Plaintiffs’ Exhibits | National Gypsum Company
National Gypsum manufactured and sold asbestos construction products beginning in the 1930s and continuing as late as the 1980s. The company knew that these products endangered everyone who came into contact with them – its own employees, construction workers, workers’ families and the children and adults present in the schools and other facilities built with National Gypsum’s plasters and cements. Notwithstanding this knowledge, National Gypsum continued for fifty years to make and sell asbestos-laden products, first without warnings and later, with warnings designed to mislead the public.
National Gypsum knew “just as certain as death and taxes” that breathing asbestos dust causes lung disease.
National Gypsum began to study the risks of asbestos disease in its own internal laboratory as far back as the 1940s. The company’s early research revealed that dust from asbestos products was linked to the disease of asbestosis, a disabling lung disease that only continues to grow worse over time until a person is no longer able to breathe. As far back as the 1950s, National Gypsum’s safety director warned company managers that “just as certain as death and taxes is the fact that if you inhale asbestos dust you get asbestosis.” [NG154]
By the 1960s, the link between asbestos and cancer had been reported to National Gypsum through a variety of sources. In 1961, one of the company’s employees died of lung cancer, and the autopsy showed evidence of asbestos present in the worker’s lungs. Through its participation in industry associations, National Gypsum learned of the research conducted by Dr. Irving Selikoff, a New York doctor who pioneered efforts to protect workers from the deadly harm of working around asbestos. Dr. Selikoff reported in the mid-1960s about the alarmingly high rates of mesothelioma among insulation workers, and about reports of mesothelioma and lung cancer among people who lived in neighborhoods adjacent to asbestos facilities.
For the sake of corporate profit, National Gypsum silenced its own safety director.
In 1953, the company’s safety director, M.C.M. Pollard, wrote to the Indiana Board of Health to warn that workers applying National Gypsum’s Thermocoustic product should wear respirators to protect against exposure to asbestos dust. At the same time, Dr. Pollard circulated copies of this letter to other National Gypsum officials so that they, too, would understand that respirator use was essential to guard against asbestosis. One of the officials who read the letter, G.W. Handy, quickly instructed his secretary to intercept Pollard’s letter to the Board of Health before it went out in that day’s mail. As a justification for this exercise in mail tampering, Handy explained that the letter might cause workers on a current job to refuse to work with Thermocoustic. “If this snowballs,” Handy worried, “we are out of the Thermocoustic business.” [NG69] Thus, the Board of Health was never informed of the known danger and National Gypsum continued to make money in the Thermocoustic business.
Elementary schools and families were known to be at risk.
National Gypsum also knew in the mid 1950s that its asbestos products were releasing asbestos dust into the buildings in which the products had been installed, even after construction was completed. For example, a company memorandum from 1956 discussed a complaint from an elementary school describing the dust continuing to be released from National Gypsum’s acoustical plaster. Despite this knowledge, the company went on issuing technical product bulletins that failed to disclose the hazard.
It seems that National Gypsum left out no one in its callous disregard for the health of those exposed to its asbestos products. The company also was aware through industry literature that families and friends of asbestos workers were at risk of lung disease just from exposure to dust carried home on workers’ clothing. This, too, was information that National Gypsum elected to keep to itself.
National Gypsum knew its own workers were suffering from asbestos-induced diseases.
Beginning in at least 1953 and for decades thereafter, the chest x-rays of National Gypsum’s employees provided ample evidence that exposure to the asbestos in the company’s insulation products caused asbestos-related lung disease. In just one of many reports, it was revealed that of 28 workers who had received chest x-rays, only four had records that “show no markings.” [NG24]
From 1959 onward, National Gypsum employees started filing workers’ compensation claims for disabilities caused by asbestos. By 1971, the insurance carrier for the company’s New Jersey plant became alarmed after 26 of 26 workers’ records “showed some irregularity,” and National Gypsum was not adhering to recommendations for improving worker safety. [NG164] A memo from the workers’ compensation supervisor to the regional claims manager of National Gypsum’s insurance carrier protested that an employer who continued to expose a worker to asbestos after an irregular x-ray was “acting literally as accessory to murder.” [NG164]
Year after year and decade after decade, National Gypsum persisted in allowing the asbestos poisoning of workers in its own plants. Surveys of National Gypsum’s New Orleans plant in the 1950s and 1960s revealed that asbestos dust counts were excessive and that respirators were not protecting workers. Many years later in 1978, an E.P.A. inspector still found poor housekeeping at the facility. After this inspection, the New Orleans plant manager worried that the E.P.A. would discover that the company had been dumping asbestos-laden scrap outside the plant.
The same was true of other plants in other states. In 1972, 1973, and 1974, visits from the Illinois E.P.A. to operations in that state disclosed National Gypsum’s “lackadaisical attitude…with respect to the hazards of asbestos.” [NG87] Similarly, a confidential corporate memo of 1977 reported that airborne dust contamination surveys of the New York plant demonstrated levels in excess of allowable limits for most job classifications.
National Gypsum hid the truth from workers.
National Gypsum was no more truthful with its workforce about the hazards of the company’s asbestos products than it was with anyone else. The company radiologist who examined employee chest x-rays from 1953 through 1972 advised against telling workers or their doctors that x-ray abnormalities were related to asbestos, and National Gypsum followed through on that recommendation. Even as late as the 1970s, the company maintained its “don’t tell” policy. In 1973, for example, National Gypsum received 270 copies of a safety booklet to be distributed to workers at its New Orleans plant. But the plant manager there feared that if the employees received the information, they might in fact take the step of demanding safe working conditions. Perhaps safe working conditions were against company policy. In any event, the booklets were destroyed.
National Gypsum spearheaded efforts to block publication of asbestos hazards.
It is certain that National Gypsum had a policy to hide the dangers of asbestos from the general public. A 1963 internal memorandum set forth the company’s corporate policy to “continue to oppose distribution to the public of any literature damaging to” its asbestos cement products. [NG29] In keeping with that policy, in 1968 National Gypsum rallied its asbestos industry allies to block distribution of a health booklet addressing the risk of lung diseases caused by asbestos exposure. National Gypsum wanted to eliminate “the scare problem.” [NG46] To this end, National Gypsum reactivated the “Asbestos Cement Products Association” to stop adverse publicity that might prove helpful to competitors selling asbestos-free alternatives. Pretending that its primary concern was with safety standards, this Association in truth worked to downplay safety advice. One of National Gypsum’s internal memos on the subject stressed that “this is the time to keep cool on all the heated emotion that is being caused by the medical fraternity” in order to “stay in business at a reasonable cost.” [NG47] In the end, National Gypsum succeeded in rewriting the health booklet, perhaps eliminating “the scare problem,” but certainly not the genuine health problem suffered by those exposed to the company’s asbestos products.
National Gypsum failed to warn users and consumers.
By the early 1970s, National Gypsum knew from its own testing “that sanding of joint treatment products and particularly the spraying of wall finishes offers some substantial potential hazards.” [NG130] And yet, not until federal regulation required it in 1972, did National Gypsum begin to place warning labels on its products. Still, company officials schemed to make the warnings less visible by tucking them between two pieces of product. No mention of asbestosis or cancer was made because users might find that “scary” and might even bring lawsuits. [NG84] The company decided not to add a warning to a back inventory of products allegedly made before the effective date of the 1972 regulation. And the company only provided warnings in the U.S., where it was forced to. National Gypsum’s asbestos mine in Canada still chose not to place warnings on products headed for England, where dockworkers had refused to handle asbestos.
Even when National Gypsum finally used warning labels, the company worded them to be ineffective and misleading. For years, National Gypsum’s product labeling falsely claimed that the asbestos in the company’s products was “permanently bonded.” [NG73] In 1978, six years after the government forced National Gypsum to warn potential users about its dangerous products, one of the company’s own researchers urged company officials to stop misleading the public: “[T]he caution label, as currently written, is not sufficiently accurate or complete enough to assist the user.” Further, wrote the company researcher, the label’s content had been influenced by marketing concerns: “In other words, we tried to cover the federal regulations in a few lines and this is misleading to the customer user.” [NG73]
Even knowing that its reckless conduct would subject it to liability, National Gypsum still refused to stop selling asbestos products.
One National Gypsum executive, after meeting with leading scientists in 1974, encouraged the company to quickly develop a line of asbestos-free products. The executive warned: “Some legal review should be made as to what liability we may be subjected to for knowing that a hazardous situation could exist but took no positive action.” [NG136] Still, National Gypsum chose to forge ahead with its profitable asbestos products. By 1978, most competitors had given up on asbestos sales, making substitute products instead. National Gypsum, however, launched a campaign to boost asbestos product sales. As late as the 1980s, National Gypsum was hauling in millions of dollars in asbestos sales and instructing its sales team to emphasize the asbestos products, which were unique in the market by that time. The strategy ultimately worked no better for the company than it did for product users; National Gypsum filed for bankruptcy in 1990.
