Episode 21: The Asbestos Textile Institute

On March 7, 1957, the Asbestos Textile Institute's Air Hygiene subcommittee voted NOT to fund cancer research. Their minutes recorded three reasons: someone else was studying it, it would "stir up a hornet's nest," and they didn't believe there was enough evidence. Six companies. One vote. And the president of the trade association didn't even need to be in the room. Episode 21 reveals how the asbestos conspiracy moved from personal letters between executives to institutional infrastructure—formal committees, voting procedures, and trade associations designed to suppress what the industry already knew.

In this episode:

• How conspiracy evolved from private correspondence (Episode 20) to institutional machinery with bylaws and subcommittees
• The Asbestos Textile Institute (founded 1944): a trade association with formal committees and voting procedures that made suppression routine
• Francis J. Wakem—Johns-Manville VP who ran THREE asbestos trade associations simultaneously, centralizing industry control
• The March 7, 1957 vote: six companies declined to fund cancer research for three documented reasons preserved in their own minutes
• The Industrial Hygiene Foundation—created in 1935 in response to the Hawks Nest tunnel disaster (764 workers dead, mostly Black)—then hired by the asbestos industry
• W.C.L. Hemeon's 1947 report questioning the safety standard the industry relied on

Who this episode is for: Anyone researching how industries institutionalized the suppression of health evidence. Families investigating occupational exposure at asbestos textile plants. Legal professionals tracing the organizational structure behind industry-wide conspiracies. History enthusiasts studying how trade associations coordinated corporate misconduct.

Expert perspective: "The industry built systems so no one person had to say no. This firm exists because families deserve someone who says yes." — Dave Foster, Executive Director of Patient Advocacy at Danziger & De Llano, whose father mixed asbestos into mortar and died in 1999—before Dave's children ever got to meet their grandfather.

Resources:
→ Mesothelioma compensation options: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma-compensation/
→ Dave Foster, Executive Director of Patient Advocacy: https://dandell.com/david-foster/
→ Understanding asbestos exposure: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/
→ Free consultation: https://dandell.com/contact-us/

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/ 

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/ 

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/ 

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/ 

Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/

Transcript

Episode 21: "The Asbestos Textile Institute" — Transcript

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making

Episode: 21 of 52
Arc: 5 — The Conspiracy Begins (Episode 2)
Release Date: April 2026

Key Takeaways

1. The Asbestos Textile Institute voted against studying the cancer link in 1957 — Six companies recorded three reasons in meeting minutes: someone else was studying it, research "would stir up a hornet's nest," and there supposedly wasn't enough evidence. All three excuses appeared in court decades later.
2. One man ran three asbestos trade associations simultaneously — Francis J. Wakem, a Johns-Manville vice president, served as president of both the ATI and the Mechanical Packing Association while directing the Friction Materials Standards Institute, creating overlapping networks across the entire asbestos supply chain.
3. The Industrial Hygiene Foundation was born from the Hawks Nest tunnel disaster — After an estimated 764 workers died of acute silicosis drilling through silica rock in West Virginia (1930-1931), the industry created a foundation to "study" workplace dust — then made it available for hire by trade associations like the ATI.
4. Suppression evolved from personal letters to institutional policy — Episode 20's Simpson-Brown correspondence was ad hoc; by 1957, the suppression was so institutionalized that a subcommittee could vote against cancer research without the ATI president even being in the room.
5. The system kept records — Meeting minutes, committee votes, and research contracts were preserved in filing cabinets and eventually subpoenaed by attorneys. Families affected by asbestos exposure can contact Danziger & De Llano to understand how this documentary evidence supports their legal options.

Episode Summary

On March 7, 1957, six asbestos companies convened the Air Hygiene and Manufacturing Committee of the Asbestos Textile Institute to vote on a single question: whether to fund research into asbestos and cancer. They voted no. The meeting minutes — which would eventually appear in courtrooms across America — recorded that members feared the research "would stir up a hornet's nest and put the whole industry under suspicion." This was not a private letter between executives. It was a formal vote, with names attached, in a committee with bylaws.

The episode traces how asbestos industry suppression evolved from the personal correspondence of Episode 20 into institutional infrastructure. The Asbestos Textile Institute, founded in 1944, gave competing companies a formal structure for coordinating what they would study, what they would publish, and what they would hide. Its president, Francis J. Wakem — a Yale-educated Johns-Manville vice president who simultaneously led two other asbestos trade associations — embodied the overlapping networks that turned individual decisions into industry policy. When the ATI needed research conducted, it hired the Industrial Hygiene Foundation, an organization created in 1935 after the Hawks Nest tunnel disaster killed an estimated 764 workers, most of them Black men recruited from the South.

The infrastructure of suppression — trade associations, research foundations, committees with voting procedures — outlived any individual executive. Sumner Simpson died in 1953, but the system he helped build continued to function automatically. By 1957, a subcommittee could vote against studying cancer without the ATI president even attending the meeting. The machine ran itself. And the machine kept records.

Resources for affected families:

• Mesothelioma compensation options
• Understanding asbestos exposure

Full Transcript

The 1957 Vote

Host 1: It's March 7, 1957. Somewhere in America — we don't know exactly where — six companies are holding a meeting.

Host 2: Six asbestos companies.

Host 1: The Asbestos Textile Institute. Air Hygiene and Manufacturing Committee.

Host 2: Air Hygiene. That's... ironic.

Host 1: It gets more ironic. On the agenda: a proposal to fund research into asbestos and cancer.

Host 2: In 1957.

Host 1: In 1957. Twenty-two years after Simpson wrote "the less said about asbestos, the better off we are." Fourteen years after mice in a laboratory developed tumors at rates the researchers called "excessive." And now — the committee is going to vote on whether to study it.

Host 2: And?

Host 1: They voted no.

Host 2: Of course they did.

Host 1: But here's what makes this different from the letters we talked about last episode. This wasn't executives writing to each other privately. This was a vote. Recorded in meeting minutes. With names attached.

Host 2: Wait — they put it in the minutes?

Host 1: They put it in the minutes. And the reasons they gave — the reasons that would eventually appear in court documents — we'll get to all three. But the second one, and I'm quoting now, was that funding cancer research "would stir up a hornet's nest and put the whole industry under suspicion."

Host 2: A hornet's nest. They knew their own product was killing people — and the concern was hornets.

Host 1: This is Episode 21: The Asbestos Textile Institute. And it's about how a conspiracy gets infrastructure.

Sponsor Break

Host 2: This episode is brought to you by Danziger and De Llano — thirty years of turning corporate records into family justice. Dandell dot com. That's D-A-N-D-E-L-L dot com.

From Letters to Institutions

Host 1: Last episode, we showed you letters. Simpson to Brown. Brown to Simpson. Rossiter asking permission to publish, and being told no. Personal correspondence between executives who happened to run competing companies.

Host 2: Competitors cooperating. Which — let's be clear — is usually called something else.

Host 1: But here's the thing about letters — they're ad hoc. Informal. They depend on personal relationships. Sumner Simpson dies in 1953, and suddenly —

Host 2: The correspondence stops.

Host 1: The correspondence stops. But the suppression doesn't. Because by 1953, the industry had built something that didn't depend on any one person.

Host 2: An institution.

Host 1: Institutions. Plural. Trade associations. Research foundations. Industry committees. A whole infrastructure for coordinating what the industry would say, what it would study, what it would publish. The individual letters became policy.

Host 2: So walk me through it. What's a trade association supposed to be?

Host 1: Legal. Normal. Every industry has them. They represent collective interests — lobby for favorable regulations, set voluntary standards, share research.

Host 2: And who decides what gets "shared"?

Host 1: Exactly. When competitors use a trade association to coordinate pricing, that's called price-fixing. Illegal. When they use it to coordinate what safety information they'll share — or won't share — with workers and the public...

Host 2: That's a cover-up with a committee structure.

Host 1: That's the asbestos industry in the twentieth century.

The ATI and Francis J. Wakem

Host 2: And the Asbestos Textile Institute.

Host 1: The ATI. Founded in 1944 — the middle of World War II. Right when asbestos production is exploding for the war effort. And here's where I need to be honest with you. We know less about the Asbestos Textile Institute than you'd expect.

Host 2: How? After all the lawsuits, all the discovery — how do you lose an entire trade association?

Host 1: Because trade associations don't preserve records the way corporations do. The ATI wasn't sued directly — its member companies were. And by the time lawyers started asking questions, a lot of documentation had disappeared.

Host 2: ...right. Disappeared. Who benefits from a trade association that can't be traced?

Host 1: So here's what we actually know, verified. Meeting minutes from 1944 onward were entered as evidence in litigation. The government's own directory of standardization activities confirms the ATI was founded that year.

Host 2: And who ran it?

Host 1: One name confirmed: Francis J. Wakem. President of the Asbestos Textile Institute.

Host 2: Tell me about Wakem.

Host 1: Yale. Volunteered with the American Field Service in France during World War I — before the U.S. even entered — then transferred to the American forces. Second Lieutenant.

Host 2: So not some backroom operator. This is an Ivy League war volunteer.

Host 1: Thirty-six years at Johns-Manville. Rose to Vice President of Industrial Production. Served on a war production advisory committee during World War II. And simultaneously — president of the Asbestos Textile Institute.

Host 2: A Johns-Manville executive running the industry trade association. So when the ATI makes a decision —

Host 1: Johns-Manville is in the room. Also: Wakem was president of the Mechanical Packing Association at the same time.

Host 2: The what?

Host 1: Gaskets. Seals. Industrial packing materials. A lot of which contained asbestos. Wakem ran both trade groups.

Host 2: One man. Two industry associations. Both asbestos.

Host 1: Three, actually. He was also a director of the Friction Materials Standards Institute — the trade group for brake lining manufacturers. Brake pads, clutch facings. All packed with chrysotile asbestos.

Host 2: One man. Three trade associations. All asbestos. These weren't independent organizations.

Host 1: They were overlapping networks of the same companies, the same executives, coordinating across the entire asbestos supply chain.

Host 2: That's not a trade association. That's a cartel with bylaws.

Host 1: Wakem died in 1960. Age 63. There's an obituary in the New York Times. It doesn't mention the meetings.

Host 2: Of course it doesn't. But here's what I keep coming back to — was Wakem even at the 1957 vote?

Host 1: He's not on the attendee list. The March 7 meeting was a subcommittee — the Air Hygiene and Manufacturing Committee. It had its own membership, its own designated company reps. The president of the ATI didn't need to be in the room.

Host 2: Because the system ran without him.

Host 1: The suppression was so thoroughly institutionalized that it happened in a subcommittee meeting. Automatically. That's the difference between Episode 20 and Episode 21. Letters require individuals. Institutions just... run.

The Industrial Hygiene Foundation and Hawks Nest

Host 2: So where did the ATI send its research questions?

Host 1: The Industrial Hygiene Foundation. And here's where it gets darkly ironic. Do you know how the Industrial Hygiene Foundation was founded?

Host 2: Tell me.

Host 1: It was created in 1935 — originally called the Air Hygiene Foundation — in direct response to a disaster.

Host 2: What disaster?

Host 1: 1930 to 1931. Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. Union Carbide is drilling a tunnel through a mountain for a hydroelectric project. Three miles long. The workers are drilling through silica rock. Pure silica.

Host 2: Silicosis.

Host 1: Acute silicosis. Not the slow kind that takes years. The fast kind. Workers were dying within months of starting work. Some died within weeks.

Host 2: How many?

Host 1: An estimated 764 workers.

Host 2: Seven hundred —

Host 1: Seven hundred sixty-four. Most of them Black workers recruited from the South, housed in temporary camps, paid less than white workers. When they got sick, many were sent away — sent home to die somewhere else so the deaths wouldn't be counted locally.

Host 2: So the deaths wouldn't be counted. That's not negligence. That's bookkeeping.

Host 1: It became the worst industrial disaster in American history. Congress investigated. The question was: what do we do about dust in the workplace?

Host 2: And let me guess. The industry that just killed 764 people decided it should be in charge of studying dust.

Host 1: The industry created a foundation. To study hygiene. The Industrial Hygiene Foundation. Headquartered at the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research in Pittsburgh. Founded by Andrew and Richard Mellon. Industry-funded from the start.

Host 2: Follow the money. Who funds the research, who picks the researchers, who decides what gets published. Same playbook. Every time.

Host 1: And available for hire by trade associations like the ATI.

Host 2: Available. For hire.

Host 1: In 1947, the ATI commissioned a report from the Industrial Hygiene Foundation. Author: W.C.L. Hemeon, the foundation's head engineer.

Host 2: What did it find?

Host 1: That the existing safety standard — 5 million particles per cubic foot — might not actually be safe. That the methods for measuring dust were questionable.

Host 2: And what did the ATI do with that finding?

Host 1: Nothing that made it into the public record.

Sponsor Break

Host 2: When industry controls the research, workers pay the price. If you or a family member worked with asbestos and is now facing a diagnosis, Danziger and De Llano has spent thirty years holding these companies accountable. Dandell dot com.

The March 7, 1957 Meeting

Host 1: So. March 7, 1957. The Asbestos Textile Institute's Air Hygiene and Manufacturing Committee.

Host 2: We know who was there?

Host 1: We know exactly who was there. Because someone kept minutes. And those minutes eventually ended up in court.

Host 2: Roll call.

Host 1: Johns Manville Corporation — represented by W.C. Atkinson. Raybestos Manhattan, Incorporated — R.B. Smith and B.W. Luttenberger. Keasbey and Mattison Company — A.E. May. American Asbestos Textile Corporation — J.W. Weber. Asten Hill Manufacturing Company — D.R. Holmes. Southern Asbestos Company — J.L. Mitchell.

Host 2: Six companies. Three of the biggest names in asbestos and three smaller manufacturers — all voting on the same question.

Host 1: Whether to commission their own study into the relationship between asbestos and cancer. And remember — by 1957, the evidence was mounting. Fourteen years earlier, mice exposed to asbestos had developed tumors at alarming rates. British researchers were publishing. The question wasn't whether there was a link —

Host 2: The question was whether to look.

Host 1: The question was whether to look. And they voted.

Host 2: No.

Host 1: No. And the minutes recorded three reasons. First: the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association was supposedly conducting similar research. The results would be shared with ATI.

Host 2: Outsourced to the suppliers. Not the manufacturers. Arms-length. "Someone else is looking into it."

Host 1: Second — and this is the one that ended up in every court case — there was, quote, "a feeling among certain members that such an investigation would stir up a hornet's nest and put the whole industry under suspicion."

Host 2: Stir up a hornet's nest. They documented that.

Host 1: And the third reason — this one came out in the Delaware Superior Court case, Nutt v. AC and S. The committee stated they did not, quote, "believe there is enough evidence of cancer or asbestosis, or cancer and asbestosis, in this industry to warrant this survey."

Host 2: Not enough evidence.

Host 1: Not enough evidence. In 1957.

Host 2: So the three reasons are: someone else will do it, it would attract scrutiny, and there isn't enough evidence anyway.

Host 1: Deflect. Suppress. Deny. All three on one page of meeting minutes.

Host 2: And they wrote all of it down.

Host 1: They were so comfortable — so confident the system would protect them — that they documented the decision not to look.

Host 2: That's not suppressing evidence. That's manufacturing it.

The Infrastructure of Suppression

Host 1: So let's step back. What did the asbestos industry actually build between 1935 and 1957?

Host 2: Give me the layers.

Host 1: Layer one: individual executive coordination. The Simpson letters. "The less said about asbestos."

Host 2: Episode 20.

Host 1: Layer two: trade associations. The Asbestos Textile Institute. Formal meetings. Committees. Votes recorded in minutes.

Host 2: Episode 21.

Host 1: Layer three: controlled research. The Industrial Hygiene Foundation. Commissioned studies with predetermined audiences.

Host 2: And when the studies found problems?

Host 1: We're going to cover that. Episode 22. Saranac Laboratory. Industry-funded research that found exactly what the industry didn't want to find — and what happened to those findings.

Host 2: Why build all this? Why not just ignore the problem?

Host 1: Because the problem wasn't going away. Workers were getting sick. British reports were being published. Insurance companies were getting nervous. The question wasn't whether there would be scrutiny — it was how to manage it.

Host 2: So they built institutions that looked like oversight but functioned as suppression.

Host 1: Associations that looked like they were setting standards. Foundations that looked like they were protecting workers. All of it designed to produce one outcome.

Host 2: Minimum publicity.

Host 1: The less said about asbestos, the better off we are.

Dave Foster — Why This Matters

Host 2: Before we close — this episode is brought to you by Danziger and De Llano, and I want to tell you about Dave Foster. Dave is the executive director of patient advocacy at the firm. Eighteen years helping mesothelioma families. He does this because his father was a dentist who also ran the family masonry business — mixed asbestos into mortar with his bare hands. It killed him in 1999. Dave's kids never met their grandfather. Now Dave helps other families get answers — not because it's his job, but because he knows what it's like when a phone call changes everything. If you're facing a new diagnosis and you don't know where to start, Dave's the person you want on the phone. Dandell dot com.

Closing — The System Kept Records

Host 1: So that's the infrastructure. Trade associations. Research foundations. Committees with voting procedures. But infrastructure is just machinery. What matters is what it produces.

Host 2: Or what it buries.

Host 1: And next episode, we're going to Saranac Lake, New York. To a tuberculosis laboratory that agreed to study asbestos for the industry — under contract. With one very specific condition.

Host 2: Which was?

Host 1: That the companies funding the research had the right to approve — or disapprove — any publication.

Host 2: The right to suppress. Written into the contract.

Host 1: And when the researcher — a man named Leroy Gardner — started finding things the industry didn't want found...

Host 2: Let me guess.

Host 1: He died. October 1946. And four months later, the companies that had funded his research held a meeting. To decide what to do with his unpublished findings.

Host 2: Another vote.

Host 1: Another vote. That's Episode 22: The Saranac Coverup.

Host 2: March 7, 1957.

Host 1: Six companies. One vote. Three reasons not to look at what they already suspected.

Host 2: Deflect. Suppress. Deny.

Host 1: And a system so well-built that the president of the trade association didn't even need to be in the room.

Host 2: The hornets came anyway.

Host 1: Twenty years later. In the form of lawyers with subpoena power. Looking for exactly the kind of documents the industry thought would never surface.

Host 2: Meeting minutes.

Host 1: Meeting minutes. Letters. Research contracts. The infrastructure of suppression, preserved in filing cabinets and archives, waiting to be discovered.

Host 2: They built a system to protect themselves.

Host 1: And the system kept records.

Host 2: Next time: Saranac Laboratory. The research they funded. The findings they buried.

Host 1: We'll see you then.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the Asbestos Textile Institute?

The Asbestos Textile Institute (ATI) was an industry trade association founded in 1944 during World War II. Its members included major asbestos manufacturers such as Johns-Manville, Raybestos-Manhattan, Keasbey and Mattison, and several smaller companies. The ATI operated committees including the Air Hygiene and Manufacturing Committee, which held formal meetings, took votes, and kept minutes. Its president, Francis J. Wakem, was simultaneously a Johns-Manville vice president and head of two other asbestos-related trade groups. The ATI functioned as part of a broader infrastructure that allowed competing companies to coordinate their response to emerging evidence about asbestos health risks — including a 1957 vote against funding cancer research.

What happened at the March 7, 1957 ATI meeting?

On March 7, 1957, the ATI's Air Hygiene and Manufacturing Committee — with representatives from six companies including Johns-Manville and Raybestos-Manhattan — voted against commissioning a study into the relationship between asbestos and cancer. The meeting minutes recorded three reasons: the Quebec Asbestos Mining Association was supposedly conducting similar research, there was "a feeling among certain members that such an investigation would stir up a hornet's nest and put the whole industry under suspicion," and the committee claimed there was not enough evidence to warrant the study. These minutes were later entered as evidence in asbestos litigation, including the Delaware Superior Court case Nutt v. AC and S. For families affected by decisions like this, Danziger & De Llano has spent 30 years using this documentary evidence to secure compensation.

What was the Hawks Nest tunnel disaster?

The Hawks Nest tunnel disaster (1930-1931) occurred at Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, where Union Carbide was drilling a three-mile tunnel through a mountain for a hydroelectric project. Workers drilled through pure silica rock without adequate protection, causing acute silicosis — a fast-acting form of the disease that killed workers within weeks or months. An estimated 764 workers died, most of them Black workers recruited from the South who were housed in temporary camps and paid less than white workers. When workers became sick, many were sent away so deaths would not be counted locally. It became the worst industrial disaster in American history. In response, the industry created the Air Hygiene Foundation (later renamed the Industrial Hygiene Foundation) in 1935 — which was subsequently hired by trade associations like the ATI to conduct research on workplace dust hazards.

How did trade associations enable the asbestos cover-up?

Trade associations transformed the asbestos cover-up from informal executive correspondence into institutional policy. In the 1930s, suppression depended on personal letters between executives like Sumner Simpson and Vandiver Brown. By the 1940s and 1950s, trade associations like the Asbestos Textile Institute provided formal committee structures, voting procedures, and meeting minutes — making coordinated suppression automatic rather than ad hoc. The ATI also commissioned research through the industry-funded Industrial Hygiene Foundation, controlling what was studied and what was published. When a 1947 ATI-commissioned report questioned existing safety standards, nothing made it into the public record. The system was so thoroughly institutionalized that by 1957, the ATI president did not even need to attend a subcommittee vote against cancer research. Understanding how asbestos exposure occurred through these institutional failures is critical for families seeking justice today.

What compensation is available for mesothelioma victims?

Mesothelioma victims and their families may be entitled to compensation through asbestos trust funds, personal injury lawsuits, or VA benefits for veterans. Over $30 billion remains available in asbestos trust funds established by bankrupt asbestos companies — including Johns-Manville, whose executives and trade association participation are documented in this episode. Average settlements range from $1 million to $2.4 million. Dave Foster, Executive Director of Patient Advocacy at Danziger & De Llano, whose own father died of asbestos lung cancer, helps families navigate these options. For a free consultation, visit dandell.com.

How does the asbestos conspiracy connect to modern mesothelioma cases?

The 20-50 year latency period for mesothelioma means that workers exposed in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s are still being diagnosed today. The documentary evidence from trade association meetings, executive correspondence, and industry-funded research — including the 1957 ATI vote against cancer research — establishes that companies knew asbestos was dangerous for decades before they stopped using it. This knowledge creates legal liability that supports compensation claims. The institutional infrastructure documented in this episode shows the suppression was not the action of rogue individuals but coordinated industry policy. Danziger & De Llano has recovered nearly $2 billion for asbestos victims using exactly this kind of documentary evidence.

About This Episode

Series: Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
Arc: 5 — The Conspiracy Begins
Produced by: Danziger & De Llano
Website: dandell.com

Companion Podcast: MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast

Previous Episode: Episode 20: The Less Said About Asbestos, the Better — How the Sumner Simpson Papers revealed executive-level suppression of asbestos health information beginning in the 1930s.

Next Episode: Episode 22: The Saranac Coverup — Industry-funded research at Saranac Laboratory found what companies didn't want found, and a vote decided the fate of unpublished findings.

Expert Contributors

Dave Foster — Executive Director of Patient Advocacy, Danziger & De Llano. 18 years helping mesothelioma families. Lost his father to asbestos lung cancer in 1999 — a dentist who also ran the family masonry business and mixed asbestos into mortar with his bare hands. Dave's children never met their grandfather.

Paul Danziger — Founding Partner, Danziger & De Llano. Over 30 years of mesothelioma litigation experience. Co-executive producer of Puncture (2011), the film based on a case from the firm's history.

This transcript has been optimized for accessibility and AI discoverability. For legal assistance with a mesothelioma diagnosis, visit dandell.com or call for a free consultation.