For decades, manufacturers of products containing asbestos and many of the companies that employ men and women who work with these products, have knowingly exposed workers to risks such harmful. The attitude of these companies is demonstrated by the testimony of Charles H. Roemer, a former employee of Unarco, who describes a meeting between officers from Unarco and Lewis Brown, president of Johns-Manville and his brother, Vandiver Brown, in the early ’40s:
“I’ll never forget, one of Brown said Unarco managers were fools for notifying employees who had asbestosis, and I said, ‘Mr. Brown “you are telling me they prefer their employees to work until they drop dead?” He said, ‘Yes We save much money that way. ‘ “1
That attitude is reflected again and again through the decades, thousands of industry documents. Companies that manufacture and use asbestos products had extensive information that showed them and confirmed the dangers of harmful material. Scientific publications, medical literature, industry organizations, and in many cases, their own internal reports, studies and other documents.
The amount of documents produced and held by the asbestos industry has a common theme: indisputable evidence that exposure to asbestos is harmful and causes death in people exposed to the fiber. This information could have prevented many deaths related to asbestos, if the information had been used to protect workers and the public.
