products that
are no longer tolerated in nations that belong to the Organisation for Economic Co-
operation and De-velopment. The rationale for the continued use of asbestos rests
heavily on the argument that was advanced so vigorously by some scientists in the
1980s: that white asbestos can be used safely and should therefore be a prized
mineral—especially in the developing world, where any health risks are outweighed by
the benefits offered by products such as asbestos-cement water pipes. But critics still
counter that chrysotile is a menace, that there is no safe threshold of exposure, and that
production in the developing world, where safety measures are typically lax, is
irresponsible. The debate has been characterized, by a par-ticipant, as one between
“chrysophiles” and “chrysophobes.”3 The argument, which has lasted for more than
thirty years, remains bitter; as the asbestos industry struggles for survival, it is the
contested area in asbestos epidemiology.
The resultant literature is enormous and its appraisal difficult—especially for laypeople.
Inevitably, the debate has spilled into the medico-legal and political arenas, generating yet
more documentation and increasing the problems of evaluation. One
physician has written: “Various exposés have been published, but a historian’s account
remains to be written of the conduct of these [chrysotile] battles, as does the extent to
which the scientists’ differ-ences were exploited.” This essay attempts such a history—
the first that has been written, as far as we are aware. We explain how the debate over
the safety of chrysotile arose and describe the opposing viewpoints and the main events
in the controversy. As historians, we have not attempted to provide a scientific “answer”
as to whether chrysotile is a “safe” fiber, though we do show the slow emergence of a
scientific consensus (which we regard as compelling) that views chrysotile in a far
from favorable light. We also illuminate a fact that is not always apparent from the
medical literature or official pronouncements: that political and economic factors have
shaped the scientific debate at critical points. This focus connects our work to a growing
literature in the history of occupational medicine, which emphasizes how corporate
control over scientific research has influenced both the scientific process and
government efforts at environmental protection.4
3
J. C. McDonald, “Unfinished Business: The Asbestos Textiles Mystery,” Annals of Occupational Hygiene,
1998, 42:3–5, on p. 3. For the figures see Canadian Minerals Yearbook (2002),
www.nrcan.gc.ca/mms/cmy/ content/2002/20.pdf.
4
M. Greenberg, “Dust Exposure and Mortality in Chrysotile Mining, 1910–76” [letter], Journal of Occupa-
tional and Environmental Medicine, 1994, 51:431. For work in the history of occupational medicine see, e.g.,
Ronald Bayer, ed., The Health and Safety of Workers: Case Studies in the Politics of Professional
Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988); Claudia Clark, Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health
Reform, 1910– 1935 (Chapel Hill: Univ. North Carolina Press, 1997); David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz,
Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991); Samuel S. Epstein, The Politics of Cancer Revisited (New York: East Ridge,
1998); Stanton A. Glantz, John Slade, Lisa A. Bero, Peter Hanauer, and Deborah E. Barnes, The Cigarette
Papers (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 1996); Markowitz and Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly
Politics of Industrial
BIRTH OF THE AMPHIBOLE HYPOTHESIS
Until the 1950s, scientists recognized little difference between asbestos types as
regards their ability to cause ARD (though apparently asbestos workers noted
differences in fiber toxicity as early as 1932).5 When asbestosis emerged as a significant
occupational hazard in the United States and Britain in the 1920s, it was found to
occur among workers at factories that processed all types of fiber. In South Africa at
that time, asbestosis was also a known risk in chrysotile mines. Asbestos-related lung
cancer was seen with increasing frequency between the 1930s and 1950s at mines and
factories that produced and processed blue, brown, and white asbestos. Industry-
sponsored animal experiments at the Saranac Laboratory in upstate New York during the
1930s suggested that all types of asbestos could induce fibrosis.6
By 1960 malignant mesothelioma had been identified in the blue asbestos fields of the
northern Cape by a team of South African researchers that included J.
Christopher Wagner (1923–2001). This work implicated crocidolite as the agent of
disease. According to Wag-ner, who was to become a key figure in future asbestos
debates, “This was the first time that a specific type of asbestos had been
incriminated.”7 It also launched the belief that blue asbestos was the deadliest fiber and
that it was mainly—perhaps entirely—respon-sible for mesothelioma, a view that would
later be dubbed the “amphibole hypothesis.” In South Africa, where almost all the
world’s crocidolite was produced, this condemnation threatened the mining industry.
Whereas asbestosis was typically confined to the work-place, mesothelioma could be
contracted from nonoccupational and environmental expo-sure. This meant that asbestos-
based products were themselves potentially hazardous. The birth of environmental
movements in the United States and Western Europe during the early 1960s spawned
an anti-asbestos lobby that drew public attention to the threat of mesothelioma. One
repercussion was that Wagner’s research attracted such criticism from the mining
industry that he became unemployable in South Africa. In 1962 he emigrated to the
United Kingdom and joined the government’s Pneumoconiosis Research Unit (PRU) in
South Wales.
Mesothelioma was scarcely less of a threat to the U.K. asbestos industry, for by the
mid 1960s the media had dubbed asbestos a “killer dust.” On the other hand, the U.K.
industry was mostly a chrysotile (and amosite) user, with crocidolite playing only a
minor role.8
Pollution (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 2002); Robert N. Proctor, Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What
We Know and Don’t Know about Cancer (New York: Basic, 1995); and Christopher C. Sellers, Hazards of the
Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science (Chapel Hill: Univ. North Carolina Press, 1997).
5
Reginald Tage, a trade unionist at the Cape Asbestos Company in the United Kingdom, raised the issue as
to whether “amphibole asbestos has a greater risk factor to the employees than the serpentine varieties”: Reginald
Tage to Sir T. Legge, 25 Jan. 1932, MSS 292/144.3/6, University of Warwick Modern Records Centre, United
Kingdom. The Cape company physician, meanwhile, observed that workers believed that the amphiboles (blue
asbestos and brown asbestos) were more hazardous than chrysotile. See H. Wyers, “That Legislative Measures
Have Proved Generally Effective in the Control of Asbestosis” (M.D. thesis, Glasgow Univ., 1946), p. 48.
6
B. Dewey (Dewey & Almy Chemical Company) to Manfred Bowditch, 19 Feb. 1938.
7
Christopher Wagner, “Disputes on the Safety of Asbestos,” New Scientist, 7 Mar. 1974, pp. 606–609, on
p. 606.
8
In the twentieth century Britain imported 150,000 tons of crocidolite, 600,000 tons of amosite, and 5
million tons of chrysotile. In 1964 the United Kingdom imported 7,500 tons of crocidolite (used mostly in car
batteries and asbestos cement), 22,500 tons of amosite, and 154,000 tons of chrysotile. See Ministry of Labour
and HM Factory Inspectorate, Problems Arising from the Use of Asbestos: Memorandum of the
Senior Medical Inspector’s Advisory Panel (London: HMSO, 1967), p. 8. In comparison, in 1973 America
used 18,000 tons of crocidolite, 4,000 tons of amosite, and 840,000 tons of chrysotile. See Irving J. Selikoff
and Douglas H. K. Lee, Asbestos and Disease (New York: Academic Press, 1978), p. 56.
Crocidolite was seized by the industry as the culprit—and, ironically, the cure—for its
problems. In 1968 leading producer Turner & Newall told one worried purchaser that
its products were made from white asbestos, which “has not been similarly implicated
[in mesothelioma]. Once again I do not think your customer runs any risk in this
connection.” By 1969 the U.K. asbestos industry had voluntarily ceased importing
crocidolite, though this was partly because the government had introduced more
stringent regulations on asbestos. It remained legal to produce all types of asbestos;
however, the dust controls required for crocidolite were much tighter than those for
chrysotile and amosite, thus making blue asbestos uneconomical to produce.
Crocidolite was enshrined in British law as officially the most dangerous fiber.9
In practice, the distinction between chrysotile and crocidolite was misleading. In the
same way that the terms “white,” “blue,” and “brown” are not accurate descriptions of
fiber color, the geological distinction between the types was often blurred. For example,
the mine at Penge in South Africa’s northern province was the world’s only source of
amosite. Yet the amosite was invariably mixed with crocidolite, so that in fact both fiber
types were processed together in the mills—and, of course, anyone using amosite down-
stream was inadvertently using crocidolite as well. Similarly, “pure” chrysotile often con-
tained small amounts of amphibole, such as tremolite. Asbestos could also be found as a
constituent in other potentially hazardous minerals, particularly silicates, such as talc. This
inevitably confounded medical studies on health effects. Production processes further
blurred the distinction between fiber types. Asbestos-cement products, such as pressure
pipes and long-span sheeting, traditionally used white asbestos, but these would warp if
taken from the mold “green,” or not set. The addition of crocidolite to chrysotile
asbestos cement, however, made it possible to work “green-strength” materials. The
Eastern bloc countries, especially, used large quantities of crocidolite as a kind of
“broad-spectrum antibiotic” to enhance the quality of inferior Russian white asbestos.10
Determining the toxicity of asbestos by fiber type was complex for other reasons. Major
problems were posed by the extended latency of ARD (with mesotheliomas usually oc-
curring only thirty or forty years, or even longer, after exposure), its relative rarity in the
general population, the lack of information about dust exposure that had occurred many
decades earlier, and the fact that exposure was usually to a mixture of fiber types.
Another conundrum was
that mesotheliomas were soon apparent among workers in Canadian chrys-otile mines and
among asbestos workers and end users in America, where white asbestos had been
mostly used. According to Irving Selikoff, the doyen of U.S. asbestos experts, only
trivial amounts of amphiboles were imported into the United States before the 1940s. Was
it likely, some wondered, that all the mesotheliomas were due to these small quantities of
crocidolite? In 1964 scientists attending an international meeting in New York refused to
believe “that only this type of fibre [crocidolite] is concerned with these tumours.” In
9
S. Holmes to Griffin & George, Ltd., 22 Apr. 1968, T&N microfilm archive, 15/1355; and Geoffrey Tweedale,
Magic Mineral to Killer Dust: Turner & Newall and the Asbestos Hazard, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,
2001), p. 207.
10
Jock McCulloch was given information about the mixing of amosite and crocidolite by former miners during
a visit to Penge in November 2002. On the amphibole in “pure” chrysotile see A. Churg and B. Wiggs, “Fiber
Size and Number in Workers Exposed to Processed Chrysotile Asbestos, Chrysotile Miners, and the General
Population,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1986, 9:143–152; and Churg, “Chrysotile, Tremolite,
and Malignant Mesothelioma in Man,” Chest, 1988, 93:621–628. The problem of warping was discussed in
Jock McCulloch, interview with Pat Hart, CEO, Griqualand Exploration & Finance Company, Braamfontein,
Johannesburg, 6 July 2001; the addition of crocidolite as a “broad-spectrum antibiotic” is noted in McCulloch,
interview with Hart, 7 July 1999.
Britain experts agreed that, as regards mesothelioma, “it is highly improbable that only
one type of fibre is always responsible.” Scientific studies appeared to provide some
con-firmation for this skeptical view, especially those that focused on groups—
such as asbestos textile workers and brake mechanics—that had experienced only
chrysotile exposure. These studies suggested that chrysotile could cause mesothelioma.11
Wagner believed that the uncertainty might be resolved by animal experiments, which
he began as soon as he arrived in South Wales. By 1969 he had inoculated asbestos into
the pleura of rats and triggered mesothelioma. These complex and time-consuming ex-
periments were continued both by Wagner and by other researchers around the world,
though they were particularly favored in the United
Kingdom, where funding was available from the government and the asbestos industry.
However, the initial results were unhelpful for the industry and raised as many questions
as they answered. According to one physi-cian: “In spite of negative laboratory tests
for [chemical] carcinogenicity, all the animal inhalation and injection studies indicated
that all fibres were equally dangerous, which supported the blanket restriction or
banning of asbestos, but cast doubt on the safety of substitutes like glass fiber.”
Chrysotile seemed as potent a carcinogen as crocidolite.12
This conflicted with the clinical evidence of ARD in humans, which seemed to show
that crocidolite was mainly responsible for mesothelioma. Wagner himself was inclined to
discount the laboratory work as “misleading” and saw no reason for a blanket ban on
asbestos: “the discovery that certain types are more dangerous than others has been a
great advantage in permitting a switch from the more dangerous to the less dangerous
prod-ucts.”13 This outlook was congenial to the biggest asbestos companies, because
the bulk of their profits accrued from chrysotile. For the time being crocidolite mining
continued, as it still offered financial rewards, as did the mining and use of amosite; but
the chrysotile producers were now in the ascendant as world asbestos usage rose toward
its peak of about 5 million tonnes in 1975. The leading companies, which had often
cooperated to solve the technical problems related to milling and packaging, now had
a second and far more compelling reason for cooperation. In a bid to survive the health
scares of the mid 1960s, the industry shared information to counter medical evidence of
health risks and to protect itself against trade unions, social movements, and
governments that sought to curtail the use of asbestos. Chrysotile producers in Canada,
Southern Rhodesia, and elsewhere formed a united front against amphibole asbestos.
11
I. J. Selikoff to Marie Ehrmann, 31 July 1973; International Union Against Cancer, “Report and Recom-
mendations of the Working Group on Asbestos and Cancer,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1965,
132:706–721, on p. 711; and J. C. Gilson, “Asbestos Cancer: Past and Future Hazards,” Proceedings of the
Royal Society of Medicine, 1973, 66:395–403. For studies suggesting that chrysotile could cause
mesothelioma see A. D. McDonald, A. Harper, O. A. El Attar, and J. C. McDonald, “Epidemiology of
Primary Malignant Mesothelial Tumors in Canada,” Cancer, 1970, 26:914–919; M. Borow, A. Conston, and
L. Livornese, “Mes-othelioma Following Exposure to Asbestos: A Review of Seventy-two Cases,” Chest,
1973, 64:641–646; and M. Greenberg and T. A. Lloyd Davies, “Mesothelioma Register, 1967–68,” British
Journal of Industrial Medi-cine, 1974, 31:91–104.
12
Peter Elmes, “Conflicts in the Evidence of the Health Effects of Mineral Fibres,” in Mineral Fibers and
Health, ed. Douglas Liddell and Klara Miller (Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 1991), pp. 322–335, on p. 328.
For Wagner’s experiments see J. C. Wagner and G. Berry, “Mesothelioma in Rats Following Inoculation with
As-bestos,” British Journal of Cancer, 1969, 23:578–581; J. C. Wagner, Berry, and V. Timbrell,
“Mesotheliomata in Rats after Inoculation with Asbestos and Other Minerals,” ibid., 1973, 28:173–185; and J.
C. Wagner, Berry, J. W. Skidmore, and Timbrell, “The Effects of the Inhalation of Asbestos in Rats,” ibid.,
1974, 29:252–269.
13
J. C. Wagner, P. Bogovski, and J. Higginson, “The Role of International Research in Occupational Cancer,”
Medicina del Lavoro, 1972, 63:213–220, on p. 220.
TELLING THE CHRYSOTILE “STORY”
Obviously, chrysotile could prevail only if it was shown that it did not pose the same health
hazard as crocidolite. During the 1960s and 1970s, concerned for its survival, the
asbestos industry began a massive research and public relations exercise that was
designed to achieve this aim. Funding was poured into industry-sponsored bodies,
which sprouted as the knowledge that asbestos caused cancer spread. In December 1970
the Asbestos Infor-mation Association/North America (AIA/NA) was formed at the
New York headquarters of the leading U.S. company, Johns Manville. By the following
year the AIA budget was almost $300,000, to be spent on monitoring medical
conferences and papers and then initiating “lines of action.” One such line was to
smear industry critic Selikoff and then “start to tell the chrysotile story and discredit
other fibers.” Acting in concert with the Americans was the Quebec Asbestos Mining
Association (QAMA), which in 1966 had launched an Institute of Occupational and
Environmental Health (IOEH) in Montreal. Eighty percent of Canadian asbestos was
mined in Quebec, with Thetford Mines as the focus. Canada had 40 percent of the world
chrysotile market, making it the largest producer of that mineral, with yearly shipments by
the mid 1960s of 1.5 million tons valued at over $160 million. With such profits under
threat, there was no shortage of money to support work that would protect the industry,
and by 1972 the QAMA had expended over $2 million on research projects.14
The association accepted—confidentially—that the “three types of asbestos are in the
same boat . . . [and] . . . one cannot ignore that with proper circumstances the same
fibrogenesis and malignancy apply to amosite and chrysotile.” Indeed, the first cases of
pleural mesothelioma and other lung cancers among Canadian chrysotile miners had been
identified in the late 1940s, at which time the Canadian industry had shown little com-
punction about suppressing publication of the evidence. Once publicity became unavoid-
able, the QAMA erected two defenses. One was to emphasize the distinction between the
(allegedly) favorable health experience of Canadian asbestos miners and millers—
presum-ably protected by policies that emphasized responsible use—and the disastrous
record of American insulators (as highlighted by Selikoff ). The other was the argument
that Cana-dian asbestos exposure was to “pure chrysotile, whereas insulation workers
had been ex-posed to a mixture of various types of asbestos.” The linchpin in these
defenses was the epidemiological work at the IOEH. This centered on J. Corbett
McDonald, a professor at McGill University in Montreal who in 1966 launched a major
cohort study of the health effects of chrysotile mining in Canada.15
McDonald denied that the IOEH was an industry initiative, though this assertion is
contradicted by QAMA documents. Certainly McDonald’s team was the main recipient of
14
Minutes: Meeting to Discuss Formation of Asbestos Information Association/North America, Thursday, 5
Nov. 1970 (8306A), p. 4; Minutes: Meeting to the Board of Directors, Asbestos Information
Association/North America, Thursday, 24 Aug. 1971 (8301), p. 5 (“lines of action”); AIA/NA, Items for
Discussion, 23 Mar. 1973 (smearing Selikoff ); and “IOEH: A Review of Background and Projects
Sponsored,” n.d., ca. 1974, T&N microfilm archive, 71/20–45.
15
QAMA, Minutes of the Special Meeting . . . held on 28, 29 March 1968, at Grand Bahama Hotel and
Country Club, Grand Bahamas; and QAMA, Paul-A. Filteau, Notes on Dr. Irving Selikoff, guest speaker, Univ.
Toronto, 2, 3 May 1973. On the IOEH work see Paul Brodeur, Expendable Americans (New York: Viking, 1974),
pp. 131–134. For the early instances of mesothelioma and lung cancer among Canadian chrysotile workers
see W. E. Smith, “Surveys of Some Current British and European Studies of Occupational Tumor Problems,”
Ar-chives of Industrial Hygiene and Occupational Medicine, 1952, 5:242–262; on their suppression see
Barry I. Castleman, Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Aspen Law &
Business, 1996), pp. 86–87, 113–117.

QAMA largesse, receiving well over $500,000 in research funding between 1966 and 1972.
The association targeted its money wisely. As McDonald’s cohort was followed over the
decades, the findings indeed suggested that ARD among workers in Canada’s
chrysotile mines was less severe and widespread than that seen elsewhere—thus
confirming a Ca-nadian belief that dated from the start of the twentieth century.16
This finding was not unexpected: asbestos fiber is less broken down and hence less
dangerous in the mining and preliminary milling stages than in end-user factory and
insulation work (processes that were ignored by the QAMA, despite the atrocious
asbestosis record in many Canadian factories). On the other hand, McDonald also
highlighted asbestos-related lung cancer and mesothelioma deaths in Canadian mining
communities, thereby setting the chrysotile in-dustry a major problem that he and his
team would soon seek to address.
Reassuringly, McDonald and his McGill colleagues published studies that suggested
that “contaminants” in the Canadian environment, not chrysotile, were to blame for lung
tumors. Organic and synthetic oil contamination was first suggested as a possible reason
for the carcinogenic nature of asbestos. Studies published in the late 1970s by
McDonald and his colleagues also focused on the role of imported crocidolite in
causing mesotheli-omas at a gas-mask factory that had operated during World War II.
However, critics have questioned whether crocidolite was ever imported into Canada
and have suggested that a clue to the crocidolite exposure may lie in a geological survey,
conducted in the late 1950s, that documented the presence of small amounts of
crocidolite in Quebec ore.17
The McGill studies have been characterized by American critics as the “Anything But
Chrysotile”—ABC—apologia, which they contend have been used by the industry to
expand market share and avoid liability. Certainly in North America trade
associations such as the QAMA and the AIA/NA helped the industry set the research
agenda and transform the asbestos issue into a laboratory problem that was disconnected
from political and social issues. This separation was particularly useful after the mid
1970s, when public controversy was generated by revelations of poor working
conditions at the Canadian plants of Johns Manville (in Scarborough), Turner &
Newall (in Montreal), and Bendix Automotive (in Windsor). In particular, trade union
agitation over working conditions in Thetford triggered federal investigations of the
asbestos industry. These revealed a some-what different picture than that presented in
epidemiological articles published in medical journals. Dust control was found to be far
from satisfactory, and one investigator, Judge René Beaudry, thought it “shocking” that
in some sectors of the industry workers were still handling asbestos fiber with their bare
hands. He went on to say of employers: “They have kept available information about the
dangerous effects of asbestos dust away from the workers and the unions.” A similar
picture was drawn by an Asbestosis Working Group in Ottawa, which also suggested that
McDonald’s figures for mesothelioma were under-estimated.18 The working group
noted the evidence that crocidolite was more dangerous
16
Corbett McDonald CBC radio interview, 7 Mar. 1975, T&N microfilm archive, 79/1191–1196. A more
skeptical view of the Canadian asbestos industry was expressed by industry consultant A. J. Lanza, who
wrote: “I have always had the feeling that [the Canadians’] argument was motivated by self-interest rather than
to make a scientific contribution.” A. J. Lanza to Bowditch, 13 Dec. 1937. See also M. Greenberg, “Trust
Me, I’m a Doctor,” Amer. J. Indus. Med., 2000, 37:232–234.
17
A. D. McDonald and J. C. McDonald, “Mesothelioma after Crocidolite Exposure during Gas Mask
Manu-facture,” Environmental Research, 1978, 17:340–346; and Aniruddha De, “Petrology of Dikes
Emplaced in the Ultramafic Rocks of South-Eastern Quebec” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Univ., 1961).
18
For American criticisms see D. Egilman, C. Fehnel, and S. R. Bohme, “Exposing the ‘Myth’ of ABC,
‘Anything But Chrysotile’: A Critique of the Canadian Asbestos Mining Industry and McGill University
Chrys-otile Studies,” Amer. J. Indus. Med., 2003, 44:540–557. On the working conditions at Canadian plants
see R.
than chrysotile, but nowhere in its report was there a suggestion that the latter did not
cause mesothelioma. These reports concluded that the industry was more interested in
exploiting the medical uncertainty created by the compensation system and by
epidemi-ological studies than in spending money to protect workers from the dust.
In Britain, the asbestos industry’s science and public relations function was
performed by the Asbestosis Research Council and its associated lobbying
organizations, which prop-agated the view that chrysotile could be used safely. At a
major U.K. government inquiry in 1976, the Simpson Committee, the asbestos industry
presented a united front, claiming that within certain thresholds chrysotile (and amosite)
production could be continued. The government accepted that chrysotile “rarely caused
mesothelioma” and that this “favour-able” point should be used to frame policy.19 The
idea that some types of asbestos could be produced safely if the proper precautions
were followed would be enshrined as the doctrine of “controlled use.”
By the mid 1970s, however, the devastating impact of asbestos on the U.K. workforce
had led to the creation of a disparate group of asbestos industry critics composed of
scientists, journalists, lawyers, trade unions, and victims. Lacking the resources of the
industry and the government, these people reviewed the published evidence (and in some
cases drew on their personal experience) to reach a different judgment on chrysotile. Nancy
Tait, whose husband had died from mesothelioma caused by indirect asbestos exposure in
his work as a telephone engineer, was the first to publish an attack on the amphibole
hypothesis by emphasizing that “chrysotile [is] a carcinogen.” Tait formed the Society for
the Prevention of Asbestosis and Industrial Diseases, which lobbied on behalf of
victims and campaigned against the use of all forms of asbestos. A more vigorous
attack on the asbestos industry was launched in 1979 by Alan Dalton (1946–2003), a
socialist scientist who ridiculed the white asbestos myth “peddled by the industry
over the last fifteen years.”20 Clydeside Action on Asbestos was another influential
interest group formed at around this time. The fight against all types of asbestos was
carried forward in America by the White Lung Association and in Japan by the Ban
Asbestos Network.
Scientific evidence supported these critics. In the early 1970s, under World Health Or-
ganisation (WHO) auspices, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
had begun evaluating the cancer risk to humans posed by chemicals. The first IARC
asbestos working groups, which included industry representatives, presented a cautious
evaluation of the cancer risk in 1973. However, a more independent IARC group
concluded in 1976 that all forms of asbestos caused lung cancer and mesothelioma and
that it was impossible to designate a safe threshold. The IARC gave much more weight
to the evidence of car-cinogenicity in animals than Wagner did, though the latter had
himself concluded that
Storey and W. Lewchuck, “From Dust to DUST to Dust: Asbestos and the Struggle for Worker Health and
Safety at Bendix Automotive,” Labour/Le Travail [Journal of Canadian Labour Studies], 2000, 45:103–
140. For Baudry’s comment see R. Beaudry, G. Lagace, and L. Jukau, Rapport final: Comité ´ d’Etude sur la
Salubrité dans l’Industrie de l’Amiante (Quebec: Le Comité, 1976), p. 381. See also Lloyd Tataryn, Dying for
a Living: The Politics of Industrial Death (Ottawa: Deneau & Greenberg, 1979), pp. 15–60. For the criticisms
of McDon-ald’s mesothelioma figures see Subcommittee on Environmental Health, Department of National
Health and Welfare, Report of the Asbestosis Working Group, Ottawa, 15 Feb. 1976, copy in T&N microfilm
archive, 417/ 1220–1250.
19
Health and Safety Commission, Asbestos, Vol. 1: Final Report of the Advisory Committee (London: HMSO,
1979), p. 62. On the Asbestosis Research Council see Geoffrey Tweedale, “Science or Public Relations? The
Inside Story of the Asbestosis Research Council,” Amer. J. Indus. Med., 2000, 38:723–734.
20
Nancy Tait, Asbestos Kills, 2nd ed. (1976; London: Privately published, 1977), pp. i–ii; and Alan Dalton,
Asbestos Killer Dust (London: BSSRS Publications, 1979), p. 48. See also London Hazards Centre, The
Asbestos Hazards Handbook (London: London Hazards Centre, 1995), pp. 103–104.
Canadian chrysotile could induce mesothelioma when

injected intrapleurally in rats. Mean-while, an American study showed a high cancer rate
among workers in an asbestos textile, friction, packing, and manufacturing facility that
had used 99 percent chrysotile.21
Despite these studies, chrysotile use continued, while amphibole production dipped. The
amphiboles, which even at their peak made up less than 15 percent of the global asbestos
market, have been mined only in South Africa and Australia. At its peak, in 1976, the
South African industry employed around twenty-three thousand people and exported fiber
worth R400 million to over fifty countries. As alarm about mesothelioma took hold in the
United States and the United Kingdom, South African output slumped from 379,000 tons
in 1977 to 163,000 tons in 1985. The Department of Mines attributed the fall to
increasing competition from USSR and Canadian producers and the activities of what it
termed “the international anti-asbestos movement,” which it believed had targeted South
African amo-site and crocidolite, the fibers that made up 70 percent of exports.
According to the South African Asbestos Producers Advisory Committee, the cancer
scare was being used by competitors to destroy the South African industry.22 In the
United Kingdom, the United States, and Western Europe the big firms jettisoned
amphiboles. The growing international isolation of the pro-apartheid government in
Pretoria helped Canadian and Southern Rho-desian mining companies to push South
Africa out of the market, thereby gaining a greater share for their own chrysotile.
CANADA AND THE CHRYSOTILE DEFENSE
The 1980s saw the first asbestos bans, with Scandinavian countries leading the way. For
example, in 1986 Sweden introduced the first of a series of restrictions on chrysotile.
However, annual world production of asbestos was about 4 million tonnes (which still
included amphiboles). The industry was powerful enough to launch a sustained
rearguard action, with Canada emerging as a major defender of asbestos. Within
Canada, adverse publicity and trade union pressure had led Ontario to declare in 1982
that asbestos should be a “designated” (i.e., regulated) product. The Canadian tensions
over asbestos were resolved in 1984, when a Royal Commission in Ontario
recommended a ban on crocidolite and amosite but endorsed the use of chrysotile if there
was adequate control of dust (except in asbestos textile manufacture, which it believed
should be prohibited).23 Effectively, the commission had strictly circumscribed the use of
asbestos in Canada itself while ensuring the continued mining and export of Canadian
chrysotile.
21
For the early IARC evaluation see WHO/IARC, Biological Effects of Asbestos: Proceedings of a
Working Conference Held at the IARC, Lyon, France, 2–6 October 1972, IARC Scientific Publications No.
8 (Lyon: IARC, 1973); the more independent evaluation is IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of the
Carcinogenic Risk of Chemicals to Man, Vol. 14 (from IARC Working Group, Lyon, 4–17 Dec. 1976)
(Geneva: WHO, 1977), p. 80. See also L. Tomatis, “The IARC Monographs Program: Changing Attitudes
towards Public Health,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, 2002, 8:144–152.
For Wagner’s view see J. C. Wagner, G. Berry, J. W. Skidmore, and F. D. Pooley, “The Comparative Effect
of Three Chrysotiles by Injection and Inhalation in Rats,” in IARC, Biological Effects of Mineral Fibres,
IARC Scientific Publications No. 30 (Lyon: IARC, 1980), pp. 363–373; the American study is C. Robinson, R.
A. Lemen, and J. K. Wagoner, “Mortality Patterns, 1940–1975, among Workers Employed in an Asbestos
Textile Friction and Packing Products Manufacturing Facility,” in Dust and Disease, ed. Lemen and J. M.
Dement (Park Forest, Ill.: Pathotex, 1979), pp. 131–143.
22
“Tackling Asbestos,” Johannesburg Financial Mail, 30 Apr. 1976 (1976 figures); P. H. R. Snyman,
“Safety and Health in the Northern Blue Asbestos Belt,” Historia, 1988, 33:31–52, on p. 32 (output slump);
Report of the Department of Mines for the Year Ending 31 December 1978 (Pretoria: Government Printer,
1979), p. 7; and “Mounting Campaign against SA Asbestos,” Johannesburg Citizen, 11 July 1977.
23
Report of the Royal Commission on Matters of Health and Safety Arising from the Use of Asbestos in
Ontario, 3 vols. (Toronto: Queen’s Printer, 1984).
Meanwhile, industry funding continued to oil the wheels of the academic conference
circuit. In 1982 delegates to a world symposium on asbestos held in Montreal were en-
couraged by the Quebec government (and members of the AIA) to reach a consensus on
“safe use.” This was a prelude to the formation of the Asbestos Institute (AI) in Quebec
in 1984. Still in existence, the AI describes itself as a “nonprofit” organization, yet it has
always been subsidized by the Canadian federal government, the Quebec government, and
asbestos mining interests. By 2001 it had received about $54 million from its sponsors.
From its inception, the AI has been dedicated, above all, to promoting the “safe use of
chrysotile asbestos” through conferences, public
relations initiatives, and the dissemination of scientific information. 24 Naturally, the AI
was linked with its sister organizations world-wide, such as the AIA/NA, and was not
hesitant to showcase Canadian and other medical studies that presented white asbestos in
a favorable light.
It is important to appreciate that an emphasis on the safety of chrysotile was not only
used to defend the industry in the commercial arena; it also provided a defense in litigation.
As the number of personal-injury actions mounted in the 1980s, the chrysotile defense—
the argument that asbestos cancer was fiber specific—was used increasingly in the courts,
alongside the latest scientific research. Continued animal experimentation and electron
microscopic examination of the lung burdens of individuals who had died from ARD
increasingly focused on the dimensions of fibers and their biopersistence—the degree to
which they remained in the body. The physical characteristics of the amphiboles—
spe-cifically, their long (above 5 microns in length), thin fibers and durability—
were identified as a likely reason for their ability to trigger mesothelioma.25 In comparison,
chrysotile was said to have shorter, “curly,” and less durable fibers.
Certainly chrysotile is much more biologically and chemically reactive than amphiboles,
so that chrysotile fibers tend to dissolve and divide into a multitude of small fibers that
are removed from the lung more easily than amphiboles. However, the science was not
always as clear cut as the industry suggested—mainly because the mechanisms by which
any type of asbestos induced cancer were still not fully understood. American asbestos
legislation has never differentiated between fiber types. In 1986, the U.S.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration reviewed the published scientific
evidence and con-cluded that all fiber types, alone or in combination, had been observed
in studies to cause lung cancer, mesothelioma, and asbestosis. It appeared that long
fibers did more damage than short ones; on the other hand, scientists were far from
confident that short fibers (under 5 microns) were not carcinogenic. Moreover, in the
1980s the political and social goalposts were continually moving as perceptions of risk
changed. Media pressure steadily increased. In Britain, hard-hitting TV documentaries
such as Alice: A Fight for Life (1982) did not bother to elucidate the two-fiber argument.
Even if they had, there was a steady stream of studies through the 1980s that suggested
that chrysotile did cause mesothelioma (aside from other ARD). Independent research
at Zimbabwe’s chrysotile mines found cases
24
Proceedings of the World Symposium on Asbestos Held on May 25, 26, 27, 1982, in Montreal, Quebec,
Canada (Quebec: Canadian Information Centre, 1982). On “support” for the AI see Bill Schiller, “Why
Canada Pushes Killer Asbestos,” Toronto Star, 20 Mar. 1999; Schiller, “Asbestos ‘King’ Admits Fibres Will
Kill,” ibid., 21 Mar. 1999; and Schiller, “A Deadly Export,” ibid., 23 Mar. 1999. On the institute’s mission see
the Asbestos Institute website: www.asbestos-institute.ca.
25
M. F. Stanton, M. Layard, E. Tegeris, E. Miller, M. May, E. Morgan, and A. Smith, “Relation of
Particle Dimension to Carcinogenicity in Amphibole Asbestos and Other Fibrous Materials,” Journal of the
National Cancer Institute, 1981, 67:965–975. See also R. F. Dodson, M. A. L. Atkinson, and J. L. Levin,
“Asbestos Fiber Length as Related to Potential Pathogenicity: A Critical Review,” Amer. J. Indus. Med., 2003,
44:291–297.
of asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma, though lack of data made it impossible to
quantify the rates. In the developed countries, mesothelioma was found in individuals
exposed only to white asbestos: brake mechanics, makers of friction products, and
railroad workers.26 Evidence was also found that white asbestos caused
mesothelioma in wine-filter workers and metal workers and even after environmental
exposure. A marked excess of lung cancers was shown to be associated with asbestos
textile spinning in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1987 an IARC working group
concluded that chrysotile induced lung cancer and pulmonary mesothelioma and that
there was no safe level of exposure.27
Counterarguments by the Canadians still emphasized the role of “contaminants” and co-
carcinogens in asbestos disease. They explained the high cancer rate in asbestos textile
manufacture in Charleston as possibly due to oil. Another intriguing suggestion was that
many of the observed mesotheliomas in chrysotile workers (especially miners and
millers in Canada) were due to amphiboles. Since the 1960s, it had been known that
Canadian ore contained blue fibrous reibeckite (i.e., crocidolite), yet researchers and
asbestos com-panies initially ignored this—possibly because crocidolite could not be
removed from the ore or the final product, thus compromising the claim that Canadian
asbestos was benign. By the late 1980s and 1990s, however, it was suggested by
McDonald and others that tremolite (which typically constituted about 1 percent in
commercial-grade chrysotile) was the sole cause of mesothelioma in Canadian workers
and, further, that if an effort was made to identify tremolite-free ore chrysotile mining
could continue. Others believed that the presence of the tremolite merely underlined the
truism that asbestos was never a pure entity and that to single out one variety as safe
was reckless. As one critic remarked: “attributing mesothelioma production to this
amphibole contaminant . . . is clearly suspect. If tremolite cannot be removed from
chrysotile via industrial processing, the whole issue of tremolite contamination appears
academic at best.”28 However, McGill scientists coun-
26
Regarding fiber length see Selikoff and Lee, Asbestos and Disease (cit. n. 8), pp. 427–428. For the research
at Zimbabwe chrysotile mines see Rabelan Baloyi, “Exposure to Asbestos among Chrysotile Miners, Millers,
and Mine Residents and Asbestosis in Zimbabwe” (Ph.D. diss., Inst. Occupational Health, Univ. Kuopio, Hel-
sinki, 1989), p. 65; and M. Cullen and Baloyi, “Chrysotile Asbestos and Health in Zimbabwe, I: Analysis of
Miners and Millers Compensated for Asbestos-Related Diseases since Independence (1980),” Amer. J. Indus.
Med., 1991, 19:161–169. On mesothelioma in brake mechanics see A. M. Langer and W. T. E. McCaughey,
“Mesothelioma in a Brake Repair Worker,” Lancet, 13 Nov. 1982, 8307:1101–1102; M. J. Teta, H. C. Lewinsohn,
J. W. Meigs, R. A. Vidone, L. Z. Mowad, and J. T. Flannery, “Mesothelioma in Connecticut, 1955–1977: Oc-
cupational and Geographical Associations,” Journal of Occupational Medicine, 1983, 25:749–756; and M.
Huncharek, J. Muscat, and J. V. Capotorto, “Pleural Mesothelioma in a Brake Mechanic,” Brit. J. Indus. Med.,
1989, 46:69–71. On mesothelioma in railroad workers see T. F. Mancuso, “Relative Risk of Mesothelioma
among Railroad Machinists Exposed to Chrysotile,” Amer. J. Indus. Med., 1988, 13:639–657.
27
On mesothelioma in wine-filter workers see G. Scansetti, F. Mollo, G. Tiberi, A. Andrion, and G. Piolatto,
“Pleural Mesothelioma after a Short Interval from First Exposure in the Wine Filter Industry,” Amer. J. Indus.
Med., 1984, 5:335–339; in metal workers see K. Moringa, N. Kohyama, K. Yokohama, Y. Yasui, I. Hara, M.
Sasaki, Y. Suzuki, and Y. Sera, “Asbestos Fibre Content of Lungs with Mesotheliomas in Osaka, Japan: A
Preliminary Report,” in WHO/IARC, Non-Occupational Exposure to Mineral Fibres, IARC Scientific
Publica-tions No. 90 (Lyon: IARC, 1989), pp. 438–443; and after environmental exposure to white asbestos
see K. M. Wolf, Z. H. Piotrowski, J. D. Engel, L. G. Bekeris, E. Palacios, and K. A. Fisher, “Malignant
Mesothelioma with Occupational and Environmental Asbestos Exposure in an Illinois Community Hospital,”
Archives of Internal Medicine, 1987, 147:2145–2149. On the Charleston results see J. M. Dement, R. L.
Harris, M. J. Symons, and C. M. Shy, “Exposures and Mortality among Chrysotile Asbestos Workers, Pt. II:
Mortality,” Amer. J. Indus. Med., 1983, 4:421–433. For the conclusion that there was no safe level of
exposure to chrysotile see WHO/ IARC, IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to
Humans: Overall Evaluations of Carcin-ogenicity: An Updating of IARC Monographs Vols. 1–42, Supplement
7 (Lyon: IARC, 1987).
28
M. Huncharek, “Asbestos and Cancer: Epidemiological and Public Health Controversies,” Cancer
Investi-gation, 1994, 12:214–222, on p. 217. On possible oil contamination see P. Sebastien, J. C.
McDonald, A. D. McDonald, B. Case, and R. Harley, “Respiratory Cancer in Chrysotile Textile and Mining
Industries: Exposure Inferences from Lung Analysis,” Brit. J. Indus. Med., 1989, 46:180–187; on tremolite
contamination see Churg, “Chrysotile, Tremolite, and Malignant Mesothelioma” (cit. n. 10).
tered that through careful screening and selection of mines, the production of chrysotile
with “minimal” contamination was feasible.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL DEBATE
By the end of the 1980s, asbestos was in retreat worldwide. But the intensity of the
chrysotile versus amphibole debate did not diminish, even in countries—
such as the United States and the United Kingdom—where asbestos manufacture had
almost ceased. During the 1990s the battleground shifted to environmental
considerations, such as atmospheric pollution by asbestos brake linings or by asbestos
used in the filtration of beverages. Particularly contentious was the perceived hazard
posed by asbestos in buildings. In Amer-ica in 1986, congressional plans to require
schools to inspect for asbestos (and possibly remove or “abate” it) provoked a backlash
among insurers and real estate owners. Oppo-sition to the measures was led by the
Safe Buildings Alliance, founded in 1984, which asserted that chrysotile (the main type
of asbestos in buildings) was not a health hazard. Internal asbestos industry documents
show that the Safe Buildings Alliance was a front for various asbestos companies
(notably Celotex, U.S. Gypsum, and W. R. Grace) and that its main interest was public
relations.29 The Safe Buildings Alliance, together with realtors, funded the symposium
held at Harvard in 1988 that publicized the view that the danger posed by asbestos in
buildings was negligible.
The nucleus of the American opposition to asbestos abatement was centered around the
microbiologist Brooke Mossman, the physician Bernard Gee, and the engineer Morton
Corn.30 Corbett McDonald and his colleagues were also supportive. Articles duly
appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine and in the popular journal Science
extolling the view that amphiboles were the problem, not chrysotile. The articles were
highly persua-sive—the editor of Science lamented that chrysotile had been “tarred”
by a mistaken association with crocidolite—and generated enormous publicity.31 Both
articles also drew heavy criticism, not only because of the views expressed but also
because the asbestos industry associations of the authors had not been declared in
either journal. Prominent critics included Irving Selikoff and his colleagues at the
Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. In 1990, with the support of organized
labor and plaintiffs’ lawyers, they organized the “Third Wave” conference in New York
as an ambitious counterblast to the Harvard meeting.32 The battle lines between
chrysophiles and chrysophobes had now been firmly drawn.
In 1993 the editor of the British Journal of Industrial Medicine, having reprinted one
29
Robert J. Day to C. F. N. Hope, 26 Oct. 1989, T&N microfilm archive, 504/981–982; and Safe
Buildings Alliance, Asbestos in Buildings: What Owners and Managers Should Know (Washington, D.C.,
1989), T&N microfilm archive, 504/905–942.
30
Castleman, Asbestos (cit. n. 15), pp. 822–827. See also J. E. Alleman and B. T. Mossman, “Asbestos
Re-visited,” Scientific American, July 1997, 277:70–76, which alongside a picture of the Space Shuttle
extols asbestos as a “vital commodity of strategic global significance” that can “still be considered good.”
31
B. T. Mossman and J. B. L. Gee, “Asbestos-Related Diseases,” New England Journal of Medicine, 29
June 1989, 320:1721–1730; and Mossman, J. Bignon, M. Corn, A. Seaton, and Gee, “Asbestos: Scientific
Devel-opments and Implications for Public Policy,” Science, 19 Jan. 1990, 247:294–301. For the editor’s
remark see Philip H. Abelson, “The Asbestos Removal Fiasco,” ibid., 2 Mar. 1990, 247:1017.
32
For criticism see, e.g., Sheldon W. Samuels, “Asbestos, Carcinogenicity, and Public Policy” [letter], Science,
18 May 1990, 248:795–796. The New England Journal of Medicine, 11 Jan. 1990, 322:131, responded:
“We kept [the authors’] disclosure [of asbestos consultancies] on file, but chose not to publish it.” On the New
York conference see P. J. Landrigan and H. Kazemi, eds., “The Third Wave of Asbestos Disease: Exposure to
Asbestos in Place: Public Health Control,” Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., 1991, 643:1–628.
of McDonald’s studies as a landmark publication, opined that “one might have expected
[McDonald’s] observations would have been welcomed, implying as they did that there
were conditions under which asbestos could be worked without harm to health. But . . .
he and his colleagues were subjected to a campaign of vituperation that was designed to
achieve political rather than scientific ends.” In America, an appraisal of the asbestos-
in-place problem launched by the Health Effects Institute (a body funded by government
and industrial interests) largely confirmed the view
that the risk from nonoccupational exposure to asbestos in buildings was slight and that
removal posed a greater risk.33 Congressional laws concerning the management of
asbestos in all commercial and public buildings were shelved, and the specter of asbestos-
in-buildings litigation receded. As “abategate” abated, the asbestos companies, insurers,
and real estate owners avoided severe financial damage. Amidst the publicity, however,
the risks associated with maintenance work and the dis-turbance of old asbestos
materials had been glossed over, as was the fact that buildings often contained
amphiboles—a significant point if one agreed that these fibers were es-pecially
dangerous.
In the early 1990s chrysophiles were in the ascendancy at some conferences, where
complaints were heard about the “uniting of several quite different minerals under the term
‘asbestos.’” Between 1986 and 1993 the influence of the Canadians has also been
detected in meetings of the International Program on Chemical Safety (IPCS), where
products such as asbestos cement were cleared for continued use, and in meetings and
reports organized under WHO auspices. At such meetings, asbestos manufacture was
defended with the concept of “controlled use” or by risk analysis, which highlighted
the social “dividend” of using asbestos fire retardants and friction products. Proponents
of such arguments in-cluded, among others, Richard Doll (renowned for his studies
linking smoking and lung cancer), Corbett McDonald, Peter Elmes (former director of
the PRU), Robert Murray (former medical advisor to the Trades Union Congress in
the United Kingdom), Kevin Browne (retired physician of Cape Asbestos,
Ltd.), and Christopher Wagner.34 The asbestos companies soon asked these supporters
either to conduct studies on selected parts of the workforce or to testify in litigation,
sometimes both. They were convinced that chrysotile was an essential material that, with
appropriate safeguards, could be used safely; thus they often made statements warning
against the demise of the asbestos industry and the loss of jobs that would entail.
According to McDonald, Wagner regarded chrysotile as “close to harmless.” In
South Africa in the 1960s this view had not been popular with the crocidolite producers
or some of his fellow scientists. Once Wagner moved to Britain, however, his
research proved more
33
“Editor’s Choice,” Brit. J. Indus. Med., 1993, 50:1058; and Health Effects Institute, Asbestos in
Commercial Buildings: A Literature Review and Synthesis of Current Knowledge (Boston, Mass.: Health
Effects Institute, 1991). For a W. R. Grace–sponsored history of the asbestos-in-buildings controversy, which
is highly critical of the Environmental Protection Agency’s abatement policy, see Jacqueline K. Corn,
Environmental Public Health Policy for Asbestos in Schools: Unintended Consequences (Boca Raton, Fla.:
Lewis, 1999). The author is the spouse of Morton Corn.
34
For the complaint about the blanket use of the term “asbestos” see G. W. Gibbs, F. Valic, and K. Browne,
eds., “Health Risks Associated with Chrysotile Asbestos: Report of Workshop in Jersey, Channel Islands, 14–
17 November 1993,” Ann. Occup. Hyg., 1994, 38:399–646, on p. 401. On the “Canadian influence” see B. I.
Castleman, “The Manipulation of ‘Scientific Organisations’: Controversies at International Organisations over
Asbestos Industry Influence,” Annals of the Global Asbestos Congress: Past, Present, and Future, Osasco, Brazil,
17–20 Sept. 2000, CD-ROM. Browne’s view is aired in Kevin Browne, “Chrysotile: Thresholds of Risk,” paper
presented at an International Seminar on Safety in the Use of Chrysotile Asbestos: Basis for Scientifically Based
Regulatory Action, Havana, Cuba, 12–13 Sept. 2000, posted on the AI website:
www.chrysotile.com/en/hltsfty/ browne.htm.
congenial to the big British and American companies, with which he reached a modus
vivendi. From 1986 until 2001 a leading American asbestos company, Owens-Illinois,
made regular payments to Wagner through its legal firm. The total sum—probably over
$300,000—was significant, especially in light of the low salaries paid to research
workers in the United Kingdom. Yet this employment as a “consulting expert on
asbestos issues” was never disclosed either by Owens-Illinois or by Wagner himself. It is
not clear why the company employed Wagner and what he did
for his monthly retainer, which often exceeded $6,000. One suggestion was that he was
hired to help revise the medical literature by emphasizing the dangers of crocidolite
above those of amosite and chrysotile, thereby buttressing Owens-Illinois’s defenses in
litigation.35 Certainly Wagner testified at the re-quest of asbestos manufacturers using
a chrysotile/amosite defense, and the transcripts reveal that it was an uncomfortable
experience that had little to do with pure science. Possibly Wagner regretted that he
had allowed himself to be compromised. When inter-viewed in 1998, he complained
about how the asbestos industry set out to frustrate sci-entific discovery and how
science had been hijacked by lawyers and the press—so much so that he expressed
regret that he had ever worked on ARD.36 The secret consultancy emerged in legal
discovery shortly before Wagner’s death in 2001, though it did not blight any of the
eulogistic obituaries.
Peter Elmes (1921–2003) also regarded the chrysotile risk as negligible. He believed
that the evidence for chrysotile’s link with mesothelioma was inconclusive and endorsed
its continued use, especially if it was tremolite free. He thought that even white asbestos
spinning could continue if it was “restricted to a few, very sophisticated, safe factories.”
Elmes did not say where such factories were located; and his comments are puzzling given
that, as an asbestos industry consultant in the 1980s, he had seen for himself—and criti-
cized—the dusty and dangerous conditions at the mines and mills of Turner & Newall,
the most advanced firm in the industry. One of the Turner & Newall processes that Elmes
had criticized was the manufacture of “Fortex”—a wet dispersion chrysotile technology
that killed at least one worker from mesothelioma. Elmes’s vision of an amphibole-
free chrysotile received short shrift from the firm’s managers, who pointed out that the
mines gave no guarantees as to dust content and that their main consideration was cost.37
The chrysophobes were just as vocal in their opposition to chrysotile. In the 1990s, as
Barry Castleman has shown, industry participation in bodies such as the IPCS and the
WHO met with increasing resistance from scientists who demanded more objectivity in
assessing health risks. This was partly because a continuing stream of
epidemiological studies from as far afield as Australia, Germany,
and the United States described chrysotile-induced mesotheliomas. The same disease
was also suffered by Italian mine and mill workers (who worked with chrysotile
uncontaminated by tremolite), by railway and lo-
35
McDonald’s obituary of Wagner, London Independent, 4 July 2000; affidavit of Paul J. Hanly, Jr., in
Owens-Illinois, Inc., v. T&N, Ltd., in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall
Division, CA No. 2-99CV01117-DF, 24 Jan. 2000, p. 10; and amended affidavit of R. Bruce Shaw in response
to affidavit of Paul. J. Hanly, Jr., in Owens-Illinois v. T&N, 16 Feb. 2000.
36
J. C. Wagner deposition, Claude Cimino v. Raymark Industries, Stafford Hotel, London, 30 May 1990,
in which he stated that “chrysotile does not cause mesothelioma” but that amosite can, “probably with very
heavy dosage” (pp. 79–80); and McCulloch, interview with J. C. Wagner, Weymouth, Dorset, 22 Mar. 1998.
37
P. C. Elmes, “Mesotheliomas and Chrysotile,” Ann. Occup. Hyg., 1994, 38:547–553; and Elmes,
“Conflicts in the Evidence” (cit. n. 12), p. 334 (quotation). For Elmes’s criticism of the manufacture of
“Fortex” see Tweedale, Magic Mineral to Killer Dust (cit. n. 9), p. 259. For the Turner & Newall response to
Elmes’s views see N. Rhodes to S. Marks, 2 Apr. 1983, T&N microfilm archive, 310/1676–1677.
comotive workers, and by car mechanics.38 The IARC and American organizations such
as the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Ser-vices, and the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOHS)
regarded chrysotile as a causative agent for mesothelioma. In 1996, for example, NIOHS
concluded that chrysotile should be treated with the same concern as amphiboles.
In 1995 a British study highlighted a disturbing national trend in mesothelioma mortality.
Not only was this rising (and was projected to do so until at least 2020), but a striking
percentage of the workers affected were plumbers, electricians, construction workers,
and painters—even schoolteachers. This gave a fresh perspective on previous reports
that the asbestos risk in buildings was negligible. The research did not specifically
address the question of chrysotile’s relative “safety,” since there is often no way of
knowing for certain the exposure history of people afflicted by mesothelioma, but it
sounded a cautionary note and resurrected the whole problem of asbestos in buildings.
Suddenly, critics of the as-bestos industry did not seem so extreme. Government
reaction to these findings was tardy but far reaching. In 1998 the U.K. Health and Safety
Executive commissioned a Medical Research Council group to evaluate chrysotile.
Their report was cautious as to whether chrysotile could cause mesothelioma in the
absence of traces of amphibole but underlined that it caused asbestosis and lung cancer.
Moreover, no doubt was expressed that the use of chrysotile for asbestos cement and
friction materials was “not justifiable in the face of available and technically adequate
substitutes,” such as polyvinyl alcohol, aramid, and cellulose fibers.39
The reaction of the Canadians was uncompromising. A 1997 issue of the Annals of
Occupational Hygiene, published by the British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS),
showcased the completion of McDonald’s cohort study of eleven thousand Quebec
miners and millers. In an unorthodox gesture, the journal invited one of the MGill
scientists, Doug Liddell, to write a guest editorial. Since Liddell was one of McDonald’s
coauthors, he was in effect asked to editorialize on his own work. Liddell used the
opportunity to launch an intemperate attack on the “menace” and “intense malice” of the
Mount Sinai physicians—
38
Castleman, “Manipulation of ‘Scientific Organisations’” (cit. n. 34). Among the reports on chrysotile-
induced mesothelioma see A. J. Rogers, J. Leigh, G. Berry, D. A. Ferguson, H. B. Mulder, and M. Ackad,
“Relationship between Lung Asbestos Fiber Type and Concentration and Relative Risk of Mesothelioma: A
Case Control Study,” Cancer, 1991, 67:1912–1927; W. Sturm, B. Menze, J. Krause, and B. Thriene, “Use of
Asbestos, Health Risks, and Induced Occupational Diseases in the Former East Germany,” Toxicology Letters,
1994, 72:317–324; and W. J. Nicolson and P. J. Landrigan, “The Carcinogenicity of Chrysotile Asbestos,” in
Advances in Modern Experimental Toxicology, Vol. 22: The Identification and Control of Environmental and
Occupational Diseases: Asbestos and Cancers, ed. M. A. Mehlman and A. Upton (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton Scientific Publishing, 1995), pp. 407–423. On mesothelioma in Italian mine and mill workers see
G. Piolatto, E. Negri, C. La Vecchia, E. Pira, A. Decarli, and J. Peto, “An Update of Cancer Mortality
among Chrysotile Asbestos Miners in Balangero, Northern Italy,” Brit. J. Indus. Med., 1990, 47:810–814. On
the disease in railway and locomotive workers see C. Maltoni, C. Pinto, and A. Mobiglia, “Mesotheliomas
Due to Asbestos Used in Railroads in Italy,” in Landrigan and Kazemi, eds., “Third Wave of Asbestos Disease”
(cit. n. 32), pp. 347–367; and J. R. Ruttner, “Mesothelioma in Swiss Railroad Workers,” ibid., pp. 404–406.
On mesothelioma in car mechanics see H.-J. Woitowitz and K. Rodelsberger, “Chrysotile Asbestos and
Mesothelioma,” Amer. J. Indus. Med., 1991, 19:551–553.
39
J. Peto, J. T. Hodgson, F. E. Matthews, and J. R. Jones, “Continuing Increase in Mesothelioma Mortality in
Britain,” Lancet, 4 Mar. 1995, 345:535–539; and MRC Institute for Environment and Health, Chrysotile and
Its Substitutes: A Critical Evaluation (Leicester: Institute for Environment and Health, Dec. 2000), p. 4, posted
at www.le.ac.uk/ieh/webpub/webpub.html. See also MRC Institute for Environment and Health, Fibrous Mate-
rials in the Environment: A Review of Asbestos and Man-Made Mineral Fibres (Leicester: Institute for
Environ-ment and Health, 1997); and P. T. C. Harrison, L. S. Levy, G. Patrick, G. H. Pigott, and L.
L. Smith, “Comparative Hazards of Chrysotile Asbestos and Its
Substitutes: A European Perspective,” Environmental Health Perspectives, 1999, 107:607–611.
a group characterized as “The Lobby.” The article contended that chrysotile is

“essentially innocuous, except possibly in textile manufacture,” and asserted that this
was the view of most scientists in the field. The papers growing out of the study showed
an excess of lung cancers and thirty-eight mesotheliomas, which were—
characteristically—attributed to tremolite. However, it was asserted that only certain
“central” mines in Thetford had a
tremolite problem; “peripheral” mines had a much lower tremolite component, which could
be removed in processing to provide an amphibole-free product. “Magic, Menace, Myth,
and Malice” provoked a predictable furor, and chrysophobe ripostes by W. J. Nicholson
(a Mount Sinai physician) and Morris Greenberg (an independent U.K.
epidemiologist) were subsequently published. The BOHS distanced
itself from the whole affair by asserting that the BOHS Council never saw anything prior
to publication—this despite the fact that the editors of the Annals had prefaced the issue
in question with the following statement (uncannily reminiscent of the remark in the
British Journal of Industrial Medicine): “[McDonald’s] group has . . . established that
chrysotile is a much less dangerous form of asbestos than amphiboles, especially
crocidolite. It might have been supposed that this would have been welcome news to
those concerned with occupational health but McDon-ald and his colleagues had to
endure a campaign of vilification which was motivated by those whose motives were
often not scientific.”40
However, the idea that chrysotile was innocuous was difficult to sell to the growing
number of asbestos action groups, which were forming as far afield as France, India, and
Brazil. Fueling their continued rise and anger was the steadily rising mortality from ARD.
In 1991 a Ban Asbestos Network was formed after an international conference in Brazil.
Facilitated by the Internet, the number of international groups associated with
this network grew steadily until in 1999 an International Ban Asbestos Secretariat
(IBAS) was formed. As its name suggests, the IBAS demands a worldwide ban on all
types of asbestos—a call echoed in 1999 by the Collegium Ramazzini.41 European
scientists added fuel to these demands with yet another disturbing projection of ARD
mortality. The United Kingdom banned chrysotile in 1999 (with some temporary
exemptions), which meant the disap-pearance of asbestos cement.42 A year earlier the
Council of Europe had recommended that all forms of asbestos be banned in forty
member states—a recommendation that will become law in 2005. By that time bans
will have been instituted in Chile, Brazil, and Australia; the United States is also
moving toward a ban.
The views of lay groups and scientists were beginning to converge. Pathologists began
40
F. D. K. Liddell, “Editorial: Magic, Menace, Myth, and Malice,” Ann. Occup. Hyg., 1997, 41:1–12, on
p. 11. The findings are spelled out in Liddell, A. D. McDonald, and J. C. McDonald, “The 1890–1920 Birth
Cohort of the Quebec Chrysotile Miners and Millers: Development from 1904 and Mortality to 1992,” ibid., pp.
13–36; J. C. McDonald and A. D. McDonald, “Chrysotile, Tremolite, and Carcinogenicity,” ibid., pp. 699–705;
A. D. McDonald, B. W. Case, A. Churg, A. Dufresne, G. W. Gibbs, P. Sebastien, and D. McDonald, “Mesothe-
lioma in Quebec Chrysotile Miners and Millers: Epidemiology and Aetiology,” ibid., pp. 707–719; and Liddell,
A. D. McDonald, and J. C. McDonald, “Dust Exposure and Lung Cancer in Quebec Chrysotile Miners and
Millers,” ibid., 1998, 42:7–20. For the critical letters see ibid., 1997, 41:383–388. The preface is “The Quebec
Asbestos Cohort,” ibid., p. 1.
41
On IBAS see L. Kazan-Allen, “The Asbestos War,” Int. J. Occup. Environ. Health, 2003, 9:173–193. The
Collegium Ramazzini, a group of occupational health physicians, was founded by Irving Selikoff at Mount
Sinai School of Medicine in 1982. See P. J. Landrigan, “Asbestos—Still a Carcinogen,” New Engl. J. Med.,
28 May 1998, 338:1618–1619; and articles in a special issue entitled “Call for an International Ban on
Asbestos,” Amer. J. Indus. Med., 2000, 37.
42
J. Peto, A. Decarli, C. La Vecchia, F. Levi, and E. Negri, “The European Mesothelioma Epidemic,” Brit. J.
Cancer, 1999, 79:666–672 (mortality projection); and M. R. Cullen, “Chrysotile Asbestos: Enough Is Enough,”
Lancet, 9 May 1998, 351:1377–1378 (ban).
questioning the ideas that amphiboles were uniquely dangerous and that white
asbestos was harmless because it was removed more readily from the lungs. What if
chrysotile triggered cancer before it was removed? After all, it had been known since the
1980s that chrysotile had a predilection for the pleura—exactly what one would expect
if it caused mesothelioma. When pathologists examined mesothelioma fiber burdens
under the micro-scope, they certainly found amphiboles—but also chrysotile. They were
therefore unable to exclude a role for it in causing the malignancy. Subsequent studies
of mesothelial tissues by analytical electron microscope showed that in many tumors the
major fiber type iden-tified was chrysotile; moreover, many of the fibers were “short”
(under 5 microns). By the mid 1990s, therefore, a marked reaction had set in against
the chrysophiles, with some even suggesting that chrysotile was mainly responsible
for mesothelioma.43 Even those who did not go that far refused to give chrysotile a
clean bill of health.
The emerging consensus that chrysotile causes
mesothelioma was highlighted by several publications in the late 1990s. For example, in
1997 a multidisciplinary panel of scientists meeting in Helsinki found that, although
chrysotile was less potent than amphiboles, it nevertheless caused mesothelioma.
Moreover, in 1998 the IPCS, under the joint sponsor-ship of the U.N. Environment
Program, the International Labour Organisation, and the WHO, published a monograph
devoted entirely to chrysotile. It concluded: “Exposure to chrysotile asbestos poses
increased risks for asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma in a dose-dependent
manner. No threshold has been identified for carcinogenic risks. Where safer substitute
materials for chrysotile are available, they should be considered.”44 These developments
coincided with a Canadian challenge, conducted through the World Trade Organisation
(WTO), to the French decision to ban chrysotile. The Canadian industry was now a
shadow of its former self. In 1999 Canada produced 345,000 tonnes of asbestos (over
18 percent of world output), making it the second largest producer after Russia; most of
the fiber was destined for the developing world (Asia, Africa, and Latin America). The
industry employed about fifteen hundred workers in various mining jobs (a decline from
about six thousand in 1964). But the Canadian industry still thought it worthwhile to pursue
the French case as a way of advertising chrysotile’s beneficial properties to its
diminishing customer base. This presented another opportunity for chrysotile defenders
and their op-ponents to lock horns: one charging unfair trade practices, the other
scientific corruption and misinformation. The dispute was resolved in favor of the
French in 2000, when the WTO confirmed to its satisfaction that there was a
carcinogenic risk associated with the
43
On the predilection of chrysotile for the pleura see Y. Suzuki and N. Kohyama, “Translocation of Inhaled
Asbestos Fibres from the Lung to Other Tissue,” Amer. J. Indus. Med., 1991, 19:701–704; see also Suzuki and
S. R. Yuen, “Asbestos Fibers Contributing to the Induction of Human Malignant Mesothelioma,” Ann. N.Y. Acad.
Sci., 2002, 982:160–176. On mesothelioma fiber burdens see V. L. Roggli, P. C. Pratt, and A.
R. Brody, “Asbestos Fiber Type in Malignant Mesothelioma: An Analytical Scanning Electron Microscope
Study of Ninety-four Cases,” Amer. J. Indus. Med., 1993, 23:605–614. For the electron microscope studies
see Suzuki and Yuen, “Asbestos Tissue Burden Study on Human Malignant Mesothelioma,” Industrial Health,
2001, 39:150–160; see also Suzuki and Yuen, “Asbestos Fibers.” For the suggestion that chrysotile was the
chief cause of mesothelioma see A. H. Smith and C. C. Wright, “Chrysotile Asbestos Is the Main Cause of
Pleural Mesothelioma,” Amer. J. Indus. Med., 1996, 30:252–266; and L. T. Stayner, D. Dankovic, and R. A.
Lemen, “Occupational Exposure to Chrysotile Asbestos and Cancer Risk: A Review of the Amphibole
Hypothesis,” American Journal of Public Health, 1996, 86:179–186.
44
A. Tossavainen et al., “Asbestos, Asbestosis, and Cancer: The Helsinki Criteria for Diagnosis and
Attri-bution,” Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment, and Health, 1997, 23:311–316; and
International Pro-gramme on Chemical Safety, Environmental Criteria 203: Chrysotile Asbestos (Geneva:
WHO, 1998), p. 94, posted at www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/ehc203.htm.
inhalation of chrysotile fibers, that the safety of “controlled use” had not been demon-
strated, and that substitutes such as glass fiber were less carcinogenic.45
PERSPECTIVES
At any given point, the chrysotile debate appears highly confusing, especially to the public.
It remains so today. It would seem that with the WHO/WTO reports some kind of con-
sensus might have been reached. However, the scientific disputes have continued unabated;
so too has the propaganda. In 2001 the arguments over the banning of asbestos were aired
again in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The opponents were the familiar ones:
Canadian scientists and physicians defending the export and continued use of chrysotile;
and their critics, many from the Collegium Ramazzini, arguing the opposite. Meanwhile,
articles continued to pile up showing the hazards of chrysotile or suggesting that amphi-
boles in chrysotile were really to blame for any danger it posed. In 2003 the Canadian
government expressed its continued support for the industry with a $775,000 grant spread
over three years. In Britain in 2002, in a rerun of the American asbestos-in-buildings
debacle, the Daily Telegraph denounced government regulations to compel property own-
ers to manage asbestos in situ and to provide anyone working on their property with a
description of asbestos materials used in the construction. The newspaper emphasized that
most asbestos in buildings was chrysotile—a mineral, it alleged, that was as safe as talcum
powder.46 The articles once more publicized the idea that chrysotile was benign and raised
uncertainty among the public. It would seem that the debates are incapable of resolution.
In this respect, a historical overview is useful. Despite the apparent confusion at partic-
ular points, overall we are struck by the consistency of the picture. First, there has always
been a perceived spectrum of risk. Amphiboles had traditionally been regarded by asbestos
workers as the most dangerous fibers—a fact apparently confirmed by experience. The
asbestos industry’s greatest health disasters—Hebden Bridge and Armley in the United
Kingdom, Wittenoom in Australia, Penge and Prieska in South Africa, Tyler in Texas, and
Libby in Montana—have usually involved amphiboles.47 Decades of scientific research
45
WTO, “European Community—Measures Affecting Asbestos and Asbestos-Containing Products”:
Report of the Panel, WT/DS135/R, 18 Sept. 2000; Report of the Appellate Body, WT/DS135/AB/R, 12 Mar.
2001. For the competing views expressed in the context of the controversy see B. I. Castleman and R. A.
Lemen, “The Manipulation of International Scientific Organizations,” Int. J. Occup. Environ. Health, 1998,
4:53–55; and Castleman, “WTO Confidential: The Case of Asbestos: World Trade Organization,”
International Journal of Health Services, 2002, 32:489–501. See also Lemen, “Challenge for the Twenty-first
Century—A Global Ban on Asbestos,” in Annals of the Global Asbestos Congress: Past, Present, and Future,
CD-ROM (cit. n. 34).
46
For the 2001 debate see, e.g., M. Camus, “A Ban on Asbestos Must Be Based on a Comparative Risk
Assessment,” Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2001, 164:491; and P. J. Landrigan, “The Debate on
Banning Asbestos,” ibid., 165:1191. For more on the hazards of chrysotile see S. X. Ca, C. H. Zhang, X. Zhang,
and K. Morinaga, “Epidemiology of Occupational Asbestos-Related Diseases in China,” Indus. Health, 2001,
39:75–83; W. J. Nicolson, “The Carcinogenicity of Chrysotile Asbestos: A Review,” ibid., pp. 57–64; and E.
Yano, Z.-M. Wang, X.-R. Wang, M.-Z. Wang, and Y.-J. Lan, “Cancer Mortality among Workers Exposed to
Amphibole-Free Chrysotile Asbestos,” American Journal of Epidemiology, 2001, 154:538–543. On amphiboles
in chrysotile see K. J. Butnor, T. A. Sporn, and V. L. Roggli, “Exposure to Brake Dust and Malignant Mesothe-
lioma,” Ann. Occup. Hyg., 2003, 47:325–330. For two contrasting recent views see Richard H. Lemen, “Chrys-
otile Asbestos as a Cause of Mesothelioma: Application of the Hill Causation Model,” Int. J. Occup. Environ.
Health, 2004, 10:233–239; and Malcolm Ross and Robert P. Nolan, History of Asbestos Discovery and Use and
Asbestos-Related Disease in Context with Occurrence of Asbestos within Ophiolite Complexes, Special Paper
273 (Boulder, Colo.: Geological Society of America, 2003), posted at www.ierfine.org/html/history/asbestos.pdf.
On the alleged safety of chrysotile in buildings see, e.g., C. Booker, “Unnecessary Asbestos Bill Will Top £8bn,”
London Daily Telegraph, 27 Jan. 2002. The analogy was unfortunate, given that talc can contain asbestos, but
then the newspaper’s main scientific source was a representative from the asbestos-cement industry.
47
Geoffrey Tweedale, “Management Strategies for Health: J. W. Roberts and the Armley Asbestos Tragedy,
have merely confirmed what workers already suspected, though there is still debate as to
how much more carcinogenic crocidolite is than chrysotile.48 Second, chrysotile has never
been regarded as risk free either by workers or by a majority of scientists. Abundant
evidence now exists that chrysotile can cause mesothelioma; and, of course, it can also
cause lung cancer and asbestosis—a fact that has often been forgotten in the
chrysotile debate, which has increasingly focused on mesothelioma. The Canadian
chrysophiles have tried persistently to show that white asbestos is innocuous, but their
assertions are still unproven and their recommendations probably impractical. Third,
and perhaps most im-portant, the scientific process has been heavily influenced by
funding from industry— something that is not always apparent from the scientific
literature, which is often regarded as unbiased and evenhanded. Those unfamiliar with
the history of asbestos may wonder why over forty years have been spent in such
intensive research on a mineral that already had a disastrous record by the 1960s. It is
explicable only in terms of the actions of asbestos mining and manufacturing interests,
which in the mid 1960s set out to prove that chrysotile did not cause mesothelioma,
thereby turning this cancer into a problem of fiber type.
That asbestos use continues after the WHO/WTO reports demonstrates that the argument
is now essentially a political and economic one. In a sense, it has always been so, be-
cause—as this essay has shown—asbestos was too profitable to be abandoned without a
fight by commercial interests. The influence of the latter largely explains why what is
known as the “precautionary principle” was never able to operate freely in regard to
asbestos.49 Similarly, it explains why there has been far more debate and research about
asbestos than about the merits of substitute materials, which since at least the 1970s have
offered much safer alternatives. It also explains why the current debate over asbestos has
subtly shifted to the question of relative risk—thus opening the way for continued asbestos
manufacture under “controlled” conditions. Chrysophiles should be on firmer ground here,
but two facts make this the weakest part of their case. First, Canadian mining and manu-
facturing interests have failed abysmally to provide safe working conditions for their em-
ployees—the consequences of which, in terms of ARD, are still being felt. Second, the
industry’s track record in the developing countries has been worse, and even today poor
working conditions and ARD remain the norm. As critics of asbestos have warned, prod-
ucts can be transferred relatively easily, but knowledge about hazards and safeguards
travels more slowly. The increased promotion of tobacco products (which have a syner-
1920–1958,” Journal of Industrial History, 1999, 2:72–95 (Armley); Jock McCulloch, Asbestos: Its Human
Cost (St. Lucia: Univ. Queensland Press, 1986) (Wittenoom); McCulloch, Asbestos Blues: Labour, Capital,
Physicians, and the State in South Africa (Oxford: Currey, 2002) (Penge and Prieska); Brodeur, Expendable
Americans (cit. n. 15) (Tyler); Andrea Peacock, Libby, Montana: Asbestos and the Deadly Silence of an
American Corporation (Boulder, Colo.: Johnson, 2003); and Andrew Schneider and David McCumber, An Air
That Kills: How the Asbestos Poisoning of Libby, Montana, Uncovered a National Scandal (New York:
Putnam, 2004).
48
For the layperson, it is a case of “pick a number.” Nicolson and Landrigan, “Carcinogenicity of
Chrysotile Asbestos” (cit. n. 38), suggests that crocidolite is two to three times more potent than chrysotile as
a cause of mesothelioma. Others have reported the crocidolite:chrysotile risk in the ratio of 500:1. See J. T.
Hodgson and A. Darnton, “The Quantitative Risks of Mesothelioma and Lung Cancer in Relation to Asbestos
Exposure,” Ann. Occup. Hyg., 2000, 44:565–601.
49
This has been defined as “the need to act to reduce potential hazards before there is strong proof of harm,
taking into account the likely costs and benefits of action and inaction.” See European Environment Agency,
Late Lessons from Early Warnings: The Precautionary Principle, 1896–2000 (Copenhagen: European
Environ-ment Agency, 2001), p. 13.
gistic effect with asbestos) in the developing world also has profound
health implications.50 Thus “controlled use” is at best an unrealizable ideal in developing
countries and at worst another industry myth. It is only because manufacture in the
developing world is uncon-trolled that chrysotile remains an economic alternative, thus
ensuring that the debate be-tween chrysophiles and chrysophobes continues.
50
On the situation in Canada see Institut National de Sante Publique du Quebec, Rapport épidémiologie des
maladies reliées à l’exposition à l’amiante au Québec (Quebec, Sept. 2003), posted at
www.inspq.qc.ca/pdf/ publications/222-EpidemiologieExpositionAmiante.pdf. On circumstances in developing
countries see L. V. Har-ris and I. A. Kahwa, “Asbestos: Old Foe in Twenty-first-Century Developing
Countries,” Science of the Total Environment, 2003, 307:1–9; and A. L. Ramanthan and V. Subramanian,
“Present Status of Asbestos Mining and Related Health Problems in India: A Survey,” Indus. Health, 2001,
39:309–315. On the synergism with tobacco see A. L. Frank, R. F. Dodson, and M. G. Williams,
“Carcinogenic Implications of the Lack of Tremolite in UICC Reference Chrysotile,” Amer. J. Indus. Med.,
1998, 34:314–317.

White Asbestos Controversy: Chrysophiles vs Chrysophobes Debate 1950s-2004

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Chrysophiles versus Chrysophobes: The White Asbestos Controversy, 1950s–2004

Author(s): G e o f f r e y Tweedale and Jo ck McCulloch

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By Geoffrey Tweedale* and Jock McCulloch**

Isis, 2004, 95:239–259

240 CHRYSOPHILES VERSUS CHRYSOPHOBES

December 1988, addressed “Health Aspects of Exposure to Asbestos in Buildings”;

GEOFFREY TWEEDALE AND JOCK MCCULLOCH 241

action. Meanwhile, European countries are projected to suffer an epidemic of ARD

242 CHRYSOPHILES VERSUS CHRYSOPHOBES

BIRTH OF THE AMPHIBOLE HYPOTHESIS

GEOFFREY TWEEDALE AND JOCK MCCULLOCH 243

244 CHRYSOPHILES VERSUS CHRYSOPHOBES

GEOFFREY TWEEDALE AND JOCK MCCULLOCH 245

TELLING THE CHRYSOTILE “STORY”

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GEOFFREY TWEEDALE AND JOCK MCCULLOCH 247

248 CHRYSOPHILES VERSUS CHRYSOPHOBES

Canadian chrysotile could induce mesothelioma when

CANADA AND THE CHRYSOTILE DEFENSE

GEOFFREY TWEEDALE AND JOCK MCCULLOCH 249

250 CHRYSOPHILES VERSUS CHRYSOPHOBES

GEOFFREY TWEEDALE AND JOCK MCCULLOCH 251

THE ENVIRONMENTAL DEBATE

252 CHRYSOPHILES VERSUS CHRYSOPHOBES

GEOFFREY TWEEDALE AND JOCK MCCULLOCH 253

254 CHRYSOPHILES VERSUS CHRYSOPHOBES

GEOFFREY TWEEDALE AND JOCK MCCULLOCH 255

a group characterized as “The Lobby.” The article contended that chrysotile is

256 CHRYSOPHILES VERSUS CHRYSOPHOBES

GEOFFREY TWEEDALE AND JOCK MCCULLOCH 257

258 CHRYSOPHILES VERSUS CHRYSOPHOBES

GEOFFREY TWEEDALE AND JOCK MCCULLOCH 259

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