How to Search for those Tough to Find Documents: Toxicdocs.org is a Good Site to Kick Off your Research Project.
My third thesis for the Masters in History program will likely involve tracking asbestos (primarily blue) sold by Cape Asbestos in South Africa to Johns-Manville for use in the JM Waukegan, Illinois site and which, over time, found itself into Lake Michigan, onto the Illinois beaches, or as being within the superfund clean-up site. The first issue, of course, is needing to show that JM purchased blue asbestos from Cape Asbestos in South Africa and then imported those fibers for use in the Waukegan manufacturing facility. Tough to do without spending a lot of time lining up the dominos, right? Potentially needing to rely on secondary source material as the primary documents are lost to history, correct?
Unless, of course, the research begins at toxicdocs.org. This site is well known for finding such hard to discover materials. I just put in a basic search as follows:
The search results were as follows:
And one of the search result documents included the following Purchase Order from JM to Cape Asbestos for blue asbestos fibers in the 1970s for a number of manufacturing facilities, including the one in Waukegan:
So, I now have a primary source document which supports an underlying fact upon which I can build my thesis. There are a number of other pearls of wisdom which I found doing this research, but you should just be aware of this site for your future research on asbestos or other similar issues. It will save you a lot of time and, likely, frustration.
Let me know what you think of this blog by leaving a comment or sending me an email at TheAsbestosBlog@gmail.com. Thank you. Marty
2 Responses
Because JM had to purchase blue / crocidolite fiber they did not use it widely. They purchased the blue from Cape and CSR. The large product lines they used it in were Sheet Gaskets and Transite Pipe. There were a few other small production products I cannot remember. I’m aware that at the Pipe plants, JM ground the pipe scrap and used it on shingles (mostly Marrero, LA) when I worked at the CRMC document facility I prepared a memo with supporting manufacturing specifications on JM’s use of blue. You may want to contact the CRMC for this information. Good luck
Maggie: You are amazing.
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