Plaintiffs’ Exhibits | U. S. Gypsum
U.S. Gypsum started manufacturing asbestos-containing construction materials in the 1920s and didn’t stop making them until 1978. In dozens of cities throughout North America, U.S. Gypsum made plasters, tiles, insulation, fire board, texture finishes, joint compounds, adhesives, roofing products and even paint, all of which contained dangerous asbestos fibers, putting workers and their families at risk.
U.S. Gypsum knew by the 1930s that asbestos exposure could cause injury and death.
Early on, the U.S. Gypsum company library included dozens of articles alerting the company to the dire health hazards of asbestos. For example, a 1931 article in the company library reported that asbestos causes lung damage that progresses “rapidly to a serious if not fatal condition.” [USG223] In 1933, a corporate memo widely distributed to U.S. Gypsum’s managers warned that “asbestos dusts are definitely known to be harmful” and can cause disability and death. [USG226]
In 1936, U.S. Gypsum hired a lab to conduct a safety review of its plant in Jersey City. The scientists who inspected the plant warned the company that no safe level of exposure to asbestos was known for certain and that the association between asbestos and lung disease had been proven in clinical and experimental studies. [USG180] The report summarized several studies showing a high percentage of asbestos-disease among workers exposed to asbestos and warned that “dangerous dust” was generated when workers handled asbestos materials. [USG180] In response to the lab’s review, U.S. Gypsum acknowledged that the “very hazardous dust condition” and the “number of men who now have asbestosis” placed the company in an unsteady legal position. [USG1, USG4] Around the same time, the company’s employees did indeed begin to file workers compensation claims for asbestos-related disease.
Over the years, U.S. Gypsum only received more and more evidence of the association between asbestos and disabling lung disease. A 1941 chemistry reference book in the company’s library identified asbestos as a known poison. In the late 1940s, a U.S. Gypsum researcher was told by a Canadian industrial hygienist that asbestosis among workers in that country was “a major scandal.” [USG234] An internal corporate bulletin of 1948 acknowledged that asbestosis is a disabling lung condition.
In 1950, U.S. Gypsum received a letter from Ben Miriello, the son of a man who had worked at the Jersey City plant for a couple of years in the 1930s and died of asbestosis in 1949. Miriello described his father’s intense suffering and desperate gasps for breath at the end of his life: “It ate his lungs away. He was like a drowning man—I knew he was drowning but there was nothing I could do.” Miriello pleaded with U.S. Gypsum “for the sake of God and Humanity” to “do all in your power to save others from suffering as my Dad did…. Precaution is better than a cure—there was none for dad.” [USG161]
U.S. Gypsum participated in the Saranac Lab cancer cover-up.
In 1936, U.S. Gypsum’s Secretary-Treasurer signed an agreement with other asbestos companies to underwrite studies on asbestos products to be conducted in New York at Saranac Laboratory. Under the terms of the agreement, the asbestos companies would be allowed to prevent publication of the test results, should they prove disappointing for the asbestos industry. In 1943, Saranac Lab reported its preliminary results—an 81.8 percent rate of cancer in mice exposed to asbestos. Five years later, in 1948, the experiments were finished. The lab sent U.S. Gypsum and the other asbestos companies a copy of the study results for the companies’ approval prior to publication. Unhappy with the evidence that asbestos exposure causes cancer, the asbestos giants opted to require that the test results remain secret—at least until the companies could lean on the Saranac researchers to change the published version. At the request of U.S. Gypsum and the other asbestos companies involved, the report that was finally published was whitewashed to exclude any mention of the excessive rates of asbestos-induced cancer.
Over the years, U.S. Gypsum continued to receive further evidence of the link between asbestos and cancer.
In 1965, the U.S. Gypsum employee who managed the company’s insurance, C.P. Kipp, was busy investigating the relationship between asbestos and cancer. In the same time frame, U.S. Gypsum also learned through its participation in industry meetings that lung cancer cases had been reported in the neighborhood of asbestos manufacturing facilities even among those who did not work at the plants. In addition, U.S. Gypsum received evidence that mesothelioma can be caused by exposure to just a few asbestos fibers. By 1970, Mr. Kipp expressed his concerns in an internal corporate memo explaining that the company used over six thousand tons of asbestos in a given year and that “our involvement with the asbestos problem is very real.” [USG112]
Continuing to raise concerns over the company’s persistent use of asbestos, Kipp informed 13 U.S. Gypsum officials of a study reporting a 20% death rate among workers exposed to asbestos. The next year, Kipp warned company officials about the high rate of lung cancer among workers whose jobs required them to work with and sand asbestos joint compounds, like the ones sold by U.S. Gypsum. In the same 1971 memo, Kipp also cautioned that the company’s manufacturing operations fell short of applicable health standards. Mr. Kipp urged U.S. Gypsum to eliminate asbestos from its products and to place warning labels on any asbestos products the company did make. In 1972, Kipp warned his colleagues that existing health standards were still not being met and that even stricter federal standards were on the way. He pleaded for product warning labels and once more outlined the dangerous risks to which workers applying U.S. Gypsum products were being exposed.
In 1974, the U.S. Gypsum research library received reports from Dr. Irving Selikoff, then the leading asbestos authority in the nation, warning that the very type of asbestos used in U.S. Gypsum products can cause lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis.
U.S. Gypsum tried to whitewash the asbestos problem threatening school children.
Beginning in 1955, U.S. Gypsum manufactured and sold its Audicote brand acoustical plasters for use as a spray-on product in schools and other public buildings. Although U.S. Gypsum was well aware of the dangers of asbestos by then, still the company sold the Audicote product without a warning. In fact, the company boasted of the ease with which the dusty spray-on product could be applied. All the while, U.S. Gypsum knew that the Audicote asbestos plaster was flaking off the ceilings of the schools in which it had been used, and company researchers investigated the problem as early as 1960. For over a decade more, however, U.S. Gypsum continued to sell Audicote plaster for use in schools and other buildings until 1972.
By 1983, U.S. Gypsum had been sued fourteen times by school authorities. In response to the lawsuits, the company paid a public relations firm to convince the public that children inhaling asbestos were in no particular danger. The firm advised U.S. Gypsum to organize alleged “experts” to take a stand on the side of the asbestos industry while pretending to be independent. The company also tried to whitewash its conduct by joining an industry group named the “Safe Building Alliance.” This was nothing more than a cover-up organization, however, that according to the New York Asbestos Advisory Board, “conducted a very extensive and very misleading campaign which attempts to minimize the health effects of asbestos.”
U.S. Gypsum chose not to warn workers using its SprayDon acoustical asbestos-plaster.
U.S. Gypsum also manufactured another line of line of acoustical plasters – the SprayDon plaster composed of 30% asbestos. As early as 1968, company officials discussed the fact that the use of SprayDon subjected construction workers to seriously dusty conditions. However, the product was advertised with the promise that its application was “dust free” and created “no respiratory hazards or dust contamination.” [USG88] In 1969, U.S. Gypsum’s legal and insurance department proposed a more honest and informative caution label, but management rejected this proposal because a warning that was accurate might actually scare consumers. U.S. Gypsum opted for the shorter version with less information. The company continued to make asbestos-containing SprayDon acoustical plaster through 1971.
U.S. Gypsum tried to avoid ever warning workers about the asbestos in the company’s joint compounds.
U.S. Gypsum made its asbestos-containing joint compounds even longer than it did the acoustical asbestos-plasters; the company made the joint compounds until 1976. And it refused to place a warning label on the product until it was forced to do so by federal regulation. In fact, the Gypsum Association, of which U.S. Gypsum was a member, tried to persuade regulators that joint compounds should be exempted from the 1972 federal labeling requirements because the compounds allegedly did not release asbestos in excess of the government limit. U.S. Gypsum, however, knew from testing conducted for it by the National Loss Control Services Corp. that this was not true. After regulators refused to waive the label requirement, the Gypsum Association hired a different testing firm, hoping somehow for better results. But in 1973, the second firm also reported to U.S. Gypsum that the asbestos in the company’s joint compounds clearly endangered workers. Nonetheless, the company continued to make and sell the dangerous asbestos joint compound for three more years.
U.S. Gypsum filed for bankruptcy in 2001.