1966: Grind Baby Grind, no Reason per Raybestos for any Asbestos Protection.

By 1966, many of the international asbestos companies such as Johns-Manville, Turner & Newell, James Hardie, Cape Asbestos, just to name a few, had undertaken a number of actions to hide the potential health hazards of asbestos. As some of my prior posts have pointed out, this includes settling cases upon the condition that the Plaintiff attorney not handle any more cases and running lungs by in-house counsel in the trunk of their car from Canada to Saranac to lab test the lungs in private. See my blogs on these issues at https://theasbestosblog.com/?p=769 and https://theasbestosblog.com/?p=2808 with the article on lung running from the mine site to Saranac lab from 1944 to 1958 by the JM in-house counsel at https://niche-canada.org/2015/11/19/workers-as-commodities-the-case-of-asbestos-quebec/. As stated in the article:

“So why steal lungs? Well, partly because the company saw workers as dollar signs rather than humans, and partly because it was easy. This was a time before government-run health care. The Premier of Quebec, Maurice Duplessis, was pro-international business. He allowed corporations a number of concessions, including the removal of asbestos-related disease from the province’s workers’ compensation legislation. Just like the raw asbestos spread out underneath the town, international asbestos companies treated the bodies of the people of Asbestos as a resource to be extracted. They ordered the doctors at the JM hospital in Asbestos and at nearby Thetford Mines, to secretly remove the lungs of deceased asbestos workers. Their lawyer, Yvan Sabourin, drove these organs across the border in the trunk of his car.”

With all of the above information available and known to the big mining companies and sellers of asbestos in the 1930s and 1940s, certainly it would have been easy for them to just tell their customers to “have your employees wear a respirator if you are going to grind asbestos friction material as it may save their lives and their health.” Simple and direct without a lot of fluff.

Unfortunately, at least up until the Raybestos 1966 Brake Service Manual which I have in my library, it was grind baby grind, with no warning at all. And, the grinding was absolutely required. As stated in he manual:

“Arc grinding the surface of the lined shoes is a necessity.”

You would find a number of other areas in the manual recommending grinding, but no warning about asbestos, inhalation, or respirators.

Remember, the failure to provide such a warning by the asbestos companies to the employers of brake mechanics and owners of brake shops likely killed thousands of people over the years in the United States, and a whole lot more throughout the globe. It is one thing if the companies didn’t know about the hazards, but quite a different issue when those hazards were known but hidden and buried. People are still suffering and dying because of the decisions that these people made in the 1960s and before.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments or by email to TheAsbestosBlob@gmail.com. Thanks. Marty