One of the best stories from the Johns-Manville facility in Manville, New Jersey is the multipage historical information provided in the 1980s by Joe and Stella Utasi discussing their escape from the Pennsylvania coal mines to work in the Manville facility. I first blogged on their story on March 3, 2022. The link for that…
Read more
This coming Tuesday, I am presenting asbestos for beginners at the Western Mining Museum here in Colorado Springs. My draft PowerPoint is at https://theasbestosblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Presentation-WMM.pdf for those who are looking for basic history, both pre-industrial revolution or during the industrialization of the modern world. Yes, I know that the presentation is on its right side —…
Read more
Every few weeks, I provide a summary of the prior 200 plus blogs including the the topic, date, and cite. My hope is that such a summary is useful to my readers as they get involved in historical asbestos research. Also, let me know if you want a particular asbestos history topic covered. Blog Title…
Read more
I like to give credit to companies when deserved, even those which manufactured asbestos-containing products or mined asbestos. This includes Johns-Manville in the depth of the depression. You may remember my earlier blog discussing statements by Manville, in which I quoted New Jersey residents who refused to sue Johns-Manville for illnesses arising from asbestos exposure;…
Read more
Researching asbestos history is difficult — lots of mistakes (especially about the science), experts and attorneys with private data/document silos, significant paywalls to get articles, inconsistent claims trying to reconcile studies that have been undertaken in the Global South to those using the countries of the Global North, and on and on and on. This…
Read more
Below is a table listing all of my asbestos-related blogs from December 2020 to the present including the titles, dates, and hot links. Interestingly, my summary blogs are among my most popular. Happy Holidays to all. Thank you. Marty Blog Title Date Blog Location 1 Asbestos, a Magic Mineral Dec 16, 2020 https://theasbestosblog.com/?p=619 2 A…
Read more
One of the more difficult jobs for Mesothelioma sufferers, attorneys, shipbreakers, and others participating in “Industries Behind the Ship,” is to sort out when and where asbestos components were located. To help you, The Book of the Ship from 1949 is a good starting place. The book doesn’t focus on asbestos but, rather on ship…
Read more
Most of my lawyer friends know this story, but I am not sure about others. So, lets begin with the participants. On September 12, 1966, E. A. Martin, was a Director of Purchases for the Bendix Friction Material Division stationed in Troy, New York. Noel Hendry, at the same time, was employed at “Canadian Johns…
Read more
I found a copy of Sweet’s 1906 Indexed Catalogue of Building Construction on EBay. This is 760 page compilation of catalogs for building construction was created by architects to overcome the challenges of staying current with the capability of particular products. As such, if you want to database the likely use of asbestos in construction…
Read more
Although I have discussed this issue in the past, I don’t recall grounding it from an historical document. In summary, many of the immigrants from Ellis Island originally worked in the coal mines. They later migrated to work in the Manville asbestos factory to escape those coal mines. As stated by Edward J. Purzycki in…
Read more
Recent Comments