Jock McCulloch

Chrysophiles versus chrysophobes: the white asbestos controversy, 1950s-2004.

In the first half of the twentieth century, asbestos was a controversial mineral because of its association with asbestosis and asbestos‐related lung cancer. It has proved no less so since the 1960s, when another asbestos cancer, mesothelioma, was identified. Mesothelioma appeared to be more strongly linked with blue asbestos (crocidolite) than with the other asbestos varieties, brown (amosite) and white (chrysotile). This finding triggered a fierce debate between “chrysophiles” (those who declared chrysotile innocuous) and “chrysophobes” (those who believed it was a mortal hazard). This essay attempts the first history of the chrysotile controversy, which shows that a scientific consensus on the safety of white asbestos was very slow to emerge. This was only partly due to the complexities of scientific research. Political, economic, and social factors have militated against a speedy resolution of the debate, facilitating the continued production and use of asbestos in the developing world.

Science is not Sufficient: Irving J. Selikoff and the Asbestos Tragedy

Professor Irving J. Selikoff (1915–1992) was Americas foremost medical expert on asbestos-related diseases between the 1960s and early 1990s. He was also well known to the public for his media appearances on the burgeoning asbestos problem. Yet his reputation has been strikingly mixed. On the one hand, he has been portrayed as a mischief maker and irresponsible demagogue, who exaggerated the risks of asbestos and so destroyed an industry; on the other, as a pioneer in asbestos epidemiology, whose landmark studies of insulation (and other) workers demonstrated the severity of a modern occupational and public health tragedy. Drawing upon unprecedented access to the Selikoff archive at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, this article demonstrates that the most serious criticisms of Selikoff are either ill-founded or simply false. It also shows that Selikoff, in the highly politicized world of asbestos science, was a far more complex and conservative individual than previous studies have suggested.

Beating the odds: The quest for justice by South African asbestos mining communities1

In March 2003 a small community group, ‘The Concerned People Against Asbestos (CPA)’ based at Prieska in the Northern Cape, won a court case in a foreign country. That case may change the way in which multinational corporations behave in the developing world. Until now the hidden costs of mining in Southern Africa have been paid for by labour. The CPAs victory may also help to end that injustice. It is usual to depict communities like Prieska as dis-empowered and impoverished. Despite its lack of resources the CPA was able to synchronise an elaborate game of small and big politics. The groups victory suggests that such communities have levels of political and organisation skill which given the right alignments can be irresistible.

Double standards: the multinational asbestos industry and asbestos-related disease in South Africa

This study documents and contrasts the development of knowledge about asbestos-related disease (ARD) in South Africa and the United Kingdom. It also contributes to the globalization debate by exploring corporate decision-making in a multinational industry. Between the 1930s and 1960s, the leading U.K. asbestos companies developed a sophisticated knowledge of ARD, though in South Africa, where the leading companies such as Turner & Newall and Cape Asbestos owned mines, there was little attempt to apply this knowledge. Asbestos mines (and their environments) in South Africa were uniquely dusty and ARD was rife. Social and political factors in South Africa, especially apartheid, allowed these companies to apply double standards, even after 1960 when the much more serious hazard of mesothelioma was identified. This shows the need for greater regulation of multinationals. Because of the lack of such regulation in the early 1960s, an opportunity was lost to prevent the current high morbidity and mortality of ARD both in South Africa and worldwide.

Women Mining Asbestos in South Africa, 1893-1980

In the period from 1893 to 1980 the asbestos mines of the north-west Cape and the north-eastern Transvaal were important sources of employment. The methods of extraction were simple; and in many mines until the early 1950s the basic labour unit was the family. Even by South African standards labour conditions for black and Coloured workers were harsh. A mixture of political skills and the isolation of the mines allowed British-owned companies and their subsidiaries to escape the strictures of the various Mines Acts. According to the Department of Mines records, the mining companies, and the few historians who have written on the subject, female workers had disappeared from the industry by 1955. In fact, until the 1980s, females comprised up to half of asbestos mine workers in South Africa, in an example of a contemporary mining industry dependent upon female labour.

Hiding a Pandemic: Dr G.W.H. Schepers and the Politics of Silicosis in South Africa

The gold miners of South Africa have been among the most heavily medicalised of any workforce. As a consequence, for much of the twentieth century, the Chamber of Mines and its members claimed that the mines were safe and miners were relatively free of dust-induced occupational disease. For decades that orthodoxy was repeated in the medical literature. It was also repeated by numerous Commissions of Enquiry. However, epidemiology published since 1990 has identified a pandemic of silicosis, which now threatens the industry. The reasons for the hitherto invisibility of that disease burden have less to do with the limits of medicine than with the political imperatives of the gold industry.

Surviving blue asbestos: mining and occupational disease in South Africa and Australia

Australia and South Africa are the only countries to have mined crocidolite or blue asbestos. Crocidolite was mined in the Northern Cape for one hundred years and at Wittenoom in Western Australia from 1944 until 1966. Mining has left a pandemic of asbestos disease in the Northern Cape and although production levels were modest Wittenoom has become the site of Australias worst occupational health disaster. The labour regimes in South Africa and Australia were very different, yet the rates of asbestos disease among miners and their families were probably similar. The hazards facing miners arose from the nature of the labour process, the technologies of production, the rapacity of employers, and the limitations of state regulation.

The mine at Wittenoom: Blue asbestos, labour and occupational disease

Australia and South Africa are the only countries to have mined crocidolite or blue asbestos. Crocidolite was mined at Wittenoom in Western Australia from 1944 until 1966. Although production levels were modest, Wittenoom has become the site of Australias worst occupational health disaster. The labour regimes in South Africa and Wittenoom were very different and yet the rates of occupational disease were probably similar. The hazards facing miners arose from the nature of the labour process, the technologies of production and the limitations of state regulation.

Sleights of Hand: South Africa's Gold Mines and Occupational Disease.

South Africa’s gold mines were the first to compensate silicosis and tuberculosis as occupational diseases. They were also the first mines to introduce a state-sanctioned regime of medical surveillance. Despite those innovations, the major mining houses are currently facing class actions by former miners with occupational lung disease. The obvious reason for this medical and legislative failure is to be found in the economic fabric of South Africa’s gold industry. In this article, I will argue that it is also found in the system of mine medicine, which was designed to hide rather than reveal the actual disease rates.

Asbestos, lies and the State: occupational disease and South African science

In February 1959 a young pathologist named J.C. Wagner gave a paper at the Pneumoconiosis Conference in Johannesburg. The subject was a rare form of cancer called mesothelioma, which was blighting asbestos mining communities in the Northern Cape. Chris Wagner was a research fellow at the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit (PRU) where he worked closely with his brother-in-law Ian Webster. At the 1959 Conference Wagner (1960:378) told a distinguished audience that there might be a serious hazard facing asbestos miners and their families. The paper, which was immediately published in The British Journal of Industrial Medicine, was the first to establish the link between asbestos and what is the most lethal of the asbestos related diseases (Wagner et al. 1960:260-5). Wagner’s paper soon became a classic study in occupational and environmental health. In time it formed the basis of a brilliant career (see J.C. Wagner obituary, The Guardian 1 July 2000).