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PACNY's Annual Environmental

Conference


February 27th & 28th, 2025

at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino

Join us for this special 2-day event.

Highlighting our industry experts.....

Barry Castleman ScD.



Presenting:

Saranac Laboratory Coverups for the Asbestos Industry



In 1936, 10 asbestos companies agreed to fund experimental animal studies at Saranac Lab on condition that nothing would be published without prior approval by the contributors. In 1943, Gardner wrote a summary and sent it to Vandiver Brown, the top lawyer at Johns-Manville. Included was an “unintentional” study in mice that had produced “suggestive but not conclusive” evidence that asbestos dust inhalation caused lung cancer. 


The president of one of the asbestos companies wrote to Brown that Saranac experts could help fight compensation claims by stating that only particles large enough to be captured by respirators were fibrogenic – “without injections of possibilities of cancer.”


Gardner died unexpectedly in 1946 and was replaced by Dr. Arthur Vorwald, who came under pressure to publish as asbestosis compensation claims were rising. Vorwald sent the industry sponsors a draft report of Saranac’s experimental tests in 1948, including reference to the cancer findings. The industry executives met at J-M headquarters and ordered that all references to cancer be removed; and this was done in the report published in 1951. 


Saranac did another experimental study for the asbestos mining companies in the early 1950s, this also yielded positive findings and was never published.  Asbestos industry consultant Dr. Anthony Lanza became a director of the Trudeau Institute immediately following Gardner’s death. He knew all about the Saranac cancer studies and continued to publicly question the carcinogenicity of asbestos. A building named in his honor at New York University was renamed in 1992 following a campaign over his 1948 letter to Vorwald directing that all references to cancer be omitted from the report published in 1951.


Dr. Gerrit Schepers succeeded Vorwald as Saranac director, and the lab was closed in 1956. Schepers published data on the positive findings of the second cancer study in 1995. The Trudeau Institute still exists in Saranac Lake.


 


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PACNY would like to thank our Diamond Sponsor

Aramsco

for their continued support of our conference



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CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Thursday

February 27

8:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Multiple Sessions by Industry Leaders

Thursday

February 27th

4:15 PM - 7:15 PM

Vendor Happy Hour



Friday

February 28th

8:00 AM- 1:00 PM

Keynote Speaker

DOL Presentations

DOL Roundtable Q&A

Click Here to Reserve Your Spot