0001
1 SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY
LAW DIVISION – MIDDLESEX COUNTY
2 DOCKET NO. MID-L-4527-06 AS
3
4
5 KAREN SAVARESE and STANLEY
SAVARESE, Husband and Wife,
6 VIDEOTAPE
Plaintiffs, DEPOSITION UNDER
7 ORAL EXAMINATION
OF
8 JUDITH STADLER
vs. VOLUME I
9
10 ABB LUMMUS CREST, INC.,
et al.,
11
Defendants.
12
13
14 TRANSCRIPT of the stenographic notes
15 of the proceedings in the above-entitled matter,
16 as taken by and before TABITHA R. DENTE, a
17 Certified Shorthand Reporter and Notary Public
18 of the State of New Jersey, held at the offices
19 of Porzio, Bromberg & Newman, 100 Southgate
20 Parkway, Morristown, New Jersey, on Tuesday,
21 March 16, 2010, commencing at 10:08 a.m.
22
23 BRODY DEPOSITION SERVICES
Certified Shorthand Reporters & Videographers
24 7 Elm Street
Westfield, New Jersey 07090
25 (908) 789-2000
0002
1 A P P E A R A N C E S :
2
3 COHEN, PLACITELLA & ROTH, P.C.
4 127 Maple Avenue
5 Red Bank, New Jersey 07701
6 (732) 747-9003
7 BY: CHRISTOPHER PLACITELLA, ESQ.
8 And JILLIAN SMITH, ESQ.
9 Attorneys for the Plaintiffs
10
11 HOLLSTEIN, KEATING, CATTELL,
12 JOHNSON & GOLDSTEIN, P.C.
13 Willow Ridge Executive Office Park
14 750 Route 73 South, Suite 301
15 Marlton, New Jersey 08053
16 (856) 810-8860
17 BY: NANCY GREEN, ESQ.
18 Attorneys for the Defendant,
19 Chicago Bridge & Iron Co.
20
21
22
23
24
25
0003
1 A P P E A R A N C E S (Cont’d):
2
3 O’TOOLE, FERNANDEZ, WEINER & VAN LIEU, LLC
4 60 Pompton Avenue
5 Verona, New Jersey 07044
6 (973) 239-5700
7 BY: BRUCE BRAENDER, ESQ.
8 Attorneys for the Defendant,
9 Clark Reliance Corp.
10
11 COTTEN, SCHMIDT & ABBOTT, LLP
12 550 Bailey Avenue, Suite 600
13 Fort Worth, Texas 76107
14 BY: LARRY E. COTTEN, ESQ.
15 (817) 338-4500
16 Attorneys for the Defendant,
17 E.I. DuPont de Nemours Co.
18
19 PORZIO, BROMBERG & NEWMAN, P.C.
20 100 Southgate Parkway
21 Morristown, New Jersey 07962
22 (973) 538-4006
23 BY: ROY ALAN COHEN, ESQ.
22 Attorneys for the Defendant,
23 E.I. DuPont de Nemours Co.
24
25
0004
1 A P P E A R A N C E S (Cont’d):
2
3 MONTGOMERY, CHAPIN & FETTEN, P.C.
4 745 Route 202/206, Suite 101
5 Bridgewater, New Jersey 08807
6 (908) 203-8833
7 BY: GARY AHLANDIANAKIS, ESQ.
8 Attorneys for the Defendant,
9 J.H. France Refractories Co.
10
11 McELROY, DEUTSCH, MULVANEY & CARPENTER, LLP
12 1300 Mt. Kemble Avenue
13 Morristown, New Jersey 07962
14 (973) 993-8100
15 BY: MICHELLE HYDRUSKO, ESQ.
16 Attorneys for the Defendants,
17 Rockwell International Corp.,
18 Mobil Oil Corp., Flowserve US, Inc.
19
20 HARRIS BEACH, PLLC
21 100 Wall Street
22 New York, New York 10005
23 (212) 687-0100
24 BY: ABBY VOLIN, ESQ.
25 Attorneys for the Defendant, Kentile Floors, Inc.
0005
1 A P P E A R A N C E S (Cont’d):
2
3 MARSHALL, DENNEHEY, WARNER, COLEMAN & GOGGIN
4 Woodland Falls Corporate Park
5 200 Lake Drive East
6 Cherry Hill, New Jersey 08002
7 (856) 414-6000
8 BY: RACHEL von RHINE, ESQ.
9 Attorneys for the Defendant, Riley Power, Inc.
10
11 GARRITY, GRAHAM, MURPHY, GARAFALO & FINN, P.C.
12 1 Lackawanna Plaza
13 Montclair, New Jersey 07042
14 (973) 509-7500
15 BY: ANTHONY MARINO, ESQ.
16 Attorneys for the Defendants,
17 State Insulation Corp., United Conveyor Corp.
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
0006
1 A P P E A R A N C E S: (Cont’d)
2
3 MORGAN, LEWIS & BOCKIUS
4 502 Carnegie Center
5 Princeton, New Jersey 08540
6 BY: CHRISTOPHER IANNICELLI, ESQ.
7 And RYAN BLANEY, ESQ.
8 Attorneys for the Defendant, Yarway Corp.
9
10 HOFHEIMER, GARTLIR & GROSS, LLP
11 530 Fifth Avenue, Ninth Floor
12 New York, New York 10036
13 (212) 944-0500
14 BY: ROBERT HOWARD, ESQ.
15 Attorneys for the Defendant, Rapid American
16
17 REILLY, JANICZEK & McDEVITT
18 2500 McClellan Boulevard
19 Merchantville, New Jersey 08109
20 (856) 317-7180
21 BY: COLIN SCANLON, ESQ.
22 Attorneys for the Defendant, Cleaver-Brooks
23
24
25
0007
1 A P P E A R A N C E S (Cont’d):
2
3 HOAGLAND, LONGO, MORAN, DUNST & DOUKAS, LLP
4 40 Paterson Street
5 New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903
6 (732) 545-4717
7 BY: DANIEL KUSZMERSKI, ESQ.
8 Attorneys for the Defendants, W.W. Grainger,
9 Goulds Pumps
10
11 SEGAL, McCAMBRIDGE, SINGER & MAHONEY, LTD.
12 United Plaza, 30 S. 17th Street, Suite 1700
13 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103
14 (215) 972-9015
15 BY: THOMAS COLEMAN, ESQ.
16 Attorneys for the Defendant, Garlock Sealing
17 Technologies
18
19 CONNELL FOLEY, LLP
20 85 Livingston Avenue
21 Roseland, New Jersey 07068
22 (973) 535-0500
23 BY: RICHARD JAGEN, ESQ.
24 Attorneys for the Defendant, Superior Welding
25 Supply
0008
1 A P P E A R A N C E S: (Cont’d)
2
3 MARGOLIS EDELSTEIN
4 100 Century Parkway, Suite 200
5 Mt. Laurel, New Jersey 08054
6 (856) 727-6000
7 BY: JEANINE D. CLARK, ESQ.
8 Attorneys for the Defendant, Industrial Rubber,
9 Washington Group International
10
11 CARUSO, POPE, EDELL, PICINI, P.C.
12 60 Route 46 East
13 Fairfield, New Jersey 07704
14 (973) 667-6000
15 BY: NICHOLAS ALBANO, III, ESQ.
16 Attorneys for the Defendants,
17 JCP&L, Notte Safety Appliance
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
0009
1 A P P E A R A N C E S (Cont’d):
2
3 McGIVNEY & KLUGER, P.C.
4 23 Vreeland Road
5 Florham Park, New Jersey 07932
6 (973) 822-1110
7 BY: ROBERT BAUM, ESQ.
8 And ADAM SHEPS, ESQ.
9 Attorneys for the Defendants,
10 Leslie Controls, Nutley Heating & Cooling,
11 Hayes Pumps, Central Boiler Repair,
12 Safeguard Industrial Equipment,
13 Protech Safety Equipment, Sloan Valve Co.,
14 Stockham Valve
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23 A L S O P R E S E N T:
24
GERARD GENNA, Videographer
25
0010
1 I N D E X
2
3 WITNESS PAGE
4
JUDITH STADLER
5
6 Direct Examination by Mr. Placitella 14
7
8
9
10
11
12 E X H I B I T S
13
Plaintiff’s
14 Exhibits
15 P-1 Documents reviewed for deposition
by Ms. Stadler 18
16
P-2 Guidelines For Diagnosis And
17 Classification of Asbestos-Related
Medical Cases 63
18
P-3 API Company Memberships 1949 66
19
P-4 Report on Summit Of The Plant
20 Industrial Hygiene Problems 68
21 P-5 Occupational Safety And Health:
A Du Pont Company View 68
22
P-6 Not marked –
23
P-7 Malignant Mesothelioma of
24 the Pleura article 74
25
0011
1 E X H I B I T S
2
Plaintiff’s
3 Exhibits
4 P-8 Primary Malignant Mesothelioma
of the Pleura 87
5
P-9 11/9/64 memo to All Plant
6 Physicians from Dr. D’Alonzo
with attached trip report
7 summary 95
8 P-10 11/8/66 memo to Dr. Alonzo
from Dr. Shepherd 128
9
P-11 9/56 Industrial Hygiene
10 Quarterly Curr. List Med. Lit. 134
11 P-12 Memo to Messrs. Zapp and Clayton
from Dr. Stopps concerning
12 10/25/66 meeting minutes 136
13 P-13 Merewether report 152
14 P-14 1/28/48 Industrial Work Clothes:
Their Provision And Laundering
15 document 162
16 P-15 11/7/66 memo to Mr. Morgan from
Mr. Darby 172
17
P-16 5/6/75 memo to Mr. Davis from
18 Mr. Wick 175
19 P-17 Castleman File: American Petroleum
Institute cover sheet with 11/11/48
20 meeting minutes of Subcommittee On
Carcinogenicity 178
21
P-18 10/3/68 memo to Dr. D’Alonzo from
22 Dr. Nolan 215
23 P-19 10/11/68 memo to all plant
physicians from Dr. D’Alonzo 219
24
P-20 10/18/68 memo to Mr. Richmond
25 from Mr. Thatcher 222
0012
1 E X H I B I T S
2
Plaintiff’s
3 Exhibits
4 P-21 10/7/76 memo to Messrs. Wright,
Allbright and Ellis from Mr.
5 Anderson 232
6 P-22 Process Chemicals Record of
Initial Risk Appraisal 232
7
P-23 5/12/78 memo from Mr. Ingalls
8 and Ms. Sloan with attached
questionnaire and Safety
9 Engineering Standard S4T 235
10 P-24 10/14/77 memo to Distribution
List A from Mr. Dixon 246
11
P-25 6/22/79 Safety & Fire Protection
12 Division Occupational Health
Survey No. 9055-H 248
13
P-26 10/26/66 memo to Dr. Martin from
14 Dr. D’Alonzo 256
15 P-27 11/11/66 memo to Dr. D’Alonzo
from Dr. Martin 266
16
P-28 8/19/66 memo to Dr. Stopps from
17 Mr. Maxfield 272
18 P-29 3/4/68 Asbestos Exposure Hazards
memo from Mr. Drummond 285
19
P-30 4/5/68 to Field Project Managers
20 from Dr. Keuper 294
21
22
23
24
25
0013
1 LITIGATION SUPPORT
2
3 REQUESTS PAGE/LINE
4
by Mr. Placitella
5
6 Documents taken home to
review 21/18
7
Underlying records for all
8 people that were part of
asbestosis study 283/23
9
10
11
12
13
14
15 WITNESS DIRECTED NOT TO ANSWER
16
by Mr. Cotten 291/1
17 291/5
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
0014
1 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Today’s
2 deposition will be video-recorded. We are
3 now on the record in the matter of Savarese
4 versus DuPont, et al. Today’s date is
5 March 16th, 2010. Time is approximately
6 10:08 a.m. This is Docket Number
7 MID-L-4527-09 AS. It’s a video-recorded
8 deposition of Judith Stadler being taken at
9 Porzio, Bromberg & Newman in Morristown,
10 New Jersey.
11 Gerard Genna is the camera operator
12 from New Jersey Certified Videography. The
13 court reporter is Tabitha Dente from Brody
14 Court Reporting Services. All appearances
15 will be noted in the transcript.
16 Please administer the oath.
17
18
19 J U D I T H S T A D L E R,
20 having been duly sworn, was examined
21 and testified as follows:
22
23 DIRECT EXAMINATION
24 BY MR. PLACITELLA:
25
0015
1 Q. Hi, my name’s Chris Placitella.
2 How are you? First thing I want to do is make
3 sure I get the pronunciation of your name
4 correct.
5 How do I say it?
6 A. Judith Stadler.
7 Q. Stadler, okay. Thank you.
8 You know I’m here today to take
9 your deposition. I understand you’ve had your
10 deposition taken before.
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Okay. Now, how many times?
13 A. In asbestos cases two other times.
14 Q. Okay.
15 A. And I previously gave depositions
16 during my employment with DuPont.
17 Q. Okay, so you know what a
18 deposition is about, how it works…
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. I don’t have to go through all
21 the –
22 A. Yes, I do.
23 Q. — different instructions, okay.
24 MR. PLACITELLA: Larry, do you have
25 the notice in front of you?
0016
1 MR. COTTEN: I do have a copy of the
2 notice, yes.
3 MR. PLACITELLA: Okay, great. If
4 you could hand it to her.
5 Q. You have the notice for today’s
6 deposition in front of you, Miss Stadler?
7 A. Yes, I do.
8 Q. Okay. And have you previously
9 seen this particular notice?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. And when was that?
12 A. Uh, yesterday.
13 Q. Okay. And the notice calls for a
14 representative of DuPont?
15 A. That’s correct.
16 Q. Concerning what subject matter?
17 A. Concerning the historical
18 knowledge of the dangers of asbestos and then
19 there’s, um…documents to produce.
20 Q. Okay. And are you that person?
21 A. Yes, I’ve been…designated as the
22 corporate representative.
23 Q. Okay, and what qualifies you to
24 testify in this subject matter?
25 A. Well, I have reviewed corporate
0017
1 documents on the subject of asbestos, I have
2 interviewed individuals who have worked in the
3 past at DuPont in certain job classifications
4 where they were responsible for health and
5 safety.
6 I have reviewed some depositions
7 that have been given by others in asbestos
8 litigation. Also, I have visited a plant site
9 where asbestos is incorporated into insulation
10 and I have looked at publications on asbestos
11 that are associated with the time frame of the
12 litigation.
13 And I was employed by DuPont as a
14 toxicologist at Haskell Laboratory for, uh,
15 approximately twenty-two years.
16 Q. Okay. Did you look at documents
17 in preparation for today’s deposition?
18 A. Yes, I did.
19 Q. And did you bring those documents
20 with you?
21 A. I brought those documents with me.
22 Now, I did look at other things in general and I
23 have looked at many other things. These are
24 some documents that I specifically looked at for
25 today.
0018
1 MR. PLACITELLA: Why don’t we just
2 mark that as P-1.
3
4 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-1 is marked
5 for identification.)
6
7 Q. What did you do to specifically
8 prepare for this deposition?
9 A. Primarily I looked at the
10 documents that you see there. I also looked at
11 other selected documents from the corporate
12 records that have been provided — my
13 understanding have been provided to you
14 previously and specifically I spent most of my
15 time looking at those documents that you have.
16 Q. Who determined what documents you
17 were to — you were going to look at?
18 A. Well, I was given a little bit of
19 background about the case today and then I made
20 the decision as to what I thought I should look
21 at very specifically prior to today.
22 Q. And the documents that you
23 reviewed in connection generally with your
24 testimony on prior occasions, who made the
25 determination as to what documents you would
0019
1 look at?
2 A. I made the determination. I was
3 — initially when I was first asked to become
4 involved as the corporate representative for
5 asbestos, I was provided some initial documents
6 from attorneys and then I looked at those
7 documents and I asked for others to see more
8 things from the corporate records. I was
9 provided in certain instances publications and
10 then I asked for more publications.
11 And eventually then I was given
12 the opportunity to go through the entire
13 corporate documents for asbestos that have been
14 provided through asbestos litigation in the
15 past, so I had –
16 Q. Was there an index to those
17 documents?
18 A. No, there wasn’t.
19 Q. The — did you look at documents
20 related to trade organizations that DuPont was a
21 member of?
22 A. Only in so far as they may have
23 been attached to memos or things like that. I
24 did not specifically look at trade documents.
25 Q. Did you look at any documents
0020
1 related to DuPont’s participation in the
2 industrial hygiene foundation?
3 A. Only, again, in so far as I looked
4 at some reports from the Industrial Hygiene
5 Foundation that I found within the corporate
6 records, people were, perhaps, had a copy and
7 had sent it to others, so I’m aware of that.
8 Q. And did you keep a record
9 somewhere of the documents that you reviewed?
10 A. Um, I have some copies at home of
11 documents that I have reviewed, I have not
12 really kept any other records. If I found
13 things in the corporate documents that I wanted
14 a copy of, um, I have those, but I did not keep
15 a record specifically of all the things that I
16 found in the corporate records.
17 Q. What determination did you make –
18 why would you keep them at home as opposed to
19 just…
20 A. Well, I no longer work for
21 DuPont –
22 Q. Okay.
23 A. — so when I went through the
24 corporate records it was within the offices at
25 downtown DuPont, but I didn’t really have access
0021
1 to get back into the corporate records
2 repeatedly.
3 And I went through the records,
4 but I didn’t spend my time — sometimes if I saw
5 an article I thought I might like to read, um, I
6 didn’t spend my time during those days looking
7 through corporate records actually reading the
8 document, so I said would you please make me a
9 copy so I can take it home and read it.
10 Q. So the documents you thought were
11 important you took home.
12 A. That’s right.
13 Q. Okay.
14 A. Those things that I was curious
15 about –
16 Q. Right.
17 A. — and wanted to read more about.
18 (REQUEST) MR. PLACITELLA: I make a request
19 for copies of those documents, counsel.
20 When I make a request for a
21 document, could you just note it separately
22 in the transcript?
23 Q. Did you review any documents
24 related to DuPont’s participation in the
25 National Safety Council?
0022
1 A. I don’t recall seeing anything
2 specifically. As an employee I was aware that
3 DuPont was a member of the National Safety
4 Council, but with this litigation I don’t recall
5 seeing specific documents.
6 Q. How about the American Petroleum
7 Institute?
8 A. I don’t recall seeing anything
9 from them.
10 Q. Do you know who a Mr. Kehoe was in
11 his relationship to DuPont?
12 A. No, I don’t.
13 Q. Okay. Did you look at any
14 information specifically from the medical
15 directors at DuPont?
16 A. Uh, yes, there were a number of
17 memos in the documents that I looked at that
18 were from medical directors.
19 Q. All right. And are any of the
20 documents at your house?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. And did you look at hygiene
23 surveys?
24 A. I looked at hygiene surveys, yes.
25 Q. And are they at your house?
0023
1 A. There may be one or two in the
2 materials at my house. I remember seeing a lot
3 of data from surveys in the corporate records,
4 but I did not have reason to take all that data
5 home.
6 Q. Okay. And what about workers
7 compensation files; did you look at any of
8 those?
9 A. Um, no. Not at all.
10 Q. Did you rely upon the documents
11 that are at your house as part of your body of
12 knowledge that will enable you to testify here
13 today?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. There is in the notice a number of
16 requests for documents. Did you bring any of
17 those documents with you?
18 A. The only documents I brought with
19 me were the ones that I provided to you. I
20 think that some…some others have provided you
21 with that.
22 Q. Okay.
23 A. Those documents.
24 Q. So although the notice asked for
25 documents, you didn’t bring any with you.
0024
1 A. I — my understanding is they were
2 already provided to you.
3 Q. And how did you get that
4 understanding?
5 A. The attorneys told me that those
6 documents had been supplied to you.
7 Q. Okay. Well, we’ll deal with that
8 another time.
9 A. I guess on…CDs or something like
10 that.
11 Q. Okay. Do you know whether the
12 documents that were given to me were the same
13 documents that you reviewed?
14 A. As far as I know, yes.
15 Q. Do you know whether the documents
16 given to me…well, scratch that.
17 You said you spoke to individuals
18 in preparation for your testimony, correct?
19 A. That’s correct.
20 Q. Okay.
21 A. Now, that was in preparation for
22 general knowledge as the corporate
23 representative.
24 Q. All right.
25 A. Not specifically for this case.
0025
1 Q. But that was part of the body of
2 information –
3 A. That’s correct.
4 Q. — that you would rely upon for
5 this case.
6 A. That’s right.
7 Q. Okay. And did you take notes from
8 those interviews?
9 A. No, I don’t think I did.
10 Q. So you kept no record of what you
11 learned.
12 A. Not at that time, no.
13 Q. When you say not at that time,
14 what do you mean by that?
15 A. Well, it was much more of an
16 informal kind of conversation with those
17 individuals and it wasn’t like I specifically
18 asked them questions and they gave me answers.
19 Q. Well, who did you talk to?
20 A. Oh, I talked to Dr. Carr who was a
21 former medical director and also has served as a
22 corporate representative in other litigation.
23 Q. When you say other litigation,
24 what do you mean by that?
25 A. Other — well…he has also served
0026
1 as corporate representative in other asbestos
2 litigation and his history goes way back, so
3 he’s done other litigation other than asbestos.
4 Q. And where does he live?
5 A. Um, I don’t really know.
6 Q. Well, when you spoke to him
7 where –
8 A. He lives in Florida or he lives in
9 the Carolinas, I’m not sure.
10 Q. Did you speak with him on the
11 phone or in person?
12 A. No, I spoke with him in person, he
13 actually was in Wilmington for a number of days
14 and I met with him there.
15 Q. Okay. And how long did you meet
16 with him?
17 A. Just for a day.
18 Q. A full day?
19 A. A business day. Several hours.
20 Q. And what did he tell you?
21 A. Oh, I –
22 MR. COTTEN: Objection to form.
23 A. — can’t — I can’t even remember
24 specifics of what he told me. You know, I asked
25 him about his experiences and, you know, a
0027
1 little bit of — I was trying to get an
2 understanding of how the Medical Department
3 actually worked and, you know, what his role was
4 and that kind of thing.
5 Q. So did you discuss the subject of
6 asbestos?
7 A. Um, I think that maybe we talked a
8 little bit about — there was an asbestos
9 medical program and he talked a little bit about
10 the program and how they had set it up and what
11 they did at that time, um.
12 Q. When you say –
13 A. Things like that.
14 Q. — at that time what do you mean?
15 A. That was — when he was medical
16 director was in the late seventies and they set
17 up — they were working on trying to improve
18 their medical surveillance program, so he talked
19 a little bit about that.
20 He also — he was the actual
21 medical doctor at the Spruance plant, which is
22 the plant that I had visited, and so he talked a
23 little bit about his experiences at Spruance
24 during his time there.
25 Q. Okay, who else did you speak with?
0028
1 A. Uh, I spoke with a Mr. Gaskins.
2 Q. And who is he?
3 A. I can’t remember. He had
4 responsibilities for safety. At various plant
5 sites.
6 Q. And where did you speak with him?
7 A. Uh, that was also in Wilmington.
8 At the DuPont offices.
9 Q. Were there arrangements made by
10 DuPont to bring these people to Wilmington to
11 have you interview them?
12 A. Yes. Mr. Gaskins, I don’t think,
13 lives too far away so for him it was a driving
14 over.
15 Q. Does he live in Delaware?
16 A. I think he lives in Maryland.
17 Q. Maryland, okay. And what did you
18 discuss with him generally?
19 A. Just generally, again, about the
20 processes and procedures, how safety meetings at
21 DuPont were conducted, um, how, you know, people
22 were responsible for the safety procedures, that
23 kind of thing.
24 Q. Okay. And did you talk
25 specifically about the subject of asbestos?
0029
1 A. Um, yes, I think we did.
2 Q. Okay.
3 A. You know, we talked about the
4 asbestos programs that had been put in place
5 and, and learning about sampling, that kind of
6 thing.
7 Q. Okay. Who else did you speak
8 with?
9 A. I spoke with the industrial
10 hygienist at Spruance and honestly I cannot tell
11 you his name right now, I cannot remember it.
12 Q. And what did –
13 A. He had been there for quite a few
14 years and I had the opportunity to speak with
15 him and also another gentleman when I was at
16 Spruance who was retired, but they had brought
17 him back to talk to me about, you know, some of
18 the things they did there, how they went about,
19 um…you know, dealing with their dust abatement
20 issues, how they eventually ended up covering
21 all their pipes and labeling things with
22 asbestos and some of the safety routines that
23 they went through at that time.
24 Q. Anybody else?
25 A. I can’t think of anybody else
0030
1 specifically.
2 Q. Now, you indicated you also
3 reviewed actual transcripts, correct?
4 A. Deposition transcripts, yes.
5 Q. Right. Whose deposition
6 transcripts?
7 A. Well, a number of transcripts from
8 Dr. Carr…some from Mr. Gaskins. I viewed a
9 video of a deposition of Mr. Keuper who was head
10 of the Construction Division. I’m sorry, I
11 can’t really think of other names of
12 individuals.
13 Q. Okay. And is that material you
14 keep at your house?
15 A. Yes, I have the copies there.
16 Q. How long did you meet with — I
17 don’t want to know what you spoke about, but how
18 long did you meet with lawyers for DuPont in
19 preparation for today’s deposition?
20 A. Oh, yesterday it was probably, um,
21 maybe four, five hours and previous — on a
22 previous day about three hours.
23 Q. Okay. So maybe a full business
24 day, little more?
25 A. Yes.
0031
1 Q. Okay. And how many hours do you
2 believe that you put in up to this point in time
3 familiarizing yourself with the historical
4 knowledge of the dangers of asbestos as it
5 relates to DuPont?
6 A. That’s very difficult for me to
7 say because it spanned several years and I would
8 maybe spend a day here and there and then not,
9 um — nothing for several months and then
10 another day, so I really can’t say, but maybe a
11 period of ten or twenty days over several years.
12 Q. Okay. When were you first engaged
13 by DuPont to assist them with asbestos
14 litigation; do you remember?
15 A. Uh, I think it was back in late
16 2005, early 2006 and that was approximately a
17 year before I retired, so at that time I was
18 interviewed and asked if I would consider taking
19 on those responsibilities and I spent some time,
20 however, I was actually actively working an
21 eight-hour-a-day job so that was on a limited
22 basis, just kind of getting myself a little bit
23 familiar with, with the whole project.
24 And then when I retired in January
25 of 2007 I spent more time actually preparing for
0032
1 the role.
2 Q. Okay. Do you believe you made a
3 good faith effort to investigate all the
4 information available to the company that’s the
5 subject of today’s deposition?
6 A. Well, I certainly tried very hard
7 to look at the corporate records, I tried to
8 look at selected publications. I certainly in
9 no way have read every publication out there on
10 asbestos, certainly, so –
11 Q. No, but I’m not asking –
12 A. — I tried to do that.
13 Q. — about generally, I’m just
14 talking about what Dupont knew. Do you believe
15 you made a good faith effort to learn that.
16 A. Yes, I do.
17 Q. Okay. What do you know about the
18 clients that I represent?
19 A. What I know is there is a
20 mesothelioma case. The woman who is
21 involved…I’m not very good at pronouncing the
22 name, but I think it’s Savarese? Is that
23 correct?
24 Q. (Nods in the affirmative).
25 A. — has mesothelioma and that the
0033
1 claim is an exposure through a family member
2 when she was very young, the exposure would have
3 been to asbestos, and that family member, who I
4 think is her father, supposedly was exposed at
5 DuPont to asbestos.
6 Q. Well, do you have any information
7 that would indicate that the father was not
8 exposed to asbestos at DuPont?
9 A. I have no information one way or
10 another relative to the exposure or the
11 particular…
12 Q. Okay.
13 A. Situation.
14 Q. Did you review any of the clients’
15 transcripts or the father’s transcripts or the
16 husband’s transcripts?
17 A. No, I have not seen any of that.
18 Q. Okay. You worked at DuPont as a
19 toxicologist for more than twenty years; is that
20 correct?
21 A. That’s correct.
22 Q. Okay. And you have a Bachelor’s
23 Degree in Biology?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. And a Master’s Degree in
0034
1 Industrial Hygiene from the University of
2 Pittsburgh; is that right?
3 A. Yes. Yes.
4 Q. You have a Ph.D. in Toxicology
5 from the University of Pittsburgh?
6 A. That’s correct.
7 Q. And when did you get that?
8 A. That was — the Ph.D. I finished
9 in 1983.
10 Q. Okay. And then from there you
11 went to work for DuPont in 1984?
12 A. That’s correct.
13 Q. All right. And you went to work
14 as a toxicologist for the Haskell Laboratory?
15 A. That’s right.
16 Q. All right. And were you also as
17 part of your background and training trained in
18 the area of industrial hygiene?
19 A. That’s correct.
20 Q. All right. And…in your capacity
21 at DuPont you actually worked for some period of
22 time as an industrial hygienist, correct?
23 A. No, I never did.
24 Q. Okay.
25 A. Not while I was at DuPont.
0035
1 Q. All right. Do you consider
2 yourself an industrial hygienist?
3 A. I certainly have been entrained…
4 Q. Okay.
5 A. Trained as an industrial
6 hygienist. I never worked –
7 Q. All right.
8 A. — or was certified as an
9 industrial hygienist.
10 Q. And in your capacity as a
11 toxicologist and in the research you’ve done,
12 are you familiar with the general principles
13 that govern the discipline of industrial
14 hygiene?
15 A. Yes, I am. I was an inhalation
16 toxicologist so we used many of the same…
17 Q. Okay.
18 A. Principles.
19 Q. And I want to try to maybe…have
20 you ever taught courses on industrial hygiene or
21 toxicology?
22 A. I have on occasion. When I was
23 still in school and I was working on my Ph.D., I
24 actually had a grant that that provided and I
25 was teaching laboratory skills to some of the
0036
1 people in the industrial hygiene program, so we
2 did that kind of teaching at that time.
3 Q. Okay.
4 A. And then — and my capacity as a
5 toxicologist, I did teach courses now and then
6 for people in toxicology.
7 Q. Okay. What I want to try to do is
8 see if I can get — narrow the scope of what
9 we’re going to do here today.
10 A. Okay.
11 Q. So in the — in your capacity as a
12 student or a teacher, are you familiar with
13 true/false examinations?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Okay. I’m going to ask you some
16 questions…and see if we can narrow the scope
17 of the examination, okay?
18 A. Okay.
19 Q. And I put the questions right on
20 the screen for you.
21 True or false; DuPont had the
22 money and the resources to do whatever was
23 necessary to protect the health and safety of
24 workers on its premises?
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection to form.
0037
1 A. I can’t say that was necessarily
2 true or false.
3 Q. Why not?
4 A. Well, when you say had money and
5 resources, that could be very, very extensive
6 and I’m not sure that would necessarily be
7 possible. Certainly DuPont did everything that
8 it could to try to protect the health and safety
9 of its workers.
10 Q. Well, DuPont was one of the
11 largest chemical companies in the world,
12 correct?
13 A. That’s right.
14 Q. And it certainly had the money and
15 the resources to do whatever was necessary to
16 find out about the dangers in its workplace –
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection.
18 Q. — do you agree with that?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. Uh, as a toxicologist who worked at
21 Haskell Laboratory and who tried to do things to
22 determine health and safety issues, we didn’t
23 have an infinite budget to just spend whatever
24 we possibly could, so that’s why I have some
25 trouble with just saying true or false.
0038
1 We certainly tried to do that,
2 um…you know –
3 Q. But I’m not talking about –
4 A. — it’s not infinite.
5 Q. Okay, I’m not talking about
6 Haskell Laboratory’s resources, I’m talking
7 about DuPont the company.
8 If they wanted to spend the money,
9 they had the money and the resources to do
10 whatever was necessary to protect their workers;
11 true?
12 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
13 A. Well, I can’t really speak to the
14 amount of money DuPont had available to do that.
15 Q. Okay. Do you agree with me, two,
16 DuPont knew all it needed to know about the
17 dangers of asbestos in order to protect the
18 health of workers on its premises?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. Um, I guess the — that’s very
21 difficult to say. Knew all…
22 Q. All it needed to know.
23 A. You know, at what point in time
24 are you talking about?
25 Q. Well, why don’t we narrow it.
0039
1 From the year 1945 forward, would
2 you agree with me that DuPont knew all it needed
3 to know about the dangers of asbestos in order
4 to protect the health of workers on its
5 premises?
6 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
7 A. I think at the early stages, the
8 dangers of asbestos that were known were
9 considered to be in the actual asbestos trades,
10 in the mining and the milling and the textile
11 workers and the place where people were handling
12 raw asbestos and, certainly, there was knowledge
13 about asbestos just as there was knowledge about
14 other kinds of dust diseases.
15 But I don’t think DuPont really
16 had knowledge that there might be danger to its
17 own workers until a much later time, like,
18 actually around 1964 when Dr. Selikoff had a
19 conference and at that point in time he reported
20 on asbestos-related disease and cancer in
21 insulation workers and when Dr. Stopps from
22 Haskell went to that conference and he came back
23 and he said, well, DuPont uses insulation and
24 there is a good chance that, perhaps, we may
25 have issues here in a chemical company, uh,
0040
1 about workers being exposed to asbestos.
2 So, you know, when you say what
3 did we know, I would say that, you know,
4 toxicologists, medical people, people that
5 actually worked in occupational health were
6 aware of asbestos disease, but were they aware
7 of it as being an issue for DuPont? No, I don’t
8 think so.
9 Q. Okay. Do you remember what my
10 question was?
11 A. Well, your question was kind of a
12 true/false and I can’t — as I said, I can’t
13 answer that as being true or false, but,
14 certainly, when DuPont became aware that there
15 might be something that had to be done at
16 DuPont, then I think they did try very hard to
17 protect their workers.
18 Q. Okay. As of what time did DuPont
19 know all it needed to know about the dangers of
20 asbestos in order to protect the health of
21 workers on its premises?
22 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
23 A. You know, the knowledge that’s been
24 available on asbestos has changed so much over
25 the years, you can say that what DuPont knew in
0041
1 1945 was much different than, say, what we know
2 today or what they knew in 1970 to protect its
3 workers.
4 You know, the more research there
5 was the more they learned about what they needed
6 to do and I think it, it kind of illustrates it
7 over time, because when you look at — back in
8 the early forties they set up — there was a TLV
9 of five million particles per cubic foot, which
10 would be like about twenty-four fibers per cc,
11 and that by today’s standards and what we know
12 today, I mean, that’s a tremendously high
13 number.
14 But, certainly, if they were
15 protecting at that point, you know, then over
16 time as the protective level came down, you had
17 to keep adapting and that’s one thing DuPont
18 did, is adapt to the new information as it was
19 given to them to try to put protection in place.
20 Q. My question was what?
21 A. Again, you’re trying to pin me
22 down to one point in time.
23 Q. No, I just asked you if you
24 remembered what my question was.
25 A. I thought I answered it.
0042
1 Q. What was my question?
2 A. I can’t tell you, I can’t repeat
3 it.
4 Q. True or false; DuPont by 1945 knew
5 all it needed to know about how to protect
6 employees from exposure to asbestos?
7 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
8 Q. If you can’t answer it, just tell
9 me you can’t answer it.
10 A. I would say no.
11 Q. Okay.
12 A. Not at that time.
13 Q. False?
14 A. False.
15 Q. By 1945 DuPont knew all it needed
16 to know about how to protect employees of
17 outside contractors from exposure to asbestos;
18 true or false?
19 A. No. False.
20 Q. By 1955 DuPont knew all it needed
21 to know about how to protect employees of
22 outside contractors from exposure to asbestos;
23 true or false?
24 A. I would say that’s also false.
25 Q. Um-hum. By 1960 DuPont had in
0043
1 place procedures and standards intended to
2 protect workers from asbestos exposure on its
3 premises; true or false?
4 A. I don’t think even in 1960 DuPont
5 perceived a need to protect workers from
6 asbestos on its premises.
7 Q. Okay. So the answer’s false.
8 A. I find it difficult to answer that
9 true or false.
10 Q. Okay, so if you were taking a test
11 you’d just skip this one?
12 MR. COHEN: Objection.
13 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
14 A. Um, maybe.
15 Q. Okay. DuPont had in place –
16 MR. COHEN: She’d asked, she’d ask
17 the professor for a clarification.
18 MR. PLACITELLA: All right. I only
19 have one question — one rule. Whoever’s
20 going to defend the dep, one lawyer, okay?
21 So if –
22 MR. COHEN: Well, that may be your
23 rule, but it’s not ours.
24 MR. PLACITELLA: No, then we’re
25 going to call a judge. I’m not going to do
0044
1 this, I’m not getting tag-team objected to.
2 So whoever’s going to make the objections
3 make them. I’m not dealing with two
4 lawyers.
5 When I agreed to have Mr. COTTEN
6 without a pro hoc defend the deposition,
7 that didn’t mean two people.
8 MR. COHEN: Move on.
9 MR. PLACITELLA: So if you want to
10 take a break and come up with your rules or
11 you can take his seat, one way or the
12 other.
13 Q. By 1948 DuPont had in place
14 procedures to protect workers’ families from
15 asbestos brought home on workers’ clothing; true
16 or false?
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
18 A. I can’t really answer that.
19 Q. By 1948 DuPont had in place
20 procedures to protect workers’ families from
21 workers bringing toxic substances home on their
22 clothing –
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection –
24 Q. — true or false?
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0045
1 A. Um, I would say I can’t say
2 specifically about asbestos. All I can say is
3 DuPont definitely had dust abatement programs
4 which would have, um…worked to protect people,
5 but certainly, as I said, prior to 1964 there
6 was no concept by DuPont that asbestos in
7 particular was an issue.
8 Q. My question was what?
9 A. Again, you’re asking me a true or
10 false about whether they had programs in place.
11 About –
12 Q. For what?
13 A. Asbestos.
14 Q. No. My question was by 1948
15 DuPont had in place procedures to protect
16 workers’ families from workers bringing toxic
17 substances home on their clothing; true or
18 false.
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. At — I cannot speak to specific
21 dates. I know that DuPont definitely had
22 programs on — depending upon what was being
23 worked with at various plant sites, they did
24 have protective clothing policies or workers
25 changed clothes and actually used different
0046
1 clothes and the company laundered them for them,
2 that kind of thing, but I think that was not a
3 corporate policy, I’m only aware of that from
4 very — different kinds of materials.
5 So as far as I can say, that was
6 on a site-by-site basis and was not a specific
7 corporate policy that everybody had to change
8 clothes or anything like that and I do not know
9 specific dates when those things started or
10 stopped, whatever, at plant sites.
11 Q. So if you were an employee’s
12 family, whether you got protected depended upon
13 what site your husband or wife worked on?
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 A. Uh, I don’t think the site was
16 important, it had to do with whether or not the
17 company would perceive that individuals needed
18 to have protective clothing and I don’t think
19 even back then the concept of taking it home was
20 really the issue.
21 People may have been required to
22 wear, let’s say, aprons, you know, a
23 rubberized-type apron or something because of
24 spills. They might have been required if they
25 were in a particular, like, metal-type working
0047
1 or something like that, it might have been
2 required to change into overalls or they might
3 have just changed their clothes and worked in an
4 environment and then the company cleaned the
5 clothes for them and it might not have been what
6 you would now today consider protective, uh,
7 clothing.
8 But there were various policies
9 depending upon the perception of what people
10 were dealing with.
11 Q. Okay, let me try some easier
12 questions. See if we can agree.
13 MR. COHEN: Objection.
14 Q. There were doctors and hygienists
15 at DuPont who cared about the health and safety
16 of workers on their premises.
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Okay. There were doctors and
19 scientists that knew what was required to
20 protect the health and safety of workers on
21 their premises.
22 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
23 A. They certainly knew from published
24 literature, things about the chemicals that they
25 were handling and then they acted upon those
0048
1 things.
2 Q. Okay. DuPont started in 1802; is
3 that correct?
4 A. That’s correct.
5 Q. And they started manufacturing
6 explosive powder? Is that right?
7 A. That’s right, black powder.
8 Q. And the primary customer of DuPont
9 was the U.S. Government; true?
10 A. Over a period of time, yes.
11 Q. Okay. And at some point in time,
12 in order to focus toxicological and scientific
13 research on health and safety, the Haskell
14 Laboratory was established; true?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. And when was that?
17 A. 1935.
18 Q. All right. And that’s where you
19 worked.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. All right. And the purpose of the
22 Haskell Laboratory was to focus all of the, the
23 best resources in DuPont to understand the
24 toxicological implications of the processes and
25 products used on DuPont premises; true?
0049
1 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
2 A. Not quite.
3 The whole, um…sort of goal of
4 the laboratory was to look at the products that
5 DuPont made and it was the toxicology,
6 occupational health issues of the products and
7 also of the waste streams, so what DuPont was
8 specifically responsible for was toxicology
9 study of the products they made and any of the
10 waste materials that they may release –
11 Q. Okay.
12 A. — into the environment.
13 Q. You would agree that the Haskell
14 Laboratory was one of the most sophisticated
15 toxicologic laboratories in the world.
16 A. Well, uh, I would like to think
17 so.
18 Q. And you had some of the best
19 scientists in the world.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Okay. And there wasn’t any
22 resources in terms of scientific research or
23 health and safety that was not available to the
24 people at the Haskell Laboratory.
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0050
1 A. Well, there may have been resources
2 not available, but the laboratory certainly
3 tried to do their best with their research.
4 Q. You had access to all the
5 pertinent scientific journals?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. All right. If there was a product
8 that you needed to test, you could get it and
9 testing could be done there.
10 A. If the product was made by DuPont,
11 yes.
12 Q. Okay. How about used by DuPont?
13 A. No, not necessarily –
14 Q. Okay.
15 A. — we did not conduct — generally
16 did not conduct research on products that we
17 bought from others.
18 Q. Did DuPont ever manufacture, to
19 your knowledge, an asbestos-containing product?
20 A. I, I think that DuPont did,
21 perhaps, manufacture some…as I recall,
22 something to do with radiators and at that point
23 I would imagine they bought the asbestos from
24 someone else and put something together that had
25 asbestos in it.
0051
1 Q. Okay.
2 A. I’m not real familiar with it, it
3 was sort of a short-lived program as I
4 understand and they also made some fluids and
5 things that I think — or other compositions
6 that were ultimately put together by somebody
7 else with asbestos.
8 Q. Okay. They also manufactured
9 paint historically.
10 A. Uh, I think they did have some
11 sort of paint that had asbestos in it at one
12 point in time.
13 Q. All right. And where was that
14 manufactured; do you know?
15 A. Um, I’m — I don’t recollect.
16 Q. And you recall that that paint
17 that had — did they also manufacture paint that
18 had talc in it as an ingredient?
19 A. Uh, I don’t know.
20 Q. And do you recall what the purpose
21 of the asbestos-containing paint was?
22 A. Um, I don’t know specifically. I
23 know generally what asbestos-containing paints
24 were, you know, tried to use in — for
25 anti-fire…protection-type things.
0052
1 Q. You’re aware that the
2 asbestos-containing paint that was manufactured
3 by DuPont was used on U.S. Government planes?
4 A. No, I did not know that.
5 Q. Okay. Do you know it was sold to
6 the U.S. Government?
7 A. No.
8 Q. Okay. Do you have an estimation
9 about how many facilities, factories, DuPont had
10 during the 1960s and 1950s around the world?
11 A. I don’t really know the number,
12 quite –
13 Q. Hundreds? Thousands?
14 A. Probably in the hundreds.
15 Q. Okay. And do you know during the
16 1950s and 1960s how many people DuPont employed?
17 A. I do not know the number. It
18 would have been in the tens of thousands.
19 Q. Okay. And you are familiar with a
20 factory known as the Chambers Works facility?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Okay. And that is located where?
23 A. That is located in New Jersey.
24 Q. Have you ever been there?
25 A. Yes.
0053
1 Q. Okay, and for what reason?
2 A. Primarily to attend meetings.
3 Q. And what was made there?
4 A. Um…many, many different things
5 over the years.
6 Q. Was it a refinery in a sense?
7 A. Um, I’m not aware that it was a
8 refinery.
9 Q. Okay. And do you know how
10 asbestos was used at the Chambers Works
11 facility?
12 A. I do not know the specifics, but I
13 know that it was definitely used as pipe
14 coverings, um, to protect, uh, the pipes and any
15 hot systems that contained chemicals. It was
16 used as an insulation. It may have had other
17 uses, I — I’m not that familiar with the actual
18 uses in the plant.
19 Q. Okay. Have you ever heard the
20 Chambers Works referred to as The House of
21 Butterflies?
22 A. No.
23 Q. Never heard that term?
24 A. No.
25 Q. You never heard that there were so
0054
1 many people that hallucinated that they thought
2 they were seeing butterflies as workers at the
3 Chambers Works facility?
4 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
5 A. No, I had never heard that.
6 Q. Okay. Do you know anything about
7 the DuPont Rapauano plant?
8 A. I know about Rapauno.
9 Q. Rapauno, sorry.
10 A. At least that’s the way we said
11 it.
12 Q. Rapauno. And –
13 A. I know that it exists, I
14 was…never at the site. That I only know about
15 it from — historically that — and that it is
16 the site supposedly in this case, I think.
17 Q. Have you ever been there?
18 A. No.
19 Q. Okay. Do you know anything more
20 than what you just told me?
21 A. No.
22 Q. Okay. Am I correct that DuPont
23 knew…that asbestos was capable of causing
24 severe disease by at least the 1930s?
25 A. Well, I would say that some of the
0055
1 scientists at Haskell would have been aware of
2 that. Certainly, people who studied in
3 occupational medicine or toxicology would have
4 been aware of, say, the Merewether and Price
5 publication, but, again, that was all really
6 related to — and the Merewether paper was in
7 England, it was done on textile workers.
8 So I think that anybody trained in
9 any kind of field like that was aware that
10 asbestos caused disease among those people who
11 worked with the raw material in very dusty
12 conditions.
13 Q. Well, the Merewether report wasn’t
14 just about raw material, was it?
15 A. It was in a textile manufacturing
16 where people were actually using raw material
17 and turning it into textile materials.
18 Q. But the danger discussed in the
19 Merewether study discussed people handling
20 finished product and what was — and the dangers
21 that they were exposed to within the factory,
22 didn’t it?
23 A. I don’t know specifically, I know
24 that they certainly were, like, cutting the
25 material, that kind of thing. I think that
0056
1 textile work can involve everything from
2 spinning it up to actually making cloth, that
3 kind of thing, and I really can’t comment on the
4 specifics of what those plants were like.
5 Q. Well, you said that –
6 A. I think it was textile workers.
7 Q. You said it involved just raw
8 asbestos, but that would be not an accurate
9 statement?
10 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
11 A. Not just raw, that would be the
12 initial — you know, in a whole process of
13 making textiles you start out with raw
14 materials.
15 Q. All right. And you’d come all the
16 way up to a finished product.
17 A. That’s correct.
18 Q. Correct? Which would in the
19 Merewether case be asbestos-containing cloth?
20 A. The textile workers is –
21 Merewether studied textile workers, so my
22 assumption would have been that it — you know,
23 they spanned the whole realm of making the
24 textiles.
25 Q. Right. And some of that end
0057
1 product that was discussed was
2 asbestos-containing cloth, correct?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. And the — some of the dangers
5 that Merewether addressed, that need to be
6 addressed, involved the handling of the end
7 product, the asbestos cloth within the factory;
8 true?
9 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
10 A. Um, I don’t recall that, no.
11 Q. Okay. Do you recall whether
12 Merewether addressed the cutting of asbestos
13 cloth as part of his study?
14 A. I think that would have been part
15 of the whole process of making…
16 Q. Okay.
17 A. Textile.
18 Q. And you don’t dispute, do you,
19 that the scientists at the Haskell Laboratory
20 would have been aware of the Merewether study.
21 A. I think some of the people
22 probably were. I can’t speak to any particular
23 person’s knowledge other than the fact that
24 these people were trained in toxicology
25 and…industrial medicine.
0058
1 Q. The…DuPont exchanged information
2 about toxicology in the workplace with other
3 companies. Other than DuPont; true?
4 A. I think the scientists were
5 definitely in touch with each other when they
6 had some issue that they needed to find out more
7 information.
8 Q. And you — I asked you before
9 about the Industrial Hygiene Foundation. You’re
10 familiar with them?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Okay, and –
13 A. I know of…
14 Q. What do you know about them?
15 A. The foundation. Well, I know that
16 the foundation existed, I had heard of it,
17 initially when I was in school because their
18 headquarters were in Pittsburgh and I went to
19 the University of Pittsburgh and I knew they did
20 research on various issues of industrial
21 hygiene, would have been chemicals and anything,
22 you know…
23 Q. Okay.
24 A. Specifically related to industrial
25 hygiene.
0059
1 Q. And you’re aware that DuPont was a
2 member of the Industrial Hygiene Foundation from
3 at least 1936 forward; true?
4 A. Um, I have seen a list of the
5 various dates that DuPont was a member of
6 things, but I really — I cannot say
7 specifically when they first became a member.
8 Q. Well, it was around that time.
9 1936, right?
10 A. Okay.
11 Q. I mean, I’m just looking at your
12 prior testimony.
13 A. Okay.
14 Q. Is that correct?
15 A. That…that could be.
16 Q. Okay. And one of the things that
17 the Industrial Hygiene Foundation did for its
18 members was it sent out summaries of
19 toxicological reports on a regular basis,
20 correct?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. And DuPont would have received
23 those summaries as a member; true?
24 A. That would be my understanding.
25 Q. Okay. And it also conducted
0060
1 studies of workplaces on behalf or for its
2 members when requested; true?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. And DuPont would have been
5 provided with those studies. Correct?
6 A. I would think so, yes.
7 Q. Okay. Now, DuPont was also a
8 member of the American Petroleum Institute;
9 you’re aware of that.
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. All right. And DuPont would have
12 exchanged information with other members of the
13 American Petroleum Institute in terms of
14 toxicology in the workplace. True?
15 A. I would imagine that’s…certainly
16 possible. It would have been what you do and
17 why you’re a member –
18 Q. Right.
19 A. — of these organizations.
20 Q. Right. And the American Petroleum
21 Institute would author reports concerning
22 toxicology in the workplace and provide those
23 reports to their members, correct?
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
25 A. Um, I’ve never seen any of those
0061
1 reports, but it certainly would be possible.
2 Q. All right. Well, that’s kind of
3 the reason why you’re a member of an
4 organization like that, right?
5 A. That’s right.
6 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
7 Q. Okay. In terms of the National
8 Safety Council, DuPont was a member of that from
9 approximately 1934 going forward; true?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. By 1942…do you remember — do
12 you know who Dr. Hueper was? Hooper.
13 H-e-u-p-e-r.
14 A. I know of him.
15 Q. Okay. And who was he?
16 A. My understanding is he worked at
17 Haskell Laboratory in its very early years and
18 then left the laboratory and moved on to either
19 the National Institute of Health or some similar
20 situation.
21 Q. All right, and then Dr. Heuper was
22 a…a former pathologist at the Haskell
23 Laboratory?
24 A. I honestly do not specifically
25 remember what his background was.
0062
1 Q. Okay. Do you have any knowledge
2 in your review of any of the documents about
3 DuPont’s attempt to discredit Dr. Heuper in any
4 way?
5 A. No.
6 Q. Okay. You’re aware that Dr.
7 Heuper wrote a textbook on occupational cancer
8 that was published in 1942.
9 A. No, I was not aware he wrote a
10 textbook.
11 Q. You’re aware that his textbook
12 discussed asbestos as a cause of cancer in 1942.
13 A. Um…I’m not aware.
14 Q. Okay. Do you dispute that it was
15 known in 1942 that asbestos was a cause of
16 cancer?
17 A. I think that’s when some of the
18 initial research was coming out that associated
19 asbestos with, um, cancer.
20 Q. All right. And that would have
21 been information known to the people in the
22 Haskell Laboratory; true?
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
24 A. Again, I can only speak to the idea
25 that people trained in occupational medicine and
0063
1 toxicology with those kinds of backgrounds would
2 have certainly been aware of a relationship
3 between asbestos and cancer.
4 Q. Okay.
5 MR. PLACITELLA: Can we mark this as
6 P-2?
7
8 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-2 is marked
9 for identification.)
10
11 Q. I have in front of you a DuPont
12 document entitled “Guidelines For Diagnosis And
13 Classification of Asbestos-Related Medical”
14 Illness and page two, which I have up on
15 the…screen is a chart.
16 Do you see that?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Have you ever seen this chart
19 before?
20 A. I may have as part of looking
21 through the collection; I do not really recall
22 it.
23 Q. All right. It says — and the
24 chart is entitled “Asbestos-Related Disease.”
25 See that?
0064
1 A. Um-hum. Yes.
2 Q. Okay. And one of the things it
3 discusses or points out is when it was known
4 that asbestos could cause various kinds of
5 disease.
6 Do you see that?
7 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
8 A. Uh…yes, I see that.
9 Q. And it indicates, does it not,
10 that the relationship between asbestos and lung
11 cancer was approximately 1945?
12 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
13 A. Yes, I see some bars here, clear
14 ones and then there are dark ones, and I’m not
15 quite sure what that means, but…
16 Q. Well…
17 A. I’m assuming that there were –
18 the question mark would indicate that there may
19 have been some literature on that area and then
20 I’m not sure what the clear bar means, but maybe
21 you can explain…
22 Q. Well, I got it from you, I was
23 hoping you could explain.
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
25 Q. Would you agree with me that the
0065
1 dark bar more probably than not indicates when
2 it was accepted that asbestos could cause that
3 particular disease?
4 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
5 A. From my understanding and some of my
6 reading that that would be, uh, correct.
7 Q. And for here for lung cancer –
8 well, for asbestosis, it looks like about 1930?
9 And around there?
10 A. Yes, and that would probably be
11 the Merewether study where people — where there
12 was actually some bigger study.
13 Q. Okay. And then for lung cancer,
14 it looks like around 1945 or so?
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 A. Or 1950.
17 Q. Okay.
18 A. That would seem about right.
19 Q. Okay. I’ll keep a collection for
20 you to take home with you for the next
21 deposition so if you want you can just put it
22 off to the side and I may go back to it later.
23 Are you aware of Dr. Heuper’s
24 article in 1949 discussing asbestos and cancer?
25 A. No, I have not seen his article.
0066
1 Q. Okay, that — is that in the
2 information — do you know if that’s in the
3 information that was provided to you?
4 A. Uh, I don’t know. It may have
5 been in the corporation collection.
6 Q. Okay.
7 A. It may not have been something
8 that I…
9 Q. Were you ever given –
10 A. Brought home to look at in detail.
11 Q. I’m so sorry for interrupting you.
12 Were you ever provided the
13 custodial file or a file specifically related to
14 Dr. Heuper?
15 A. No.
16 Q. Okay.
17 MR. PLACITELLA: Mark this P-3.
18
19 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-3 is marked
20 for identification.)
21
22 (Brief pause.)
23 Q. I’m going to show — what you have
24 in front of you is a listing of API, that’s
25 American Petroleum Institute, memberships as of
0067
1 1949.
2 Do you see that?
3 A. Um-hum, yes, I do.
4 Q. Have you ever seen this document
5 before?
6 A. I don’t recall seeing it.
7 Q. Okay.
8 A. I may have.
9 Q. Okay. And if you look at page
10 two, bottom of the first full sentence, do you
11 see where it says DuPont?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Is that consistent with your
14 understanding that at least by 1949 DuPont was a
15 member of the American Petroleum Institute?
16 MR. COTTEN: Objection formation.
17 A. My understanding is yes, uh, I think
18 it was around that time they were a member. I
19 think…
20 Q. Maybe a little before?
21 A. They dropped out of membership
22 later and then joined again.
23 Q. Now –
24 MR. PLACITELLA: He’s going to
25 change the tape so we’ll take two minutes.
0068
1 Okay?
2 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Off the record at
3 11:08.
4
5 (Whereupon, a brief recess is
6 taken.)
7
8 (Whereupon, Exhibits P-4 and P-5 are
9 marked for identification.)
10
11 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Back on the video
12 record at 11:14.
13 Q. Okay, I’m going to show you what’s
14 been marked as Exhibit 4. You have in front of
15 you Exhibit 4 which is a report on “Summary of
16 Plant Industrial Hygiene Problems” for the
17 Standard Oil Company.
18 Do you see that?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Have you ever seen this document
21 or has this document been made available to you
22 as part of your research?
23 A. No, I’ve never seen it before.
24 Q. Okay. And do you know who a Dr.
25 Berry is?
0069
1 A. No, I don’t.
2 Q. How about a Dr. Hammond?
3 A. No.
4 Q. Do you know who hygienist by the
5 name of Boncib?
6 A. No, I don’t.
7 Q. Do you know that this report was
8 provided to the members of the American
9 Petroleum Institute?
10 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
11 A. No, I’m not aware of that.
12 Q. Okay. If you look to the back
13 where it says appendix…do you see that?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Okay. And the second page…of
16 the appendix.
17 A. Okay.
18 Q. See where it lists various
19 chemicals that are found in the refinery?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Okay. On the bottom, it says
22 silica and asbestos?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. And it says silicosis, fibrosis
25 and including in there is cancer of the lung,
0070
1 correct?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. That would be consistent with your
4 testimony that at least by 1949 or so there was
5 a recognition as…of asbestos being a cause of
6 lung cancer.
7 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
8 Q. True?
9 MR. COTTEN: Objection, sorry.
10 MR. PLACITELLA: No problem.
11 A. I think there would certainly be
12 some knowledge that there would be an
13 association.
14 Q. And listed at the crafts at risk
15 for lung cancer from silica and/or asbestos are
16 brick masons, correct?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Insulators.
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Laborers.
21 A. Uh-huh.
22 Q. And pipe-benders, correct?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. These are not people who worked
25 manufacturing asbestos, right? By trade.
0071
1 A. That’s correct.
2 Q. Okay. Now, were you aware that
3 soon after this publication that the American
4 Petroleum Institute planned a study on
5 occupational cancer which included studying
6 mesothelioma?
7 A. No, I’m not aware.
8 Q. Okay. Am I correct that the
9 relationship between asbestos and
10 mesothelioma…was known by at least the
11 mid-1950s?
12 A. There may have been some reports,
13 but I think it wasn’t really accepted in general
14 by the scientific community until the Wagner
15 study in 1960.
16 Q. Well, in the mid-1950s there was a
17 strong epidemiologic evidence that asbestos
18 could cause mesothelioma; true?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. I don’t know where you’re quoting
21 that from; I’m not familiar with that.
22 Q. I’m quoting it from a publication
23 put out by DuPont entitled “Occupational Safety
24 And Health: A DuPont Company View,” which I’ll
25 show you. P-5 (handing).
0072
1 Have you ever seen this particular
2 publication before? And you don’t have a whole
3 one in front of you, in all fairness, because if
4 I had to bring every page of every document, I’d
5 have to bring a truck.
6 Have you ever seen the — this
7 publication, “Occupational Safety And Health: A
8 DuPont Company View,” as part of the body of
9 information provided to you to prepare for
10 today’s deposition?
11 A. Uh, it may have been in the
12 corporate collection, it’s not something I have
13 a copy of, so I would not be familiar with the
14 entire scope of the document.
15 Q. Okay, if you look at the second
16 page of the document…
17 A. The second page, page — labeled
18 as five.
19 Q. Page five, correct, yes, ma’am.
20 And you look at the second full paragraph, that
21 discusses what was known about the dangers of
22 asbestos and when in a general sense, correct?
23 A. Uh, you’ll have to give me –
24 Q. Yes, ma’am.
25 A. — a chance to read it.
0073
1 Q. Take your time.
2 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
3 Q. Let me know when you’re done.
4 A. Okay.
5 Q. Does it not indicate the
6 following; “it was known for years that exposure
7 to asbestos could cause the lung disease
8 asbestosis and asbestos was implicated in
9 cancer.”
10 See that?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. It goes on to say “not until the
13 mid-1950s, however, was there strong
14 epidemiologic evidence that asbestos fibers
15 could cause the cancer called mesothelioma.”
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. See that?
18 A. Yes –
19 Q. All right.
20 A. — there were case studies,
21 certainly, at that time.
22 Q. All right. Well this, says
23 strong epidemiologic evidence, does it not?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. And then after this time, there
0074
1 continued to be reports going forward about
2 people who had exposure to asbestos and
3 developed mesothelioma; true?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. All right. For example, still in
6 the 1950s there were reports of bystanders who
7 were working in refineries that were getting
8 mesothelioma; true?
9 A. Uh, I have not seen those reports
10 so I can’t confirm that.
11 Q. Okay.
12 MR. PLACITELLA: Mark that next.
13
14 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-7 is marked
15 for identification.)
16
17 Q. You have in front of you an
18 article entitled “Malignant Mesothelioma of the
19 Pleura.” Do you see that?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. By Eisenstadt published or
22 reprinted from Diseases of the Chest. Was that
23 a respected journal available to the people at
24 the Haskell Laboratory?
25 A. Um…I do not know how available
0075
1 it was, I can’t comment on that. I would think
2 that there…it is likely that it would have
3 been available.
4 Q. Okay. And if you flip to the
5 third page of the document…it talks about the
6 person who’s being discussed in this article as
7 a 57-year-old male refinery foreman.
8 Do you see that?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Okay. So — and in 1958 was a
11 refinery foreman somebody who worked, to your
12 knowledge, in asbestos factories with raw fiber?
13 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
14 A. I can’t begin to comment on the work
15 history of this individual; I have no idea.
16 Q. Well…am I correct that foremen
17 generally are people who don’t work hands-on
18 with material, they supervise?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. Certainly when you have that
21 particular title. That doesn’t mean the person
22 wouldn’t have another work history.
23 Q. Okay. As we sit here today,
24 you’re not familiar with this and you had not
25 reviewed it in preparation for today’s
0076
1 deposition.
2 A. That’s correct.
3 Q. And it wasn’t provided to you by
4 the lawyers.
5 A. No.
6 Q. Okay. You are familiar, however,
7 with a Dr. Scheepers, are you not?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Dr. Scheepers was a pathologist
10 who worked at the Haskell Laboratory?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Okay. And was he a respected
13 scientist?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Have you spoken to Dr. Scheepers
16 at all in conjunction with your research?
17 A. No.
18 Q. And the scientists at the Haskell
19 Laboratory actually published a book in 1960
20 entitled Modern Occupational Medicine; true?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. And that was published by the
23 medical director and assistant medical director
24 or they were the principal authors, correct?
25 A. Yes.
0077
1 Q. All right.
2 A. They were not at Haskell
3 Laboratory, they would have been the medical…
4 Q. Right.
5 A. In the Medical Department.
6 Q. I’m sorry, you’re correct; they
7 were at the Medical Department at DuPont.
8 A. That’s correct.
9 Q. All right. And one was a Dr.
10 Zapp?
11 A. Yes, Dr. Zapp was at Haskell.
12 Q. And another Dr. Alonzo. He was at
13 DuPont –
14 A. He was the Medical Director.
15 He –
16 Q. For the whole show.
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. And –
19 A. Excuse me, but –
20 Q. Yes, ma’am.
21 A. — he was — he became medical
22 director later. I’m not sure he was at the
23 time.
24 Q. Okay.
25 A. The book…
0078
1 Q. And was that a…why did they
2 publish that book, do you know?
3 A. I think it was very much a
4 textbook in occupational medicine. These
5 individuals in the Medicine Department of DuPont
6 and at Haskell Laboratory had a wide background
7 in various occupational illnesses and, um, the,
8 the book was a very definitive textbook.
9 Q. Okay. Widely read and widely
10 circulated?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. At least within DuPont?
13 A. I, I have no idea how it was used
14 in occupational medicine, but it certainly was a
15 text.
16 Q. All right. And you’re aware that
17 Dr. Scheepers wrote a chapter in that book,
18 correct?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. And this chapter was entitled
21 “Occupational Chest Diseases.”
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. Correct?
24 A. That’s correct.
25 Q. All right. And in his chapter Dr.
0079
1 Scheepers discussed asbestos-causing
2 mesothelioma; true?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. And he wrote this book — he wrote
5 this chapter before the Wagner study was ever
6 even published, correct?
7 A. That’s correct.
8 Q. All right. So before the Wagner
9 study came out, it was so well established that
10 asbestos could cause mesothelioma that it ended
11 up in DuPont’s textbook; true?
12 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
13 A. I wouldn’t use the word well
14 established. I would say there were certainly
15 publications indicating there was an association
16 between asbestos and mesothelioma.
17 Whenever you look at scientific
18 literature, everything is sort of a progression
19 and, you know, you have first — some reports
20 that are, oh, isn’t this interesting, that’s
21 nice, let’s see some more, but, certainly, I
22 think by then the medical community was
23 beginning to accept the concept of a link and
24 that’s when I would say the Wagner study was
25 sort of this is a very definitive study and,
0080
1 and, um…there — the, uh, reports earlier were
2 confirmed through the Wagner study.
3 Q. But just to be clear, in DuPont’s
4 own publication they said it was pretty clear
5 that asbestos could cause mesothelioma by the
6 mid-1950s; true?
7 A. Yes.
8 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
9 Q. And my client’s dad, Mr.
10 Scarbongia, started working at DuPont in ’58, so
11 DuPont would have known about mesothelioma and
12 asbestos before he ever got to DuPont; true?
13 MR. COTTEN: Objection to form.
14 A. I think certainly the scientists
15 knew of the asbestos-related diseases that were
16 at that time associated with the very dusty
17 trades and the dirty things like mining and
18 milling and text — uh, asbestos textile
19 manufacturing.
20 Certainly at that time that was
21 the concept, that these are diseases associated
22 with those types of industries.
23 Q. When you put your publication out
24 saying that it was known, that there was strong
25 epidemiologic proof by the mid-fifties, did you
0081
1 qualify it by saying it was only known in the
2 mining industry?
3 A. I think –
4 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
5 A. Um, I don’t think that that
6 necessarily was part of this chapter. I think
7 this chapter was about what the disease looks
8 like when you examine an individual –
9 Q. Okay.
10 A. — and so there was not a lot of
11 qualification about how you would go about
12 getting it or anything. It was really focused,
13 this is the disease, mesothelioma.
14 Q. Okay.
15 A. And Dr. Scheepers was a
16 pathologist, that was his expertise.
17 Q. So what he would do is he would
18 actually look at the pieces of people’s lungs
19 and abdomen and identify it and say that’s
20 mesothelioma, that was caused by asbestos,
21 right?
22 A. Um, and I think if he was working
23 at Haskell he wasn’t necessarily looking at
24 people’s lungs. His, his job as a pathologist
25 was to look at slides of lungs and whether that
0082
1 was people’s lungs or animals’ lungs –
2 Q. Okay.
3 A. — that was his particular
4 expertise.
5 And the book, the chapter, is an
6 excellent description to people who are looking
7 at lungs to say this is what you see to diagnose
8 this disease.
9 Q. Right, he actually put pictures…
10 A. Yes, he did.
11 Q. Um, this is what mesothelioma
12 looks like.
13 A. And many other diseases.
14 Q. And many other diseases as well to
15 be fair.
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. All right. And that was important
18 enough that he put it down in a book.
19 A. That’s right.
20 Q. Okay. And it was important enough
21 that it was published by DuPont in a textbook.
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. All right. And they wouldn’t put
24 it in a textbook if it was something that was
25 still up in the air. Correct?
0083
1 A. I think that he expressed it here
2 is that it was associated and I don’t think they
3 had a problem with that.
4 Q. Okay. And this was before the
5 Wagner study ever came out. True?
6 A. Well, um, I would say they came
7 out about the same year? 1960 the Wagner study
8 was published –
9 Q. Right.
10 A. — and they certainly, you know,
11 did that work prior to the 1960 publication.
12 Q. But Dr. Scheepers didn’t have to
13 speak to Dr. Wagner to know what was going on
14 with mesothelioma; true?
15 A. Correct.
16 Q. All right. And then what happened
17 is Dr. Wagner’s study came out later that year;
18 true?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. And Dr. Wagner’s study showed that
21 people were developing mesothelioma in South
22 Africa; true?
23 A. That’s correct, it was really
24 located in one particular area of the mines of
25 –
0084
1 Q. Right.
2 A. — South Africa and it was at that
3 time crocidolite and it was associated — and,
4 in fact, most people were at that time
5 associating mesothelioma and the one particular
6 kind of asbestos fiber called crocidolite, which
7 is what was being mined in South Africa.
8 Q. All right. I want to just focus
9 on Dr. Wagner.
10 Dr. Wagner’s study involved
11 crocidolite because that was a crocidolite mine
12 down there, right?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. Okay. And what Dr. Wagner
15 published was that people not just working in
16 the mine were getting mesothelioma, but people
17 who never set foot in the mine were getting
18 mesothelioma; true?
19 A. That’s correct, but they lived in
20 that area –
21 Q. Right.
22 A. — and it was very in — you know,
23 I’ve learned more about that situation and,
24 certainly, my understanding is that there was a
25 lot of asbestos everywhere in that particular
0085
1 area. The actual, um, asbestos that wasn’t good
2 enough to sell from the mines was used on the
3 roads and so forth in the area, so it was
4 everywhere.
5 Q. All right. My question was Dr.
6 Wagner’s study involved not just people who
7 worked in the mines, but he diagnosed people
8 with mesothelioma who never set foot in the
9 mine.
10 A. That’s correct.
11 Q. And that included little kids,
12 right?
13 A. That’s right. Well, now, they
14 used the kids a lot of times to actually
15 separate the asbestos.
16 Q. Right, but the kids who were
17 diagnosed — some of the kids who were diagnosed
18 with mesothelioma in Dr. Wagner’s study in 1960
19 never went into the mine; true?
20 A. Never worked specifically in the
21 mines.
22 Q. Right.
23 A. But they lived in the area.
24 Q. They lived in the area. And some
25 people just lived along the — that got
0086
1 mesothelioma just lived along the road to get to
2 the mine.
3 A. That’s right.
4 MR. COTTEN: Objection –
5 Q. Correct?
6 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
7 A. That’s correct.
8 Q. So it was clear in 1960 that you
9 didn’t have to work in an asbestos factory or an
10 asbestos mine in order to get mesothelioma;
11 true?
12 A. But you had to be in an area where
13 there was a lot of…
14 Q. All right.
15 A. Dust and I think that was very,
16 very clear –
17 Q. All right.
18 A. — about the fact that those
19 people, whether they were actually in the mine
20 or they were small children being asked to
21 separate the asbestos or never went in the mine,
22 they still lived in an area that was very, very
23 dusty from the asbestos.
24 Q. We knew in 1960 from Dr. Wagner’s
25 study that you did not have to be occupationally
0087
1 exposed to asbestos to get mesothelioma; true?
2 A. I would say that you had be
3 exposed in a very dusty area, whether it was
4 occupationally or not.
5 Q. We knew in 1960 that you did not
6 have to be exposed occupationally to asbestos to
7 get mesothelioma; true?
8 A. But I — I can’t say true or
9 false. It’s that what the exposure is, not so
10 much whether it’s occupational or
11 non-occupational.
12 Q. All right, so it’s not the –
13 A. So I think at that time what the
14 concept was still that you have to have a high
15 exposure.
16 Q. Well…so what you’re saying is in
17 1960 it was recognized that it wasn’t
18 necessarily the trade or job that could cause
19 mesothelioma, but the exposure, correct?
20 A. The overall concept that here are
21 children that had mesothelioma that were not
22 actually working in the mines, yes.
23 MR. PLACITELLA: Mark this next.
24
25 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-8 is marked
0088
1 for identification.)
2
3 MR. COTTEN: Do you have a separate
4 copy on this one?
5 MR. PLACITELLA: Sorry, that was a
6 late last night one so I didn’t bring
7 another copy.
8 (Brief pause.)
9 Q. I put in front of you and you
10 didn’t have a chance to look at it yet a second
11 article. This is from 1960 again by Dr.
12 Eisenstadt.
13 Do you see that?
14 A. Yes, I see.
15 Q. Okay. And that was published in
16 what…uh, journal?
17 A. Um, Lancet.
18 Q. Lancet.
19 A. Um-hum.
20 Q. That was certainly a respected
21 medical journal available to the scientists and
22 physicians at the Haskell Laboratory in 1960;
23 true?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Okay. And do you know whether the
0089
1 Haskell Laboratory or scientists within it would
2 have subscribed to Lancet in 1960?
3 A. I don’t know for sure, but,
4 certainly, Lancet, um…would most likely
5 have — because it was a well-known journal
6 would have been in the library.
7 Q. All right. And this is an article
8 in the same year that Dr. Wagner published his
9 study and Dr. — and your company wrote its
10 textbook with mesothelioma and this also
11 discusses mesothelioma, correct?
12 A. Um, the title indicates that –
13 Q. Right.
14 A. — I have not read it.
15 Q. And I did highlight for you to
16 make it easier, this is now about two refinery
17 foremen that developed mesothelioma; true?
18 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
19 A. Well, case one it says a 57-year-old
20 oil refinery foreman. I don’t know whether it
21 may be the same individual that was…described
22 earlier. In case two, 58-year-old oil refinery
23 foreman.
24 Q. Right.
25 A. Again, I cannot comment at all
0090
1 upon this individual’s work history. They would
2 have been foremen at the time this was
3 identified.
4 Q. Right. And their titles are not
5 that important, it’s the exposure that’s
6 important, correct?
7 A. And I do not have any idea where
8 they may have been exposed.
9 Q. Well, I’ll represent to you that
10 the article says that they were exposed in a
11 refinery. Correct?
12 A. I don’t know.
13 Q. You know, we can look at it –
14 A. I haven’t had an opportunity to –
15 Q. I’ll make the representation that
16 you can look at it over lunch.
17 A. Okay.
18 Q. If I’m incorrect, we’ll go back it
19 to. You’ll tell me, Chris, you’re incorrect, I
20 want to go back and discuss it.
21 Let’s — so assuming that this is
22 about people exposed in a refinery, there were
23 publications in possession of people at Haskell
24 Laboratory showing people who worked in a
25 refinery had mesothelioma in 1960; true?
0091
1 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
2 A. Well, I can’t really answer that
3 because I have no idea of either of these
4 individual’s work history, did they work their
5 entire time in the refinery, is that what it
6 says in the article; I don’t know. Maybe they
7 worked in the asbestos industry before coming to
8 the refinery, so I can’t respond to you unless I
9 read the article.
10 Q. If you think somehow my question’s
11 unfair, I’ll give you the chance to look at it
12 and we’ll go back to it, okay?
13 A. Thank you.
14 Q. All right. You told me before
15 about the conference with Dr. Selikoff in 1964.
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Remember? That was four years
18 after…DuPont’s textbook discussing
19 mesothelioma; true?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. All right. DuPont did not have to
22 go to the conference to learn about mesothelioma
23 from Dr. Selikoff; true?
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
25 A. And I don’t think I ever indicated
0092
1 that they didn’t know about the disease
2 mesothelioma –
3 Q. Okay.
4 A. — before then.
5 Q. When they went to the conference,
6 who attended that conference on behalf of
7 DuPont?
8 A. That was, uh, Dr. Stopps who was a
9 physiologist at Haskell Laboratory.
10 Q. Was he the only one?
11 A. As far as I know he’s the only one
12 that attended, yes.
13 Q. And the conference involved many
14 scientists from around the world; is that fair?
15 A. That is correct.
16 Q. And it included members of the
17 asbestos industry, correct?
18 A. Yes. Primarily the asbestos
19 industry in England.
20 Q. All right.
21 A. I think there may have been a few
22 from the United States.
23 Q. Also other members of the American
24 Petroleum Institute, correct?
25 A. I don’t recall.
0093
1 Q. All right.
2 A. About the Petroleum Institute.
3 Q. All right. And Dr. Stopps, he
4 stayed there for — I’m not being rude, I’m
5 looking for stuff while I’m talking, okay?
6 A. Okay.
7 Q. Dr. Stopps, he stayed at the
8 conference for a few days; true?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Okay. And when he came back he
11 wrote up a report.
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Right? And that report was sent
14 to…Dr. D’Alonzo — I should do that because
15 he’s Italian so I should get that right — he –
16 it was sent to Dr. D’Alonzo, correct?
17 A. That’s right, he was the Medical
18 Director of DuPont at that time.
19 Q. All of DuPont.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Okay. And how many people was he
22 the medical director for approximately at that
23 time? A hundred-thousand people at that time or
24 maybe more?
25 A. Whatever the number of people
0094
1 within DuPont, he was the medical director –
2 Q. Okay.
3 A. — of that department.
4 Q. Okay. And he then sent the report
5 of Dr. Stopps to all of the plant physicians in
6 the entire DuPont company.
7 A. That’s correct.
8 Q. Okay. We agree that Dr. Stopps –
9 was he a medical doctor?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. He was, okay. We agree that Dr.
12 Stopps in authoring a report only had the best
13 of intentions, correct?
14 A. I would think so.
15 Q. Right. He had the health and
16 safety of workers at heart.
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. And when he sent that to Dr.
19 D’Alonzo and Dr. D’Alonzo sent it out, his
20 motives were similar; we agree?
21 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. Okay.
24 MR. PLACITELLA: Let me just mark
25 this just for the record as the next…
0095
1
2 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-9 is marked
3 for identification.)
4
5 Q. This is P-9 for identification.
6 You’ve seen this document before, have you not?
7 A. Yes, I have.
8 Q. Okay. Is that part of the package
9 that you gave to me?
10 A. Um…
11 Q. This morning that would –
12 A. I think it is, yes.
13 Q. Okay. And the first time you saw
14 this document was when?
15 A. Several years ago.
16 Q. Okay. Was it while you were
17 working there or as part of litigation?
18 A. Um…it was probably as part of
19 litigation.
20 Q. Okay.
21 A. Since I did not work with anything
22 that would have involved going back to the files
23 on asbestos.
24 Q. All right, and he attached to the
25 report to all plant physicians is the trip
0096
1 report of Dr. Stopps, correct?
2 A. That’s correct.
3 Q. And what he — he gives a summary
4 of basically what went on at the conference.
5 A. That’s right.
6 Q. Correct? The things that he took
7 away that were the most important.
8 A. That’s right, it was an ordinary
9 practice for anyone going on a trip to come back
10 and write up a report.
11 Q. Okay. And one of the things that
12 he reported was that discussed at the conference
13 was that you could get mesothelioma from
14 extremely slight exposures, right?
15 A. Um, could you indicate where you
16 are –
17 Q. Yeah.
18 A. — quoting?
19 Q. I’m looking at…
20 A. Extremely slight, I…
21 Q. You have a problem with that word?
22 Okay.
23 A. I’m looking for where it says
24 extremely slight, I don’t remember reading that.
25 Q. I’ll assist you. Bottom of page
0097
1 three.
2 (Brief pause.)
3 Q. See that, it talks about what Dr.
4 Wagner discussed at the meeting?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. Correct?
7 A. Okay, I see this.
8 Q. That’s the same Dr. Wagner that we
9 discussed a couple minutes ago.
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. All right. The one who diagnosed
12 mesothelioma in the kids.
13 A. Um-hum.
14 Q. All right. And it says
15 that…”more recent investigation had shown that
16 there was an increased incidence of pleural and
17 peritoneal mesotheliomas occurring in people
18 occupationally or environmentally exposed to
19 asbestos dust.”
20 You see that?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. That’s what we discussed before,
23 correct?
24 A. That’s correct.
25 Q. Okay. And it said “in some of
0098
1 these cases, the exposure has been extremely
2 slight and not sufficient to produce the
3 histological features of asbestosis.”
4 Do you see that?
5 A. Yes, um-hum.
6 Q. All right. And this memo does –
7 A. And he goes on to say there’s
8 pathological evidence of asbestos bodies or
9 fibers in the air spaces, so that definitely
10 indicates an asbestos exposure great enough to
11 cause asbestos bodies.
12 Q. Okay. Did I ask any questions
13 about asbestos bodies?
14 A. No, but you’re indicating that it
15 did — the exposure was extremely slight. I’m
16 just saying that you have to read the whole
17 thing.
18 Q. I’m sorry, if you thought I was
19 taking something out of context. I was just
20 going to ask you a question.
21 A. Okay.
22 Q. I’m not indicating that this is
23 what your doctor, Dr. Stopps indicated, correct?
24 A. This was his, uh, report of Dr.
25 Wagner’s discussion.
0099
1 Q. Right. And what he says is that
2 “in some of the cases the exposure has been
3 extremely slight and not sufficient to produce
4 the histological features of asbestosis.”
5 A. Correct.
6 Q. Okay. And he does not take issue
7 in this report with that observation of Dr.
8 Wagner, correct?
9 A. Correct.
10 Q. All right. When Dr. Wagner was
11 diagnosing mesothelioma in people back in 1960,
12 some of the exposures, at least to his mind,
13 were extremely slight; true?
14 A. As described in this article, yes.
15 Q. Okay. Could you go to the next
16 page, four? Page four discusses, in part,
17 findings reported by a Dr. Newhouse from Great
18 Britain, correct?
19 A. That’s correct.
20 Q. All right. And he talks about the
21 eighty-three patients that he found with
22 mesothelioma either at autopsy or on biopsy,
23 correct?
24 A. Yes, and it’s she.
25 Q. She, I’m very sorry. And she
0100
1 discusses the main types of exposure that caused
2 the mesotheliomas.
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. See that?
5 A. Um-hum.
6 Q. And it says “work in factories
7 manufacturing textiles,” correct?
8 A. Um-hum.
9 Q. That would have been like the
10 Merewether factory we discussed before, correct?
11 A. Right.
12 Q. All right. Insulating materials.
13 See that?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. And other products.
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. And then it says “employment as
18 laggers or insulators.”
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. They would have been the people
21 actually applying the asbestos.
22 A. That’s correct.
23 Q. Correct? “And exposure to dust
24 brought home by relatives working with
25 asbestos.” See that?
0101
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. So in this report Dr. Stopps is
3 reporting that discussed there were people who
4 were just living at home and getting
5 mesothelioma from their family members, right?
6 A. Yes, because he’s reporting Dr.
7 Newhouse’s work.
8 Q. Right. That’s kind of like my
9 client, right?
10 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
11 A. Um…probably not, but I’ve got the
12 full — in fact, I provided you with Dr.
13 Newhouse’s follow-up paper with this study.
14 Q. Okay.
15 A. And she says there that people
16 reported that the workers — the people at home
17 who were exposed, the workers came home white
18 with dust and so, um, it sounded as if they were
19 bringing home a significant amount of material.
20 Q. Well, do you know –
21 A. But this was definitely –
22 Q. — how much dust –
23 A. — one of the first times, as Dr.
24 Stopps says, that there is an indication of
25 people at home being exposed.
0102
1 Q. Well, do you know how much dust my
2 client’s father had on his clothing when he came
3 home?
4 A. I have no idea.
5 Q. Okay.
6 A. I can only tell you that I do know
7 that DuPont had very strict dust policies and so
8 I can’t imagine anyone walking out of the door
9 with white dust all over them, so –
10 Q. Right.
11 A. — I would doubt that it could be
12 anything quite like described in Dr. Newhouse’s
13 paper.
14 Q. Because DuPont had as part of
15 their policies in place that you weren’t allowed
16 to leave the plant with dust all over your
17 clothes and expose your family, right?
18 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
19 A. I would not say that. DuPont
20 definitely had policies against any kind of
21 large amounts of dust in its workplace and that
22 was a very old policy that went back to the
23 1800s relative to dust and certainly was a good
24 housekeeping and a safety policy not to have a
25 lot of dust in the workplace.
0103
1 Q. And not to let those workers go
2 home with that dust on their clothing.
3 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
4 A. I have no idea whether workers went
5 home with dust on their clothing.
6 Q. Okay.
7 A. But, certainly, not in huge
8 quantities where someone would be white with
9 dust.
10 Q. Okay, well, we’ll get there. It
11 says…there were other cases of mesothelioma
12 diagnosed with people who just live within a
13 half mile of an asbestos factory, right?
14 A. That’s correct.
15 Q. Right. So these weren’t people
16 who worked in the factory, these weren’t even
17 people who had someone at the factory bring
18 asbestos home on their clothing; these were
19 people who just lived in the neighborhood.
20 A. That’s right.
21 Q. A half a mile away.
22 A. That’s right.
23 Q. All right. And that was something
24 that Dr. Stopps said was statistically
25 significant, correct?
0104
1 A. Well, I think that he reported
2 that as having been statistically significant
3 and the…statistics would have been done by Dr.
4 Newhouse.
5 Q. Okay. And…he didn’t take issue
6 with that.
7 A. No. In fact, I think that’s
8 important because he says in, like, the second
9 paragraph of his trip report about these
10 findings were new and, certainly, he says here
11 that…from the point of view of the DuPont
12 company as a whole, the main interest of the
13 meetings was in drawing attention to the fact
14 that asbestosis and complications of asbestosis
15 have now been found in persons who would not in
16 the ordinary way come to mind as being exposed
17 to asbestos. That’s to say they do not work in
18 asbestos mines, asbestos mills or asbestos
19 textile factories.
20 And I think that that was the
21 whole point of this whole thing was the
22 information presented at this meeting was very,
23 very new, certainly, to the people working at
24 DuPont and that’s why, um, he wanted others to
25 know about it, because he thought this was very
0105
1 important.
2 Q. My question was what?
3 A. And that included Dr. Selikoff’s
4 information.
5 Q. My question –
6 A. Well, you were asking me whether
7 or not he reported this as significant and I’m
8 just saying, yes, he thought it was very
9 significant that Dr. Newhouse’s findings were
10 reported at this meeting and I think, you know,
11 that’s what he said.
12 Q. No, that’s not my question. My
13 question was were the findings in the study
14 statistically significant.
15 A. And that was Dr. Newhouse’s
16 conclusion, Dr. Stopps reported it as such in
17 his trip report.
18 Q. Okay. He also looked at
19 mesotheliomas by — he also reported on
20 mesotheliomas by Dr. Owen, correct?
21 A. Uh, yes.
22 Q. And there were people that got
23 mesothelioma including boilermakers, correct?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. That’s what Mr. Scarbongia was, my
0106
1 client’s father, a boilermaker.
2 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
3 Q. You knew that, correct?
4 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
5 A. Um, I did not know that
6 specifically, but you have said it.
7 Q. Okay. He had enough exposure — a
8 boilermaker, according to this, had enough
9 exposure to get mesothelioma, right?
10 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
11 A. Um, apparently at least within the
12 study reported by Dr. Owen, yes.
13 Q. Okay. And even people who worked
14 in offices in factories that used asbestos got
15 mesothelioma. True?
16 A. I do not know that.
17 Q. Do you see where it says, page
18 five, patients –
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. — gave a history of environmental
21 exposure from working in an office?
22 A. Okay.
23 Q. Now…so based upon sitting there
24 for three days and listening to all this, Dr.
25 Stopps was quite concerned. Do we agree with
0107
1 that?
2 A. Well, I think he felt that these
3 were all new findings and that it was important,
4 therefore, to go back and look at processes and
5 procedures –
6 Q. Right.
7 A. — within DuPont and see if DuPont
8 workers were being exposed in any of the
9 processes that were going on.
10 Q. Well, to be fair, they weren’t all
11 new findings, were they?
12 A. Well, let’s say that it became
13 apparent in this, in this particular meeting
14 that people were being exposed in jobs that were
15 not typically thought of as being the types of
16 jobs that would cause asbestos-related diseases.
17 Q. Well, you knew about people
18 applying…asbestos in your plants getting
19 mesothelioma before you went to this conference,
20 didn’t you?
21 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
22 A. Um, I don’t know about that.
23 Q. Those documents were never shown
24 to you?
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0108
1 A. Um, I have seen…several documents
2 about individuals who died of mesothelioma. I
3 think they tried to track down whether those
4 individuals ever worked with asbestos while they
5 were employed at DuPont and it’s my
6 understanding only one of those individuals
7 actually worked with asbestos while working at
8 DuPont.
9 Those people had long work
10 histories of working in other places and, um –
11 and at least two of them when they worked at
12 DuPont were not working with asbestos long.
13 Q. What’s the source of that
14 information, ma’am, that you just related?
15 A. The Medical Department had put out
16 a request to determine whether or not in all of
17 DuPont there were any cases reported that anyone
18 had died of mesothelioma and they found three
19 cases of mesothelioma were reported in the
20 records of death and so then they went back to
21 find out the work histories of those people and
22 the plant sites where those people had been
23 employed prior to their death were actually, um
24 — they went through the medical and work
25 history records of those individuals.
0109
1 Q. And you looked at them yourself?
2 A. I did not see medical histories.
3 All I saw were letters that came back to central
4 medical as to where those people worked while
5 they were at DuPont.
6 Q. And you have those as part of your
7 collection at home?
8 A. Yes, they’re part of the
9 collection you were provided.
10 Q. Oh, they’re in the documents that
11 you gave me this morning?
12 A. Not the documents –
13 Q. Oh, okay.
14 A. — this morning, no.
15 Q. So just to be clear, before Dr.
16 Stopps ever went — set foot in the 1964
17 conference, there were records in possession of
18 DuPont of people who didn’t work in asbestos
19 factories who worked at DuPont who got
20 mesothelioma; true?
21 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
22 A. I don’t know that — they didn’t
23 work in asbestos factories at DuPont, but they
24 may have had work histories of working in the
25 asbestos industry before ever coming to DuPont.
0110
1 DuPont kept medical records and
2 they kept records of the cause of death of
3 individuals working at their plants long before
4 any of this ever occurred and it wasn’t until
5 after Dr. Stopps’s trip to NYU and this
6 particular meeting, it was later that they
7 actually centrally tried to determine — because
8 all these records of, uh…medical records and
9 records of death of employees of DuPont were
10 kept at plant sites all over and they asked the
11 question how many cases do we know before
12 mesothelioma among DuPont workers and out of
13 the, as you said, and I think I said tens of
14 thousands of workers, they had identified three
15 mesothelioma cases and they only know of one of
16 those individuals that actually worked with
17 asbestos at the time he was at DuPont.
18 Q. Okay, let me ask the question this
19 way.
20 When you — this source of
21 information that somehow they discounted
22 exposure at DuPont in the people with
23 mesothelioma, what specific source of
24 information are you referring to?
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0111
1 Q. Because that’s what I need to
2 know.
3 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
4 A. There were medical records on each
5 individual that worked at DuPont and as much as
6 possible they kept records of where people
7 worked in the plants. In other words, you could
8 go to a plant site and find out a person’s work
9 history.
10 Q. Um-hum.
11 A. Okay? So there would have been
12 work history records on file at a plant site,
13 they kept their medical records and they also
14 kept if they knew about an employee or retiree
15 dying, they kept the records of what the cause
16 of death was, so they kept all those records at
17 plant sites.
18 And so someone from the central
19 medical department corporately could send out a
20 request and then the individual plant sites
21 would have to report back and in this case they
22 asked, or they had looked, I guess, through the
23 death certificates and records, I think maybe it
24 was the epidemiologist or whoever, they looked
25 at these records, then they sent memos and I had
0112
1 — in the information that I had available to me
2 were memos that were sent to the plant sites
3 where the individuals who died of mesothelioma
4 worked as of the records of DuPont and then
5 those plant sites responded in memos that were
6 also in my records.
7 So I had three memos one of which,
8 I think, came back from one of the places where
9 someone had written right on the memo what the
10 work history had been for that individual. In
11 the other cases, there were separate memos sent
12 back indicating what the work histories and
13 where those individuals worked.
14 Q. All right. And those –
15 A. At the plant sites –
16 Q. Those –
17 A. — when they were working there.
18 Q. Those memos you have; you’ve
19 segregated them out.
20 A. Well, I haven’t segregated them.
21 They’re in all these files that I’ve got.
22 Q. You mean at home.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. You live where by the way?
25 A. In Wilmington.
0113
1 Q. Okay. And you anticipated I was
2 going to ask you those questions today?
3 A. Well, that would — I certainly
4 went back and looked at them myself because this
5 was a mesothelioma case, so –
6 Q. Right.
7 A. — I remembered having seen some
8 memos around…
9 Q. Right.
10 A. Mesothelioma and I know they had
11 identified what those people were doing –
12 Q. Right.
13 A. — and the one individual who had
14 been, you know, exposed during their work
15 history.
16 Q. Okay. And the — that information
17 is information you rely upon in providing this
18 testimony.
19 A. Well, I certainly looked at the
20 memos, so, yes.
21 Q. And you did that how recently?
22 A. Probably during the last week or
23 so.
24 Q. Okay.
25 A. Once I learned that this case had
0114
1 to do with mesothelioma, I thought in my own
2 mind, oh, there’s some memos there that I should
3 look at.
4 Q. Okay. But you didn’t bring them
5 with you today.
6 A. No.
7 Q. Okay. Any reason?
8 A. Well, the memos were only
9 one-pagers and I read them and that’s all I…
10 Q. Okay.
11 A. Needed.
12 Q. So…Dr. Stopps…
13 A. Okay.
14 Q. When he came back…
15 A. Um-hum.
16 Q. He made recommendations as to what
17 DuPont should do.
18 A. Yes, he had –
19 Q. Correct?
20 A. — some recommendations.
21 Q. He said…he included those
22 recommendations on page six, correct?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. And he says, in part, the facts
25 should be borne in mind and embraces not only
0115
1 the person’s occupation, but also his hobbies?
2 A. Excuse me, could you tell me
3 where? I know I’m on page six.
4 Q. On the bottom of page six.
5 A. Okay.
6 Q. See where it says?
7 A. Okay, I see where you are.
8 Q. Says you should look at not only
9 the person’s occupation, but his hobbies.
10 Correct?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. All right. And then he says
13 because the hobbies could be responsible for
14 enough exposure to get mesothelioma.
15 A. Um-hum.
16 Q. True?
17 A. That’s what he says.
18 Q. Right. He says “since the
19 prognoses for a diagnosed pleural mesothelioma
20 is extremely poor, varying from a few weeks to
21 one year,” he says “it is important that no
22 persons within the company should be exposed to
23 asbestos, whether as frank asbestos fiber or
24 asbestos contained in such materials as
25 insulation, lagging and asbestos cement,”
0116
1 correct?
2 A. Um-hum.
3 Q. His recommendation was to DuPont
4 that from this point forward nobody in the
5 company should be exposed to asbestos because of
6 the horrible death that asbestos can cause?
7 A. I don’t think he says — I don’t
8 think he says it that way.
9 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
10 Q. Well, let me read it again. It
11 says “extremely poor varying from few weeks to
12 one year,” right? He’s referring to the
13 horrible death that people die — suffer from
14 with mesothelioma, is he not?
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 A. I think he’s just saying that at
17 that point, it’s just…maybe a few weeks to a
18 year from the time they diagnose it.
19 Q. They’re going to die.
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. And at that point in time DuPont
22 clearly was aware that the death from
23 mesothelioma was a horrible death; would you
24 agree with that?
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0117
1 A. That is, um — you’re kind of saying
2 horrible death and while I know that it is, I’m
3 not sure that that’s what he’s describing here.
4 Q. My question is at the time this
5 memo was written, clearly DuPont understood that
6 when you got mesothelioma, the death was a
7 horrible death.
8 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
9 A. I can’t really comment on…
10 Q. Okay.
11 A. That.
12 Q. It says “it is important that no
13 persons within the company should be exposed to
14 asbestos.” Did I read that…
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 Q. Correctly?
17 MR. COTTEN: Excuse me. Objection,
18 form.
19 A. That’s what he says here.
20 Q. Okay. He doesn’t say some people
21 can be exposed and some people can’t, correct?
22 A. That’s correct.
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
24 Q. He says that nobody from this point
25 forward should be exposed to asbestos. Isn’t
0118
1 that the import of what he says?
2 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
3 A. Uh, he says it’s important that no
4 persons should be exposed. He doesn’t say from
5 this point forward.
6 Q. So is he saying in your mind that
7 it’s okay to expose people starting in 1970 or
8 from the time that you — this memo was
9 authored?
10 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
11 A. I don’t think he’s putting any time
12 frame on trying to prevent exposure; he is
13 saying that it’s important that people not be
14 exposed.
15 Q. He says “nobody in the company
16 should be exposed,” correct?
17 A. That’s right.
18 Q. Okay. And it doesn’t matter
19 whether they’re handling asbestos fiber or being
20 exposed to asbestos from insulation or any other
21 product; true?
22 A. He puts no qualifier on it in this
23 memo.
24 Q. He says that it’s not the
25 classification of a man’s occupation that
0119
1 determines the risk, right?
2 A. That’s correct.
3 Q. All right. This was the rule set
4 down by the Medical Director to all plant
5 physicians in 1964, correct?
6 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
7 A. Um, no, that’s not correct. This
8 was the memo with Dr. Stopps expressing his
9 opinion. This was not a rule set down by the
10 Medical Director. The Medical Director who
11 received the trip report certainly sent it out
12 to all plant physicians.
13 Q. Right, and in his cover letter he
14 didn’t qualify by saying that the
15 recommendations of DuPont’s own Dr. Stopps
16 should be taken with a grain of salt, did he?
17 A. No, and he also did not say –
18 first of all, Dr. Stopps was a medical doctor at
19 Haskell Laboratory, he was making a
20 recommendation and he did not — and Dr. Alonzo
21 did not qualify one way or the other about how
22 to…
23 Q. Right.
24 A. Follow this recommendation.
25 Q. So Dr. Alonzo sent out this report
0120
1 from your own Dr. Stopps saying nobody should be
2 exposed to asbestos from November 9th, 1964.
3 MR. COTTEN: Objection form.
4 Q. Correct?
5 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
6 A. That’s correct, that was Dr. Stopps
7 expressing his opinion.
8 MR. PLACITELLA: All right, let’s
9 take a break.
10 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Off the video
11 record at 12:15.
12
13 (Whereupon, an off-the-record
14 discussion takes place.)
15
16 (Whereupon, a lunch recess is
17 taken.)
18
19 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Back on the
20 video record at 1:03 p.m.
21 Q. Good afternoon. How are you?
22 A. Good afternoon.
23 Q. When…when the report was sent
24 out to all the medical personnel in DuPont in
25 1964 where Dr. Stopps said no more asbestos
0121
1 exposure, in pipe insulation alone DuPont was
2 using about 200,000 pounds of pipe per year,
3 correct?
4 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
5 A. Um, I don’t really know how much
6 pipe they were using or how much insulation at
7 that time.
8 Q. And about seventy percent of that
9 was asbestos, right?
10 A. I really can’t say.
11 Q. Okay. And the problem with using
12 that much asbestos was that it really presented
13 a major hazard to the people working at DuPont,
14 right?
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 A. Not necessarily. I think hazard or
17 risk of exposure is one thing, but you, you need
18 the asbestos to be friable and loose to actually
19 inhale it and when it’s encased in insulation
20 and so forth, that doesn’t necessarily make it a
21 risk of presenting health effects just by its
22 very existence.
23 Q. Well, given the fact that you were
24 using 200,000 pounds of pipe insulation alone in
25 1964, it wasn’t difficult to visualize a real
0122
1 hazard existing, was there?
2 A. Well, I think that’s what the –
3 following Dr. Stopps report that’s essentially
4 what DuPont tried to do, is begin to ascertain
5 whether there was a risk, how it was being used
6 in the company and whether people were being
7 exposed in that way.
8 Q. All right. But it wasn’t
9 difficult to visualize given the amount of
10 asbestos that was being used that there was a
11 real health hazard at the time; true?
12 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form. If
13 you’re going to be quoting things from
14 documents, I’d like you to show the witness
15 the document.
16 MR. PLACITELLA: I’m just asking
17 questions.
18 MR. COTTEN: You’re quoting
19 something from a document and you know it.
20 MR. PLACITELLA: Well, you might
21 know better than me. I’m just asking what
22 she knows.
23 MR. COTTEN: I’m objecting to the
24 form of the question and ask that you
25 please supply the witness the document
0123
1 you’re reading from.
2 Q. In 1964, given the fact that
3 you’re using 200,000 pounds of pipe insulation
4 alone, it wasn’t hard to visualize a real health
5 hazard, was it?
6 A. I think that it’s difficult to say
7 there was an actual health hazard just by virtue
8 of using the material. It depends how it was
9 being used and whether people were being exposed
10 to airborne asbestos.
11 Q. Okay. I’m going to show you the
12 document you gave me this morning that you said
13 you read last night, or yesterday, dated
14 November 2nd, 1964 from a Dr…Stopps to the
15 Medical Director at DuPont. It’s already
16 marked.
17 Do you see the — do you need
18 glasses or something?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Okay, sorry.
21 A. I’ll get them out. I may have
22 left them in my room. I’ll do the best I can to
23 see it.
24 Q. See the second paragraph that I
25 have highlighted?
0124
1 A. The one beginning with “the DuPont
2 Company”?
3 Q. Yeah, the one that says how many
4 pounds of — how many pounds of pipe insulation
5 does it say DuPont was using per year as of
6 1964?
7 A. Um, roughly 200,000 pounds of pipe
8 insulation are used.
9 Q. And in light of the fact that
10 200,000 pounds of pipe insulation were being
11 used, what does Dr. Stopps say about whether you
12 can visualize a hazard? Can you read his
13 sentence?
14 A. He says it’s not difficult to
15 visualize a health hazard existing, just in this
16 one use of asbestos.
17 Q. Right. And one of the things that
18 he was worried about were people ripping out
19 asbestos as well, right?
20 A. Um…
21 Q. See the paragraph before it?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. All right. And one of the things
24 that came up that wasn’t related to all the
25 plant doctors was DuPont’s medical people were
0125
1 worried about getting sued because of people
2 getting sick from asbestos, right?
3 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
4 A. Um, I’m not really sure.
5 Q. Well, go to the next page. You
6 have to turn it over.
7 (Brief pause.)
8 Q. I highlighted it for you.
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. One of the things Dr. Stopps was
11 worried about in discussing with Dr. — the head
12 of the Medical Department was that, you know, we
13 might get sued for all this asbestos from people
14 who might get sick. Isn’t that essentially what
15 he says?
16 A. He, he –
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
18 A. He expresses that opinion, yes.
19 Q. Okay. And four years earlier when
20 DuPont got the Wagner study, they were told
21 specifically that people who worked in plants
22 like theirs doing maintenance could get
23 mesothelioma, weren’t they?
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
25 A. I would say that the Wagner study
0126
1 was not a plant — a chemical plant like DuPont.
2 Q. Well, DuPont, you told me earlier
3 in the deposition, did you not, operated a gun
4 powder plant and they sold that to, to, um…the
5 United States Government. Remember that?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Could you go to the chart that you
8 provided me and the Wagner study?
9 A. I don’t have copies here of –
10 Q. Here, I’ll make life easier for
11 you. Can you just hand that back to me, please?
12 A. (Handing.)
13 (Brief pause).
14 Q. You at DuPont ran an explosive
15 factory, right?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. And the explosives factory had
18 pipes with asbestos in it, correct?
19 A. I don’t know, uh…
20 Q. Can you look in the chart you gave
21 me from Dr. Wagner? Does he not indicate that
22 he diagnosed mesothelioma in somebody who
23 maintained pipes in an explosive factory?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Right. And he also talks about
0127
1 diagnosing mesothelioma in people who used –
2 who maintained asbestos in the railroad
3 industry, right?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. People who worked on boilers?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Right. Just like my client’s
8 father worked on boilers, right?
9 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
10 A. I don’t know whether the work
11 situation was the same at all.
12 Q. Okay. And these people who got
13 mesothelioma from maintaining pipes and working
14 on boilers, he doesn’t indicate they were
15 working in an asbestos mine, does he?
16 A. No.
17 Q. So four years before Dr. Stopps
18 went to see Dr. Selikoff at the conference,
19 DuPont had information in its possession
20 indicating that people who were working with
21 finished product or maintaining finished product
22 were diagnosed with mesothelioma; true?
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
24 A. Well, certainly one or two of these
25 individuals in this study are identified as that
0128
1 was their, their work.
2 Q. So the answer’s yes?
3 A. Yes, for individuals.
4 Q. Okay. Well, individuals when you
5 add them together turn into groups, right?
6 A. Um, not everyone in this study was
7 doing that kind of work, they were doing all
8 kinds of –
9 Q. Can you count how many of the
10 people in that study were only exposed to
11 asbestos by working in a mine and that is not
12 exposed environmentally or working on finished
13 product? You know what, we’ll do that later.
14 The Medical Director at DuPont
15 actually told the doctors in the plants that low
16 levels of exposure could cause mesothelioma,
17 didn’t he?
18 A. Uh, could you show me where he
19 said that?
20 Q. Do you recall ever reading that?
21 A. I do not recall the specifics; he
22 might have said that.
23 Q. Okay.
24
25 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-10 is marked
0129
1 for identification.)
2
3 Q. You have in front of you P-10
4 which is…a memo from Dr. Alonzo?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. To all plant physicians, correct?
7 A. Yes, that’s in…1966.
8 Q. Yes, ma’am, and does he say that
9 people were getting mesothelioma with relatively
10 minor exposure to asbestos?
11 (Brief pause.)
12 A. Yes, he talks about that and he
13 talks about the fact that there’s,
14 um…controversial articles on this subject
15 presenting both sides of the question, so he is
16 indicating that there is concern here, uh,
17 about — about it.
18 Q. Does the Medical Director –
19 A. And he says that –
20 Q. — for all of DuPont…
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Indicate to all the plant doctors
23 that relatively minor exposures can cause
24 mesothelioma?
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0130
1 A. He prefaces that with during the
2 past year, so he is indicating that there’s been
3 more information coming out.
4 Q. Does the Medical Director from
5 DuPont tell all the doctors in all the factories
6 that you can get mesothelioma from relatively
7 minor exposures?
8 A. He said that there are those
9 reports indicating minor exposures, yes.
10 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
11 Q. Now, you’re aware of something
12 known as a threshold limit value, correct?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. All right. And that’s something
15 that DuPont has been aware of from at least the
16 early 1950s, correct?
17 A. Well, I would say, um, some
18 scientists probably from the fifties certainly
19 from 1961 forward.
20 Q. Well, you’re aware of the Walsh
21 Healey Act?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. That was enacted in 1952 and
24 incorporated threshold limits into the act, did
25 it not?
0131
1 A. Uh, yes.
2 Q. And it was for anybody who had a
3 contract with the United States, correct?
4 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
5 Q. Correct?
6 A. Contract with the government, yes.
7 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
8 Q. Right, and you had contracts with
9 the government in 1952, did you not?
10 A. Uh, I don’t know the dates of
11 contracts.
12 Q. Well, you had –
13 A. DuPont had with the government.
14 Q. Well, they were your principal
15 customer from the early days of DuPont, weren’t
16 they?
17 A. I would say they were a customer.
18 Q. All right. So do you have any
19 question in your mind that the Walsh Healey Act
20 applied to DuPont in 1952?
21 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
22 A. I do not know. I would imagine if
23 they at that time had government contracts, then
24 it would have applied.
25 Q. Right. So the Walsh Healey Act
0132
1 you’re aware incorporated the concept of
2 threshold limit values for asbestos exposure,
3 did it not?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. As of 1952. Correct?
6 A. If that was the date.
7 Q. And, certainly, the scientists and
8 doctors at DuPont would have been aware of those
9 requirements; true?
10 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
11 A. Certainly certain scientists would
12 have been aware of the TLVs.
13 Q. And the scientists were also
14 aware, were they not, that the TLVs were
15 not…foolproof for preventing asbestos-related
16 disease; true?
17 A. Um, I don’t know that they would
18 call them foolproof. They certainly were to be
19 considered guidance levels and they were to be
20 considered protective of workers and that was a
21 long list of various chemicals and materials,
22 asbestos being one.
23 Q. And for asbestos the protection
24 was for asbestosis, not cancer, right?
25 A. Uh, I’m not –
0133
1 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
2 A. — sure that that’s exactly what it
3 said. I think the TLVs said protective of
4 health effects in general.
5 Q. Well, who’s Herbert Stokinger?
6 A. Herb Stokinger was — headed up
7 the TLV Committee.
8 Q. And he was somebody that DuPont
9 had a relationship with, correct?
10 A. Uh, individuals at DuPont knew
11 him.
12 Q. They corresponded with him.
13 A. That’s correct.
14 Q. They could call up and ask him
15 questions if they needed to.
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. And he worked for the U.S. Public
18 Health Service, did he not?
19 A. Um, I’m not exactly sure who he
20 worked for, but he was in government.
21 Q. He was a respected industrial
22 hygienist in his field; we agree?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. He published articles as a member
25 of the Public Health Service indicating that the
0134
1 TLV, threshold limit value, was not for cancer,
2 didn’t he?
3 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
4 A. I haven’t seen that article.
5
6 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-11 is marked
7 for identification.)
8
9 Q. You have before you P-11, which is
10 a…Volume 17 of September 1956 Industrial
11 Hygiene Quarterly.
12 Is this a publication that the
13 people at Haskell Laboratory would have been
14 received?
15 A. I do not know.
16 Q. Well, is the Industrial Hygiene
17 Quarterly a publication that was respected
18 amongst industrial hygienists?
19 A. I do not really know.
20 Q. You see the second page of this
21 article with a discussion by Mr. Stokinger?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. And it says he’s the Chief
24 Toxicological Services for the Public Health
25 Services. Do you see that?
0135
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. And this is the same Mr. Stokinger
3 that the people at Haskell Laboratory were on a
4 first-name basis with, correct?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. And can you flip over to the last
7 page? This is the guy, by the way, who was in
8 charge of the committee that set the limits for
9 asbestos, right?
10 A. Well, they set all the limits
11 for –
12 Q. Everything.
13 A. Many…chemicals.
14 Q. Right. And you see under the
15 section where it says “level of carcinogens”?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. He says “there is still one group
18 of substances for which some method should be
19 devised for establishing safe air standards, the
20 industrial carcinogens.”
21 Do you see that?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. And he said how should we
24 establish these and et cetera and so on, right?
25 A. Yes.
0136
1 Q. Now, in 1956 we know that asbestos
2 was already considered an industrial carcinogen,
3 correct?
4 A. Uh, yes.
5 Q. Okay. Now, even internally at
6 DuPont, it was acknowledged that DuPont did not
7 know what the safe limit was for asbestos in
8 terms of cancer, correct?
9 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
10 A. Um, I don’t know that anyone
11 expressed that, per se.
12 Q. Who’s Mr. Zapp? Is he a
13 physician?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Okay.
16 MR. PLACITELLA: Can we mark these
17 next?
18
19 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-12 is marked
20 for identification.)
21
22 Q. You have in front of you a memo
23 from Dr. Stopps to Dr. Zapp about a meeting that
24 occurred at DuPont, correct?
25 A. Yes.
0137
1 Q. And present at the meeting were
2 the two medical directors. Right?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. The medical directors for Chambers
5 Works in, New Jersey. Right?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. The director of the Haskell
8 Laboratory and a whole bunch of other DuPont
9 executives, right?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. And what they say, after they
12 they’ve discussed the problem, is that they’re
13 worried about asbestos and cancer because they
14 don’t have any data to figure out just what is
15 the safe level for asbestos exposure when it
16 comes to cancer, right?
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
18 A. Um…could you identify what
19 paragraph that is?
20 Q. I’m just trying to paraphrase so
21 we can move forward. The last paragraph of this
22 memo on the first page.
23 A. Yes, okay. The first sentence
24 says “because of the lack of data upon which to
25 base a safe concentration.”
0138
1 Q. Right. So even ten years after
2 Dr. — Mr. Stokinger published…to the world
3 that you can’t use the TLV for cancer, there is
4 meetings at DuPont talking about we still don’t
5 know what the safe level is for cancer, right?
6 A. Uh, that’s expressed in this memo,
7 yes.
8 Q. Okay.
9 A. And that has to do with not having
10 the specific data.
11 Q. Right. Because as of 1966, no one
12 still knows how much asbestos is takes to get
13 cancer. Right?
14 A. Yes, it’s certainly established
15 through many of the previous publications that
16 the lower the exposures the less likelihood of
17 cancer.
18 Q. Okay. And — but DuPont at least
19 did its best, at least these doctors, to prevent
20 asbestosis; do we agree?
21 A. I think they began at this point
22 in time to try to determine whether people were
23 being exposed. In fact, this meeting as far as
24 I know was really a meeting of — this document
25 that you just showed me was a meeting where they
0139
1 began to try to determine the kinds of levels
2 people might be exposed to. That was part of
3 the problem up to this point.
4 Q. I’m not quarreling with you,
5 ma’am.
6 A. Yeah.
7 Q. What I’m saying is that these
8 doctors who actually cared about the workers –
9 we agree with that, right?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. Okay, we’re on the same page.
12 — they at least tried to come up
13 with a level to prevent people from getting
14 asbestosis, right?
15 A. That was the goal, yes.
16 Q. Right. And they actually came up
17 with a level that was ten times less than the
18 ACGIH came up with for preventing asbestosis,
19 correct?
20 A. That was DuPont in general; they
21 decided and, certainly, it was put out by the
22 Construction Division of tenfold less than the
23 TLV at the time.
24 Q. Right. And the Construction
25 Division, just so we’re clear, is — was an arm
0140
1 of DuPont that didn’t necessarily work just in
2 DuPont facilities, it would go out and do
3 construction in industrial facilities, correct?
4 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
5 A. Um, I think at the time they were
6 primarily DuPont facilities, they were, they
7 were in charge of building new facilities and
8 doing any other kind of construction or
9 remodeling –
10 Q. Right.
11 A. — in DuPont facilities.
12 Q. These people would be the people
13 who as part of their job would apply and remove
14 asbestos-containing products.
15 A. That would have been the place
16 where you would have found most asbestos
17 handling in the company, yes.
18 Q. And what DuPont says, especially
19 for you people who are applying it or removing
20 it, or people who are working for you in the
21 vicinity, we’re going to put a level ten times
22 less than the ACGIH…
23 A. That’s correct.
24 Q. Recommends, right. And even
25 though it may not prevent cancer, at least it
0141
1 will prevent asbestosis, right?
2 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
3 A. Well, I don’t know whether they were
4 looking at it not being able to prevent cancer
5 that way, but they were certainly looking for a
6 way to make the restrictions much greater than
7 they were than through the TLVs.
8 Q. Well, they didn’t know what level
9 would prevent cancer; that’s what we found out
10 in a prior document, right?
11 A. Right. Because the data was not
12 available.
13 Q. So at least in terms of preventing
14 asbestosis, they were going to do their darndest
15 to keep the levels as low as possible; true?
16 A. That’s correct.
17 Q. Okay. Now, these efforts, it was
18 known generally to industrial hygienists how to
19 prevent exposure to industrial dusts, including
20 asbestos; true?
21 A. Yes, in general industrial
22 hygienists were in charge of seeing to it that
23 processes were ventilated and people wore
24 respiratory protection, that kind of thing.
25 Q. And in your courses that you took
0142
1 and in your work as an industrial hygienist,
2 there are basic principles of worker protection
3 to prevent exposure to industrial dusts that are
4 recognized by industrial hygienists, correct?
5 A. Correct.
6 Q. Okay. And do you recognize the
7 principle that a company should know about the
8 potential dangers associated with the use of a
9 product on it premises?
10 A. Yes –
11 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
12 A. — because you cannot prevent
13 exposure without knowing what those substances
14 are.
15 Q. Right, and how far back does that
16 principle date?
17 A. I don’t know exactly how far back.
18 Certainly DuPont recognized, for instance, when
19 it had explosive dusts that, you know, so do you
20 say that was — that was back in the mid-1800s.
21 Q. Okay. Do you agree with the
22 principle as an industrial hygienist that a
23 company should never withhold information about
24 the dangers associated with the use of the
25 products on its premises?
0143
1 A. The company should not withhold…
2 Q. Yes, ma’am.
3 A. That’s your question?
4 Q. Yes, ma’am.
5 A. Yes, I, I believe that
6 that’s…um, a very good concept for industrial
7 hygienists in the company.
8 Q. And how far back does that
9 principle go?
10 A. Um, I don’t know because I know
11 that…many, many years ago companies sort of
12 took a paternalistic viewpoint of things and did
13 not get into the details of what hazards were,
14 um, and eventually it developed into the concept
15 that the worker needed to know exactly what the
16 hazards are and that’s certainly the principle
17 we use today, but how that developed and a time
18 frame I don’t know.
19 Q. It certainly predated 1960; will
20 we agree with that?
21 A. I don’t know.
22 Q. Okay. Is it a basic principle of
23 industrial hygiene in terms of worker protection
24 to attempt to anticipate potential dangers that
25 a worker may encounter as part of his or her
0144
1 job?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Okay. And does the anticipation
4 of the potential danger include research into
5 the available resources that would provide
6 background information on the danger?
7 A. Yes. It’s, uh, sort of a
8 combination of researching, observing how the
9 worker goes about doing their job. I mean, this
10 is from an industrial hygienist standpoint.
11 Q. Um-hum.
12 A. You would research it, you would
13 evaluate how the worker is doing the job in
14 handling the material –
15 Q. Right.
16 A. — so you would try to identify
17 what dangers could come out of that.
18 Q. Right, that was my — you
19 anticipated my next question, which is –
20 A. Well, it’s a general…
21 Q. Right.
22 A. What you do as an industrial
23 hygienist, you go in and you…you, you research
24 the background of the material and then you
25 evaluate what’s going on.
0145
1 Q. And that, for example — in other
2 words, as part of the evaluation of a potential
3 danger concerning safety, for instance, of
4 asbestos, was it a recognized principle of
5 industrial hygiene that you had to first
6 determine whether an exposure actually exists?
7 A. That’s right.
8 Q. Okay. And the –
9 A. Or a potential exposure –
10 Q. Correct.
11 A. — because it may not be going on
12 at the time you’re looking.
13 Q. And in the case of asbestos, that
14 evaluation would be air monitoring.
15 A. That would be part of it, yes.
16 Q. Okay, and what would be the other
17 part?
18 A. Just the typ — in general
19 watching how the individual would do their work.
20 Q. Okay. And the principle of air
21 monitoring for asbestos-containing dust, that
22 goes back at least to the 1940s; we agree?
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
24 A. Um, the concept that you could
25 evaluate total dust and as a part of that there
0146
1 would be asbestos dust goes back that early, but
2 the actual TLV at that time was five million
3 particles per cubic foot of which that could be
4 — part of that would be –
5 Q. Part of it.
6 A. Asbestos, but there was no really
7 good way of picking out how much asbestos was in
8 the air until actually the late 1960s –
9 Q. Okay.
10 A. — when they developed a good
11 method to do that.
12 Q. I’m not quarreling with you. What
13 I’m saying is that the principle of air
14 monitoring for asbestos-containing dust…
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Dated back to the 1940s at least.
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Okay. And it was known in the
19 1940s that in order to assess whether a hazard
20 exists when working with asbestos-containing
21 products that air monitoring needed to be done;
22 true?
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
24 A. Not necessarily. I think that sort
25 of became a matter of, uh — you could do area
0147
1 monitoring versus personal monitoring. You
2 might also just generally know if you’ve got a
3 process and you’ve monitored it once or twice
4 and you’ve never seen any amount of dust, it
5 would not do continual monitoring or anything
6 like that. Because generally if there was not a
7 lot of dust in a process, the monitoring did not
8 go on.
9 Q. But if you could see dust in the
10 air…testing was warranted. Is that a
11 generalized principle recognized?
12 A. Um…
13 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
14 A. I don’t really know.
15 Q. Okay.
16 A. I think it just depends on what
17 was being handled there.
18 Q. Five million particles per cubic
19 foot. Of dust…
20 A. That’s a lot of dust.
21 Q. Including asbestos, okay. Can you
22 see five million particles per cubic foot?
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
24 A. Uh, as an inhalation toxicologist I
25 would say probably, uh, because I know that
0148
1 we’ve created atmospheres in inhalation chambers
2 and I’ve watched rats and watched the chambers.
3 Q. Um-hum.
4 A. And that five million particles
5 would be something like, uh, what we say is
6 twenty-four…fibers per cubic centimeter, which
7 is not very big, so I would say that kind of
8 level it would be some visible dust.
9 Q. But barely.
10 A. Yeah, you know, you’re, you’re
11 looking at it and saying it looks kind of
12 cloudy.
13 Q. Right. It would really depend on
14 the lighting situation and the circumstances,
15 correct?
16 A. Probably.
17 Q. Right.
18 A. And depends on, you know, what the
19 dust is like and –
20 Q. Right.
21 A. — is it big fibers and little
22 particles and that kind of thing.
23 Q. For example, you’ve seen
24 industrial hygiene literature, have you not,
25 that said that five million particles per cubic
0149
1 foot is not visible or barely visible.
2 A. Correct, and you’re right, it
3 depends on whether you can see light on it and
4 that kind of thing.
5 Q. So if you have a lot of light on
6 it you might see it; if you don’t have a lot of
7 light, you may not.
8 A. Depends on the situation and what
9 kind of dust you’re dealing with.
10 Q. So was it a recognized principle
11 of industrial hygiene that if you could actually
12 see dust, that was an indication of a potential
13 hazard.
14 A. Uh, I would say that if you could
15 see a lot of dust for a long period of time, it
16 would be the potential of a hazard.
17 Q. And that principle was known back
18 in the 1940s; true?
19 A. Again, I, I don’t want to be
20 quoted on a date for when some principle was
21 known.
22 Q. Well, it was certainly before
23 1960. Can we agree with that?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. And the proper procedures to
0150
1 undertake when you saw dust, especially dust
2 that could contain a toxic dust, was to do air
3 monitoring. Everybody knew that, correct?
4 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
5 A. Um, I’m not sure that that was
6 necessarily true, that monitoring was done.
7 Q. Well –
8 A. Certainly not at that point in
9 time was a lot of dust monitoring done.
10 Q. Well, Dr. Merewether, he did dust
11 monitoring in 1930, correct?
12 A. Um, I can’t really recall his dust
13 monitoring at that time.
14 Q. Isn’t that what he did in his
15 report? He looked at the various processes and
16 one of the things he did is he looked at the
17 monitoring that was done and made some –
18 A. I –
19 Q. — estimations about how to
20 protect people?
21 A. I’m sorry, I do not remember him
22 setting up specific dust monitoring levels in
23 his report.
24 Q. No problem.
25 A. He may have; I don’t know.
0151
1 Q. It’s not a problem. The methods
2 of preventing exposure to asbestos-containing
3 dust, they were known at least from the time
4 that Dr. Merewether issued his report in 1930;
5 true?
6 A. Methods for exposure to dust in
7 general were known.
8 Q. Right. But he was –
9 A. Let me say that, and asbestos and
10 mineral dust and all those kinds of things would
11 be included in the concepts of industrial
12 hygiene.
13 Q. Okay.
14 A. I would say that there was just
15 not a lot of attention paid to asbestos outside
16 of the general asbestos industry as we have
17 talked about before. It was not considered
18 something specific you had to monitor for…in a
19 chemical plant.
20 Q. Okay, I’m not sure we’re on the
21 same page.
22 I’m saying the methods for
23 preventing exposure to asbestos-containing dust
24 from an industrial hygiene perspective were
25 known at least by the time Dr. Merewether issued
0152
1 his report; true?
2 A. If you are speaking about methods
3 like engineering controls, dust masks, things
4 like that, they go back a long time, but I do
5 not know when the specific methodology would
6 have been in place or known. I don’t want to
7 say 1935 for sure.
8 Q. Okay.
9 MR. PLACITELLA: Let’s mark these.
10
11 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-13 is marked
12 for identification.)
13
14 Q. You have in front of you P-13,
15 which I believe is the study that you referred
16 me to early on in your deposition by Dr.
17 Merewether, correct?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. And you’re familiar with this
20 study, correct?
21 A. I have read the report, yes.
22 Q. And you told me that it more
23 likely than not the people at DuPont were also
24 familiar with this study at the time it was
25 published, correct?
0153
1 A. Um –
2 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
3 A. — that there would have been some
4 individuals who were aware of this study.
5 Q. Those individuals whose principal
6 job it would be to protect the health and safety
7 of workers at DuPont, correct?
8 A. Um, I would say that people like
9 people in the medical group and people at
10 Haskell Laboratory who would have had a
11 background, an educational background, in
12 toxicology or medicine may have seen this study.
13 Q. Okay. And probably would have
14 seen it is my question.
15 A. Um, whether they saw the study or
16 just heard about it I don’t know.
17 Q. Okay.
18 A. I can’t speak to that.
19 Q. All right. It was certainly
20 available to them.
21 A. Yes –
22 Q. Okay.
23 A. — through the published
24 literature.
25 Q. Okay. This is the study that you
0154
1 brought up to me earlier this morning, correct?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Okay. And this study is about the
4 use of asbestos and asbestos-containing products
5 in the workplace, correct?
6 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
7 A. Um, it was specifically a study, I
8 believe, of textile workers in England.
9 Q. Well, it discussed — it was
10 really what was needed to prevent exposure not
11 just in textile plants, but generally within
12 Great Britain, although the readings that were
13 done were done in a textile factory.
14 Would you agree with that?
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 A. Okay. The readings were from, uh,
17 textile workers.
18 Q. Okay. And what I mean by that
19 is…
20 A. And the title of the article is
21 about dust suppression.
22 Q. Right.
23 A. So it’s, um…
24 Q. And if –
25 A. Keeping down the dusts and methods
0155
1 and that.
2 Q. Correct. And if you go to page
3 nineteen…
4 A. Okay.
5 Q. See where it says asbestos yarn?
6 Number A? Up top, ma’am.
7 (Brief pause.)
8 Q. It’s the second full paragraph.
9 A. “Asbestos yarn is woven into
10 cloth”?
11 Q. Right. I’m just going through
12 here quickly and the products that are being
13 addressed by Dr. Merewether aren’t just raw
14 asbestos, he talks about asbestos yarn, correct?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. B, asbestos millboard, correct?
17 A. Correct.
18 Q. That’s a finished product, right?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Insulation materials like
21 magnesia, correct?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. Brake and clutch pads?
24 A. Okay.
25 Q. Electrodes for welding?
0156
1 A. Okay.
2 Q. And…could you flip to page
3 twenty-seven?
4 A. Okay.
5 Q. He has a whole section on
6 insulation material, right?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. That’s the stuff that goes on the
9 pipes, right?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. That’s the stuff that they put
12 200,000 pounds a year in in DuPont. Right?
13 A. Yes.
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 Q. And it talks about the kinds of
16 exposures you can get from working with sheets
17 of asbestos and insulation. Correct?
18 A. Well –
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. — it talks about a lot of different
21 things here, so, I mean…
22 Q. And one of the things he’s
23 concerned about is the sawing of the products,
24 right?
25 A. That’s one of the number of things
0157
1 he talks about, the…
2 Q. Right.
3 A. Feeding the fiberized asbestos.
4 Q. Right. And that’s things that you
5 actually did at the shops at DuPont. You had a
6 specific insulation shop where they would cut
7 the asbestos insulation, right?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. Okay. So we know now that Dr.
10 Merewether was addressing back in 1930 the
11 exposures that would happen from the cutting of
12 asbestos insulation, right?
13 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
14 A. I think that was one of the things
15 that –
16 Q. Yeah.
17 A. — he observed…
18 Q. Yes, ma’am.
19 A. Happening.
20 Q. And if you flip to page
21 thirty-one, Dr. Merewether gives his…summary
22 and recommendations. See that?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. And he talks about the methods of
25 control that were recognized as of 1930, does he
0158
1 not?
2 A. Just give me a second here to read
3 it.
4 Q. Yes, ma’am.
5 (Brief pause.)
6 Q. It’s down on the bottom.
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. Okay. And what he says is these
9 were recognized as of 1930, application of
10 exhaust ventilation?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Yes. Substitution? Methods,
13 correct?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Enclosures?
16 A. That was substitution of
17 mechanical for hand methods.
18 Q. Wet. Wet methods.
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. And one of his main
21 recommendations was that the worker be educated
22 to a sane appreciation of the risk that they
23 would encounter, right?
24 A. I’m sorry, I don’t see that.
25 Q. Okay. See if I can find it.
0159
1 (Brief pause.)
2 Q. Rather than not belabor it, I’ll
3 go back during a break and I’ll pull it out for
4 you.
5 A. Okay.
6 Q. Do you recollect from reading this
7 article that Dr. — maybe I can shortcut it –
8 that Dr. Merewether said that the workers should
9 be educated and trained about the dangers they
10 were facing in terms of asbestos-containing
11 dust?
12 A. Um, I can’t really recall
13 specifics from this paper.
14 Q. Okay. You know what, I’ll find it
15 for you and we’ll come back it to, okay?
16 A. That would be fine.
17 Q. All right. Now, at DuPont you
18 used many of these very same methods, did you
19 not?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. You used wet-down procedures.
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. You, you made sure there was no
24 asbestos-containing dust left on equipment. At
25 least in principle.
0160
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. There was hooded areas in some
3 places?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. Vacuums were used?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. In fact, your rules were that you
8 weren’t even allowed to sweep up the
9 asbestos-containing products, you had to vacuum
10 up the dust, right?
11 A. I think that rule was eventually
12 put into place when they recognized that
13 asbestos was potentially a hazard.
14 Q. Okay. And one of the things that,
15 um…well, let me ask you the question this way.
16 Is it a recognized principle of
17 industrial hygiene that if you don’t have to be
18 in the area where there’s a hazardous industrial
19 dust, you segregate those operations from other
20 operations?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. And how long back about did that
23 principle date?
24 A. I don’t know.
25 Q. At least from the time of
0161
1 Merewether?
2 A. I honestly don’t know. I know –
3 Q. Would you agree it was certainly
4 before –
5 A. I can say to you that I know
6 DuPont used that kind of thing in terms of
7 explosives. Certainly, people — you didn’t
8 have a lot of people standing around
9 watching…those kinds of hazardous product –
10 Q. Okay.
11 A. Um, processes, but the principle
12 as an industrial hygiene principle I can’t give
13 you a date.
14 Q. It certainly predated 1960; would
15 you agree with that?
16 A. I would say most probably.
17 Q. As an industrial
18 hygiene…hygienist, do you recognize the
19 principle of supplying changing rooms as a way
20 to prevent take-home exposure to toxins that are
21 generated in the workplace?
22 A. I recognize it as a, as something
23 that’s been done in the probably more recent
24 past and it depended on certain situations, yes.
25 Q. Well, that certainly predated
0162
1 1960.
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. We agree? And, in fact, that’s
4 something that DuPont was doing in its plants
5 probably in the forties for certain industrial
6 toxins; true?
7 A. I, I know that rules were
8 different in different places for different
9 toxins. I can’t give you a date. I don’t know.
10 Q. Well, in the 1930s DuPont had
11 actually estimated that to protect…families
12 from the take-home of toxins on work clothes, it
13 would cost about three cents a day, right?
14 A. I don’t know; is there a document
15 indicating that?
16 Q. Okay.
17 MR. PLACITELLA: Mark these, please.
18
19 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-14 is marked
20 for identification.)
21
22 Q. You have in front of you…a
23 document that was distributed to the medical
24 advisory committee of the American Petroleum
25 Institute dated January 28th, 1948.
0163
1 Do you see that?
2 A. I see that.
3 Q. And you were a member at that
4 time, correct?
5 A. Um, that’s my understanding, yes.
6 Q. Okay. And this document is
7 authored by Roy Bonsib who was an industrial
8 hygienist at Standard Oil of New Jersey,
9 correct?
10 A. Yes, that’s what it indicates.
11 Q. And it’s entitled “Industrial Work
12 Clothes: Their Provision And Laundering.” Do
13 you see that?
14 A. Yes.
15 MR. COTTEN: Counsel, excuse me for
16 interrupting.
17 MR. PLACITELLA: Sure.
18 MR. COTTEN: I need to interject an
19 objection to your question about the
20 membership. I can see now the title of
21 this document talks about members of the
22 Advisory Committee, I’m going to lodge a
23 form objection to your question about you
24 were a member at that time.
25 MR. PLACITELLA: That’s fine, I’ll
0164
1 proof it in a different way later on, I’m
2 just trying to move through it.
3 Q. Could you go to the first page of
4 the document? Second full paragraph.
5 Do you see that Mr. Bonsib
6 actually visited DuPont and, in particular, the
7 Deep Water plant to see what they were doing?
8 A. Are you — you’re not talking
9 paragraph two where he says they –
10 Q. Yeah, where he said “appropriate
11 work clothes”?
12 A. Okay, okay. And he visited
13 DuPont.
14 Q. Right. It says “properly fitted
15 and maintained, play a prominent part in an
16 industrial worker’s health and efficiency.”
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. ”This is especially true when
19 persons are working with more or less toxic or
20 carcinogenic materials.”
21 Do you recall that?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. And this is a point in time when
24 you told me before asbestos was recognized as
25 carcinogenic based upon the chart we went
0165
1 through early in the deposition; remember?
2 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
3 A. Again, I will say even though DuPont
4 recognized asbestos…health hazards, they
5 certainly did not consider health hazards in the
6 way they were using them.
7 Q. Okay, we’ll get to that later.
8 This talks about preventing people from bringing
9 home cancer-causing substances on their clothing
10 to their families, does it not?
11 A. Toxic or carcinogenic –
12 Q. Right.
13 A. — yes.
14 Q. Toxic or carcinogenic, okay. And
15 he says two paragraphs down that he went and
16 visited the Chambers Works plant at Deep Water.
17 Correct?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. There’s no question at this point
20 in time that DuPont is exchanging information
21 with other members of API on how to protect
22 people’s families, is there?
23 A. Well, they are certainly talking,
24 uh, with others about their protective clothing
25 policies.
0166
1 Q. Right. And the next page has a
2 title talking about Chambers Works, right?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. And it says all the operators and
5 maintenance people are given special clothing,
6 right?
7 A. Give me a chance to read this.
8 Q. Yes, ma’am.
9 (Brief pause.)
10 A. Okay.
11 Q. It says “all operators and
12 maintenance” people, right?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. It doesn’t say some, it says
15 everybody. Right?
16 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
17 Q. Am I correct?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Okay. And if you flip over to
20 page six, the bottom of the page…see that?
21 Mr. W.H. Kite? All the way at the bottom.
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. He was a foreman at the Chamber
24 Works facility?
25 A. At the laundry.
0167
1 Q. All right. And he says “that the
2 total cost, including direct and indirect
3 charges, was about three cents per pound” per
4 day “of dry clothes,” right?
5 A. He says “three cents per pound of
6 dry clothes.”
7 Q. All right. So for about three
8 cents a day they estimated that you could
9 protect the families of workers from
10 carcinogenic materials brought home on clothing,
11 right?
12 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
13 A. You know, I didn’t see anywhere
14 mentioning that the purposes here were
15 protecting families of workers.
16 Q. Well, why don’t you want the
17 people to bring home toxins and carcinogenic
18 material on their clothes?
19 A. Well, certainly from what we know
20 today, I would say that’s true. I’m not sure
21 there was any reason at that time to believe
22 that people were carrying all this home. What
23 they were doing was trying to keep, uh, any
24 toxic materials, um…
25 Q. Right.
0168
1 A. Anything that the workers got on
2 them, they…
3 Q. Wanted to keep it in the plant?
4 A. Wanted to keep it right there and
5 they laundered the clothes for the workers.
6 Q. Right.
7 A. So it wasn’t being, you know,
8 taken out of, of the plant and the workers were
9 basically being supplied clothing by the plant.
10 Q. For three cents a day the workers
11 would have not brought toxic, contaminated
12 clothing home, correct?
13 A. For those who were handling, as it
14 says, toxic or carcinogenic materials –
15 Q. Right.
16 A. — and at that time, you know,
17 there, there had to be some sort of recognition
18 that what they were doing would have
19 presented…
20 Q. Well, ma’am, you were –
21 A. The toxic or carcinogenic –
22 Q. — doing this for all operators
23 and maintenance people, right?
24 MR. COTTEN: Please let her finish.
25 MR. PLACITELLA: Excuse me?
0169
1 A. Okay, it says “all operators” and it
2 also says something about where — if they’re
3 working with more or less toxic or carcinogenic
4 materials, then it says all operators, but I
5 think that…the focus was really on the
6 chemical toxins at that time.
7 Q. Okay. There’s no doubt in your
8 mind, ma’am, that as of 1945 asbestos was
9 recognized as a carcinogen, is there?
10 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
11 A. It was recognized as a carcinogen,
12 but it was not recognized as having high enough
13 exposures or potential exposures at DuPont.
14 Q. All right, we’ll get to that
15 later. We’ll let somebody else decide that.
16 For three cents per day, DuPont
17 could have prevented Mr. Scarbongia from
18 bringing asbestos-laden clothing home to his
19 family; true?
20 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
21 Q. According to this document.
22 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
23 A. I have no idea whether or not he
24 wore protective clothing or not. Or there was
25 any perceived need where he was working to have
0170
1 people wear clothing.
2 Q. For three cents per day, if DuPont
3 wanted to, they could have given Mr. Scarbongia
4 the opportunity not to bring his work clothes
5 home to his family. Right?
6 A. Um…
7 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
8 A. That is certainly the number that is
9 quoted in this article as to what it cost at
10 Chambers Works.
11 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Off the video
12 record at 2:03.
13
14 (Whereupon, an off-the-record
15 discussion takes place.)
16
17 (Brief interruption.)
18
19 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Book the video
20 record at 2:05.
21 Q. As a principle of industrial
22 hygiene, do you recognize the use of respiratory
23 protection as a way of preventing exposure to
24 asbestos-containing dust?
25 A. As a way to prevent exposure to
0171
1 many kinds of dusts, yes.
2 Q. Including asbestos.
3 A. Including asbestos.
4 Q. How far back does that principle
5 go?
6 A. Again, I can’t state a specific
7 start date to that –
8 Q. Would you agree –
9 A. Concept.
10 Q. — it dates back prior to 1960?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Wasn’t it a rule within DuPont
13 that you could not be anywhere near asbestos
14 without a respirator?
15 A. I don’t recall seeing that
16 particular rule, that you couldn’t be near it.
17 Q. Well, you couldn’t work with
18 asbestos or be in its presence without a
19 respirator.
20 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
21 A. Um, certainly after the asbestos
22 hazards were recognized, the concept was that
23 you had to wear a respirator, particularly in
24 any kind of situation where dust created. There
25 was certainly asbestos around pipes and that
0172
1 kind of thing and an individual just walking
2 through the plant would not have been required
3 to have a respirator, it would be people working
4 with the substance.
5 Q. So was it a rule because of the
6 toxicity of asbestos that working with any type
7 of asbestos could not be done without a mask?
8 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
9 A. Um, I, I still do not know that it
10 was, like, working with any type of asbestos. I
11 think, again, it had to be a situation where you
12 were creating airborne asbestos.
13 Q. Okay –
14 A. That would require a respirator
15 and, again, that would have had a lot of to do
16 with people working…um, once they knew about
17 exposures, anyone working at or above, I think
18 the action level was, like, half of the TLV.
19 MR. PLACITELLA: Could you mark
20 that, please?
21
22 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-15 is marked
23 for identification.)
24
25 Q. You have in front of you Exhibit
0173
1 15. This is a document received by the Haskell
2 Laboratory, correct?
3 A. Um, Dr. Clayton would have
4 received it.
5 Q. Yes. He worked for the Haskell
6 Laboratory?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. And the subject is toxicity of
9 asbestos?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. And paragraph one says, does it
12 not, “work with any type of asbestos has been
13 halted until we have obtained approved face
14 masks for filtering asbestos dust,” correct?
15 A. Yes, that’s what it says.
16 Q. Okay.
17 A. And this, of course, was in a time
18 frame when the specific exposures, um, were
19 still being evaluated. So at that point it was
20 best to…
21 Q. Did –
22 A. Not have anyone work with the
23 asbestos until they knew that the dust masks to
24 prevent exposures were actually filtering out
25 the asbestos.
0174
1 Q. Right. Well, turns out that the
2 dust masks you were using actually didn’t keep
3 out the asbestos, didn’t it?
4 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
5 A. Um, I don’t know.
6 Q. Well, were you ever notified by 3M
7 that you couldn’t use those masks for asbestos?
8 A. Um…
9 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
10 A. I would say that probably some of
11 the early masks were not preventative for
12 asbestos dust and, certainly, the whole science
13 of creating masks for things like asbestos
14 developed and it was, um, something of a problem
15 for the company to find masks that really would
16 keep out asbestos dust.
17 I read some articles about that,
18 you know, trying to find the appropriate
19 protective equipment.
20 Q. Well, even ten years later you
21 were still using masks that weren’t keeping out
22 the asbestos, right?
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
24 A. I don’t know about timing.
25 Q. Okay. Did you use the Dustfoe 66
0175
1 as a mask to prevent exposure to asbestos?
2 MR. COTTEN: Objection –
3 A. I have no knowledge of who was using
4 what mask.
5 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
6
7 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-16 is marked
8 for identification.)
9
10 Q. You have in front of you P-16
11 which is a May 6, ’75 memo relating to asbestos
12 dust. Do you see that?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. Does it say that you are using a
15 Dustfoe 66 mask as it relates to asbestos?
16 A. It says that they just specified
17 the use of that mask, yes.
18 Q. Does it also say that that will –
19 that is not approved by OSHA or NIOSH and that
20 you shouldn’t use it anymore?
21 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
22 A. Uh, it says that we recommend using
23 a different one. It’s not clear to me from this
24 how long or if they were actually using that
25 mask they had designated it to use.
0176
1 Q. Okay. Now…
2 A. And that — well, this –
3 Q. How –
4 A. Excuse me, but –
5 Q. Go ahead.
6 A. — it does say that NIOSH criteria
7 document will result in MSA withdrawing asbestos
8 dust approval for their…Dustface or, whatever,
9 66 filter mask.
10 Q. All right.
11 A. And because it had been, I guess,
12 at that point approved, then DuPont had
13 designated it for use, but now they were turning
14 around and saying, oh, uh, we think you should
15 use something else.
16 Q. How long after they were told
17 specifically it didn’t protect for asbestos did
18 they continue to use these masks in the plants?
19 A. I –
20 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
21 A. I do not know.
22 Q. Okay. When did DuPont suspend the
23 rule that you can’t work around asbestos without
24 a mask?
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0177
1 A. I don’t know that they’ve
2 ever…suspended that rule.
3 Q. Okay.
4 A. Of that type.
5 Q. Did industrial hygiene principles
6 recognize that any exposure to human carcinogens
7 should be eliminated whenever possible?
8 A. I think that’s been a general
9 principle, um, to make exposures to carcinogens
10 as low as possible.
11 Q. And –
12 A. I don’t think anyone’s ever said
13 totally eliminate exposures.
14 Q. Well, it was DuPont’s policy to
15 use alternates to carcinogens whenever possible,
16 correct?
17 A. That’s correct.
18 Q. Okay. And how far back did that
19 policy go?
20 A. I don’t know timing.
21 Q. How far back did the industrial
22 hygiene principle go that says don’t use
23 carcinogens if you can avoid it?
24 A. I really don’t know.
25 Q. In 1948 the American Petroleum
0178
1 Institute of which you were a member actually
2 discussed eliminating all exposure to asbestos
3 because it caused cancer, didn’t it?
4 A. I don’t know what the American
5 Petroleum Institute did.
6 Q. Well, Dr. Heuper in 1948, how many
7 years was he out of DuPont?
8 A. I think he left in the thirties.
9 Q. Okay. And he actually made a
10 presentation in 1948 that the American Petroleum
11 Institute was at where he said don’t use any
12 more asbestos if you can avoid it because it
13 causes cancer, right?
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 A. I don’t know; I haven’t seen that.
16
17 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-17 is marked
18 for identification.)
19
20 Q. Have you ever heard of something
21 known as the Ethel Corporation as it relates to
22 DuPont?
23 A. I’ve heard of Ethel Corporation,
24 but I don’t know any relationship to DuPont.
25 Q. You don’t have — do you have any
0179
1 knowledge about the work done by Dr. Kehoe for
2 the Ethel Corporation?
3 A. No, I don’t.
4 Q. Okay. You have in front of you
5 the minutes of the Subcommittee On
6 Carcinogenicity on November 11th, 1948, correct?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. If you hand me your copy I’ll make
9 life easier.
10 A. (Handing).
11 (Brief pause.)
12 Q. In front of you there’s a
13 memorandum from November 22nd, 1948 about a
14 paper presented by Dr. Heuper, correct?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. And it indicates — it was talking
17 about prevention and control of industrial
18 cancer?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. And it was presented at the APHA.
21 Do you see that?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. That’s the American Public Health
24 Association. Do you know them?
25 A. I’ve heard of them.
0180
1 Q. Respected organization?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Members of the Haskell Laboratory
4 were also members of the American Public Health
5 Association at this time?
6 A. Um, I don’t know about specific
7 membership. It would not surprise me if some
8 were.
9 Q. Would you believe — would you say
10 it was more likely than not that people from the
11 Haskell Laboratory attended the meetings of the
12 American Public Health Association?
13 A. Um…
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 A. I have no idea.
16 Q. Okay. And this talks about the
17 paper provided by Dr. Heuper. Do you see that?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. The former pathologist for the
20 DuPont Corporation, correct?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. And he says — what’s related
23 here, rather, is that Dr. Heuper reported that
24 recent evidence has pointed to a definite
25 correlation between cancer incidents and
0181
1 exposures to, among other things, asbestos,
2 right?
3 A. I’m taking time to read it. Yes,
4 he includes asbestos in the list, yes.
5 Q. And on the second page they talk
6 about ways to protect people. Right?
7 A. Uh, could you give me a –
8 Q. Sure.
9 A. — chance to read…
10 Q. Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry.
11 (Extended pause.)
12 A. Okay, I’ve read the…paper you’ve
13 handed to me.
14 Q. All right. And at this point in
15 time, Dr. Hueper was the Chief Environmental
16 Cancer Section of the National Cancer Institute,
17 right?
18 A. Um…does — I don’t see that in
19 this paper.
20 Q. Right on the top page — right in
21 the top paragraph.
22 A. Okay, yes.
23 Q. And what Dr. Hueper is concerned
24 about is the link between the environment and
25 cancer, right?
0182
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. And one of the principal things
3 he’s worried about, because of the definite
4 correlation, is asbestos, right?
5 A. That’s one of the things he
6 mentions, yes.
7 Q. Right. And then he makes
8 recommendations about how to prevent people from
9 getting cancer from asbestos and other
10 carcinogenic materials, right?
11 A. Well, he, he talks about the whole
12 process.
13 Q. Right.
14 A. How you need to evaluate and look
15 at this…
16 Q. Right.
17 A. He says here about if you have
18 evidence pointing in an unusual incidence of
19 cancer, so he’s saying here that you need to
20 look at your records and see if you have a high
21 incidence or an unusual incidence of cancer and
22 from the plant records, then you should
23 investigate what those people have been working
24 with.
25 Q. Okay. And he says one of the
0183
1 things to stop people from getting cancer is to
2 eliminate the exposure completely, right?
3 A. Uh, he says minimize the exposure.
4 Q. Doesn’t he say complete
5 elimination of the exposure? Paragraph 5a.
6 A. Well, he says “aim at the complete
7 elimination of the exposure or minimize the
8 exposure.”
9 Q. Right.
10 A. Et cetera.
11 Q. But the first thing he puts on is
12 get rid of exposure altogether, right?
13 A. Through technical controls is what
14 he says.
15 Q. Right. And –
16 A. That would be your engineering,
17 ventilation, that kind of thing.
18 Q. Right, all those things we’ve
19 discussed before.
20 A. That’s always the initial
21 principle of industrial hygiene; you don’t try
22 to protect workers by giving them dust masks,
23 you try first to eliminate the exposures to
24 begin with.
25 Q. Right. Especially if it can
0184
1 potentially cause cancer. Right?
2 A. Any kind of health effect I would
3 say.
4 Q. Cancer in particular, we really
5 worry about that, don’t we?
6 A. Well, from am industrial –
7 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
8 A. — hygiene standpoint that’s…
9 Q. Right.
10 A. The general principle.
11 Q. And what he says is, in addition,
12 make sure you provide locker facilities. Right?
13 So people don’t bring this stuff home to their
14 families.
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 A. It says “adequate sanitary
17 facilities.” He doesn’t follow it up by saying
18 to keep people from taking it home.
19 Q. Okay, so — it says “expansion of
20 locker facilities,” right?
21 A. Um-hum.
22 Q. This is the same year that the API
23 published their…report where they reported
24 that DuPont was protecting its workers for three
25 cents a day, right?
0185
1 MR. COHEN: Objection.
2 A. Okay.
3 Q. Now…can we go back to
4 Merewether?
5 (Brief pause.)
6 Q. Let me know when you have it in
7 front of you.
8 A. Okay. I have it.
9 Q. You have it?
10 A. I have it.
11 Q. Okay. Can you go to page
12 seventeen? Just hold that there for a second.
13 Do you recognize the principle
14 that warning a worker is one of the available
15 resources in your armory to protect the worker
16 from exposure to asbestos?
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
18 A. I would say that is a general
19 principle in industrial hygiene for any kind of
20 toxic material.
21 Q. Including asbestos.
22 A. Including.
23 Q. Okay. And did you — do you
24 recognize the principle as an industrial
25 hygienist that workers should be warned to
0186
1 prevent exposure to industrial dust?
2 A. I think that is part of is, yes.
3 Q. And that principle was recognized
4 long before you got your degree from school,
5 right?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Okay. And, in fact, it was
8 something that was recognized, uh…at least by
9 1930 by Dr. Merewether, correct? And if you
10 look at page seventeen under preventive
11 measures? Third full paragraph.
12 (Brief pause.)
13 Q. He says, does he not, a preventive
14 measure includes “the education of the
15 individual as in other dangerous trades to a
16 sane appreciation of the risk and his personal
17 responsibility in the prevention and suppression
18 of dust.”
19 Correct?
20 A. That’s correct, and I think that
21 that was part of DuPont’s principle in terms of
22 trying to control dust.
23 Q. Okay.
24 A. From the middle 1800s.
25 Q. So DuPont recognized the principle
0187
1 from the middle 1800s that in order to protect
2 people from industrial dust, they needed to be
3 educated and warned. Right?
4 A. They needed — they needed to be
5 warned and they were. That was part of the
6 entire safety program to keep dust down in the
7 workplace.
8 Q. Okay. Do you agree with the
9 principle as an industrial hygienist that the
10 greater the danger associated with an operation
11 the stronger the warning is necessary?
12 A. Well, I think people need to
13 understand, you know, what is going on in that
14 operation.
15 Q. Okay. Do you recognize the
16 principle that a company does not own knowledge
17 about the dangers and hazards in its work site?
18 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
19 A. I’m not sure I follow you –
20 Q. Well –
21 A. — on that.
22 Q. — it’s not something you’re
23 allowed to keep secret. You’re supposed to tell
24 people. You don’t own it, it’s not a trade
25 secret.
0188
1 A. You tell people that are working
2 with the material and if it’s a product, then
3 you are required to tell the people to whom
4 you’re selling that product.
5 Q. Okay. So companies should share
6 the knowledge about product dangers and
7 hazardous conditions on its premises with
8 workers and/or consumers.
9 A. I think we understand that
10 principle now.
11 Q. Okay. As an industrial hygienist,
12 do you recognize the principle that a company
13 should always tell the whole truth about any
14 dangers associated with the use of products on
15 its work site?
16 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
17 A. I think we totally understand that
18 concept of telling workers all the details,
19 certainly now and I would say from 1970 forward.
20 I would say to you that I think that many, many
21 years back companies told people they were
22 working with dangerous products, but maybe
23 didn’t give them all the details about the
24 health effects and that kind of thing.
25 Like I — I think I said before,
0189
1 they took a more paternalistic viewpoint of
2 protecting workers without going into all the
3 specific details about what could happen and
4 that kind of thing.
5 Q. Is that –
6 A. And we’ve changed those thoughts
7 over time.
8 Q. Is that what DuPont did before
9 1970?
10 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
11 A. I, I would say as far as I know,
12 they revealed to workers just what they were
13 working with and I know they had safety meetings
14 where they talked about the things they were
15 working with. And they informed the people,
16 they sort of had weekly meetings, safety
17 meetings, said you’re working with this
18 material, and when they knew what those dangers
19 were, they discussed them at those safety
20 meetings.
21 Q. Ma’am, there were people who were
22 sick at DuPont that DuPont specifically never
23 told they were even sick; isn’t that true?
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
25 A. Um, I don’t know about that. I’ve
0190
1 certainly heard that that may have been true,
2 but I don’t know details.
3 Q. Okay.
4 A. I think that, um, certainly, you
5 know, people were getting sick initially at
6 DuPont, that’s why Haskell Laboratory was
7 created because they tried to identify what was
8 making people sick. That’s — that was the
9 whole concept of starting their own toxicology
10 laboratory, so they were concerned about sick
11 workers.
12 Q. There were people getting sick
13 from exposure to asbestos that DuPont never
14 told; isn’t that true?
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 A. I, I’m not knowledgeable about that.
17 Q. Would that violate a generalized
18 principle of industrial hygiene?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. Um, certainly industrial hygiene is
21 concerned with the exposures and so industrial
22 hygienists would be telling people about
23 chemicals they’re working with and what, um, the
24 things were that they, they could experience
25 from those things.
0191
1 Q. Okay.
2 A. That’s the industrial hygiene
3 principle.
4 The idea that people were already
5 sick and not being told, I have certainly heard
6 that there were — there was at least one
7 lawsuit about someone having X-rays that
8 indicated that they were ill and not told, but I
9 do not know any details about that.
10 Q. That would have been a violation
11 of DuPont’s own safety code; you agree?
12 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
13 A. My understanding — when you talk
14 about — you were talking about industrial
15 hygiene practice, right?
16 Q. Yes, ma’am.
17 A. That was your initial question.
18 Q. Yes, ma’am.
19 A. And that certainly would not have
20 fallen under the purview of an industrial
21 hygienist.
22 Q. So what are you saying to me?
23 That it was okay not to tell workers that they
24 were sick?
25 A. No, I’m not saying that at all.
0192
1 What I’m saying is industrial hygiene is talking
2 about prevention of illness and are you being
3 exposed to a material.
4 Q. Well –
5 A. And if you’re talking about were
6 X-rays interpreted appropriately and given to
7 people, that would not have been part of the
8 industrial hy — I’m just separating who does
9 what here.
10 Q. Well, I’m trying to get to would
11 it violate your principles to know that a person
12 who was diagnosed with an abnormal X-ray was
13 sent back out into the plant to be exposed
14 again.
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 A. It would certainly violate my own
17 personal…principle, yes.
18 Q. You know that happened right here
19 in New Jersey; did you know that?
20 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
21 A. I’ve heard that there was a lawsuit
22 about that, yes.
23 Q. It would be unreasonable, would it
24 not, for DuPont not to warn workers about the
25 dangers of asbestos if they had reason to
0193
1 believe those workers could become ill while
2 working in their plants?
3 A. Could you…phrase that question
4 again?
5 Q. Sure. Do you agree it would be
6 unreasonable for DuPont not to warn its workers
7 of the hazards in its workplace?
8 A. I would say it would be
9 unreasonable if DuPont knows a hazard exists for
10 them not to warn workers and to help them
11 understand ways to prevent…
12 Q. Okay.
13 A. Risk.
14 Q. Ways to warn, there are multiple
15 ways to warn that are recognized by industrial
16 hygienists; do we agree?
17 A. That’s true.
18 Q. You could provide films?
19 A. Um-hum.
20 Q. Correct?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Okay. You could rope off an area
23 to segregate hazardous areas from non-hazardous
24 areas.
25 A. Yes.
0194
1 Q. You could have meetings.
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Okay. You could distribute
4 fliers.
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. You could put it in union
7 publications.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. You could in later points in time
10 include it in MSDS sheets.
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Okay. DuPont –
13 A. And they actually used signs on
14 asbestos…
15 Q. Right, you could put –
16 A. Piping.
17 Q. — big signs that say cancer,
18 don’t go here.
19 A. Well, they don’t say that, but
20 they do say this…this pipe contains asbestos.
21 Q. Okay.
22 A. There’s those kinds of signs.
23 Q. Okay. Now, DuPont recognized the
24 duty to provide a safe workplace extended to
25 contractors, not just their own employees; true?
0195
1 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Okay. And that duty extended to
4 temporary employees at DuPont as well, right?
5 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
6 A. I would certainly believe if they
7 are employees or they are contractor, whether
8 they’re sort of permanent contractors or coming
9 in temporarily –
10 Q. Right.
11 A. — it extends to everyone working
12 at the site.
13 Q. In fact, DuPont had people who
14 that was their job. In these plants.
15 A. Their job to –
16 Q. To go out to the contractors and
17 make sure they knew about the hazards in the
18 plant. There were people that had that job.
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. I would say there were people had
21 that as part of their work duties was to make
22 sure that the contractors understood, you know,
23 what the requirements were and what the –
24 Q. Okay.
25 A. — hazards were. At the site.
0196
1 Q. And as a matter of policy, all
2 personnel including contractors who worked in
3 areas where there was asbestos were to be warned
4 and trained. At DuPont.
5 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
6 Q. Right?
7 A. That would have been part of the
8 policy, certainly, after the 1964 time frame and
9 I would say in the late sixties when they really
10 began to understand the hazards of asbestos.
11 That would have been a warning as much to
12 employees as to contractors and those kinds of
13 things were included in the safety handbooks
14 that they hand out.
15 Q. And that would include latent
16 hazards as well as obvious hazards, correct?
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
18 A. Not sure what you mean by that. In
19 other words, were they told that there could be
20 latent health effects?
21 Q. Right.
22 A. Certainly that would have been
23 part of the overall, um…
24 Q. You agree that –
25 A. Telling people about health
0197
1 effects from exposure. That’s a little
2 different than what the risk is and how you
3 avoid the risk.
4 Q. Okay. You will agree that it was
5 a recognized policy that the contractors were to
6 be given full disclosure, not partial
7 disclosure.
8 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
9 A. I think they were to have all the
10 information that employees had, so…
11 Q. Okay. And ultimately that
12 obligation was actually imposed on DuPont by
13 OSHA. Correct?
14 A. I — I’m sure it was probably part
15 of that concept and I will say that, you know,
16 DuPont told, say, the supervisor of the
17 contractors, DuPont made sure that the
18 contracting company had the information.
19 The people within the company that
20 was hired that had supervision of those
21 employees actually did the informing of the
22 employees. DuPont did not take the
23 responsibility to inform each individual person
24 who was a contractor, but, rather, the
25 contracting company and the contracting company
0198
1 had to, I think, sign as part of the contract
2 that they would follow the procedures.
3 Q. Okay.
4 A. Of safety of DuPont.
5 Q. Okay, true/false test part two. I
6 put it up here. These you’re not going to like
7 as much as the first ones.
8 A. I didn’t like the first ones.
9 Q. You didn’t like the first ones? I
10 thought we had a lot of agreement on the first
11 ones.
12 DuPont violated its own safety
13 standards when it came to protecting workers
14 from asbestos.
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 Q. True or false.
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
18 A. I would say that I don’t think
19 DuPont had any intent of violating its safety
20 standards, that it tried to meet its own
21 standards as best it could.
22 Q. So –
23 A. Now, were there certain incidences
24 in which that occurred? That could be, but I
25 think that overall they had the principles and
0199
1 people were told they needed to follow them.
2 Q. So is it –
3 A. So –
4 Q. — true, false or I can’t answer
5 it?
6 A. I can’t answer it, I guess.
7 Q. Okay.
8 A. I would say generally it’s a false
9 statement, but I can’t say that there weren’t
10 any incidences where that wasn’t true.
11 Q. True or false; DuPont continued to
12 use asbestos products on its premises long after
13 it knew that exposure to asbestos could cause
14 cancer?
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 A. It did use asbestos products in
17 areas, um, where it really had no alternative,
18 so I would say that is true. It’s not, however,
19 meaning that there continued to be a hazard due
20 to the presence of an asbestos product.
21 In other words, they used it in
22 certain gaskets where they couldn’t find another
23 material. That doesn’t mean that the gasket
24 itself and the presence of that gasket presented
25 a health hazard. It was probably — I mean, it
0200
1 was a safe alternative. They were using it to
2 try to prevent leaks and other bad things from
3 happening.
4 So until somebody could come up
5 with a non-asbestos form, they would use the
6 asbestos thing until they could find a
7 substitute and then do everything they could to
8 prevent a hazard from it.
9 Q. Okay, well, I’m going to do that
10 one then.
11 So DuPont continued to use
12 asbestos on its premises long after it knew that
13 exposure to asbestos could cause cancer. The
14 answer is true.
15 A. True.
16 MR. COTTEN: Objection to form.
17 Q. True your false; DuPont made
18 numerous mistakes when it came to protecting
19 workers on it premises from exposure to
20 asbestos.
21 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
22 A. From my knowledge I would that’s
23 false, it’s not numerous. I would say I could
24 never tell you there was never a mistake, but
25 certainly they tried their very best to, to
0201
1 protect their workers from exposure to asbestos.
2 Q. All right, we’ll have to do that
3 one.
4 A. Based on…
5 Q. Okay. Next, DuPont intentionally
6 withheld from workers the fact that there was
7 evidence of asbestos in their lungs.
8 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
9 A. And I think there, again, there was
10 a particular situation where that occurred. I
11 would not say that was the general practice
12 within DuPont, so it would have to be that…
13 Q. You think it only happened once?
14 A. There was — I have no idea and
15 I’m not sure how –
16 Q. What about hundreds of times.
17 A. — intentional it was.
18 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
19 A. So I can’t really answer it.
20 Q. Okay. So the answer is you don’t
21 know?
22 A. Correct.
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
24 Q. True or false; DuPont provided
25 misleading information to workers about asbestos
0202
1 and mesothelioma.
2 MR. COTTEN: Objection to form.
3 A. Um, I would say that’s false from my
4 understanding.
5 Q. Okay. True or false; executives
6 at DuPont ignored the advice of DuPont medical
7 doctors in terms of protecting workers from
8 asbestos exposure.
9 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
10 A. And I don’t know of any instances in
11 which that would be true.
12 Q. Okay.
13 A. I can’t comment.
14 Q. Now, internally DuPont knew that
15 despite what Dr. Stopps said, that it was not
16 preventing exposure to people on its premises.
17 True?
18 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
19 A. Are you talking about prior to Dr.
20 Stopps or are you talking about after?
21 Q. Well, let me –
22 A. Are you talking about –
23 Q. — ask the question.
24 A. — prior to his…
25 Q. Bad question.
0203
1 A. Question — his report?
2 Q. Bad question. Good answer.
3 DuPont knew it was not preventing
4 exposure in the fifties, the sixties and the
5 seventies.
6 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
7 A. No, I would not say that.
8 Q. Okay.
9 A. I would say DuPont certainly was
10 working very hard to keep down dust exposures
11 and at that point in time they didn’t know that
12 the way they were using asbestos could pre –
13 could actually provide an exposure that could
14 cause disease.
15 Q. Well, we’ll have to go over that
16 one.
17 DuPont acknowledged internally
18 that any exposure to asbestos by its workers was
19 significant. True?
20 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
21 A. I…I would say they acknowledged
22 that they would try to minimize exposure, but I
23 would not agree with your…statement.
24 Q. Well, significant exposure means
25 that while working at DuPont an employee handled
0204
1 asbestos, either applying it or removing it, and
2 in the course of that disbursed fibers into the
3 air. Right?
4 A. That would have been what people
5 did who were insulating, yes.
6 Q. And that would have been
7 considered a significant exposure at DuPont
8 internally.
9 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
10 A. Uh, during what period of time would
11 that have been considered significant?
12 Q. I’m asking you the question.
13 A. I think that prior to the time of
14 recognizing that insulation workers were getting
15 disease and in Dr. Stopps trip report there was
16 just not a concept that people could actually be
17 exposed to asbestos that would cause disease.
18 After that time, yes, and then
19 after that time they tried very hard to minimize
20 exposures to asbestos and they worked on the
21 plan to get there.
22 Q. Okay. Remember when we went over
23 Dr. Wagner and we showed you that people were
24 getting mesothelioma who were working with
25 finished product even in explosive factories
0205
1 like DuPont? That was 1960; remember that?
2 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
3 A. There certainly was an individual or
4 two listed there. Um, I can’t tell you that
5 much about their exposures and I certainly don’t
6 think that having one or two people in that
7 entire list would have made DuPont aware that
8 there might be exposures within their own plant
9 because they had a relatively clean plant.
10 And most scientists during that
11 period of time really looked at asbestos and
12 asbestos disease as being something in the major
13 asbestos industry.
14 Q. How many people need to die before
15 DuPont would be put on notice that they needed
16 to do something –
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection –
18 Q. — about asbestos?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. I can’t answer that.
21 Q. Well, what is the number that
22 would alert DuPont that they needed to do
23 something?
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
25 Q. One human being?
0206
1 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
2 Q. Two human beings?
3 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
4 Q. How many people would have to die
5 before DuPont was put on notice that they needed
6 to do something?
7 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
8 A. I really can’t answer that question,
9 I think.
10 Q. Before going to Dr. Selikoff’s
11 conference, DuPont had in its files records of
12 people who worked there who died from asbestos
13 exposure; true or false?
14 A. Before Dr. Stopps went to that
15 conference, as far as I know, there were three
16 people who had mesothelioma and they died in
17 1963 and 1964, so if you say…
18 Q. Well, is that enough?
19 A. — it must have been asbestos
20 exposure, after they looked at that data more
21 fully, I think only one individual was actually
22 exposed at work, uh, to asbestos as we’ve said
23 before.
24 And I think what’s really
25 important to recognize here is one of the first
0207
1 things they did after Dr. Stopps reported this
2 information, one of the first things that came
3 out was Dr. Alonzo asking plant physicians
4 whether they had any, like, clusters or reason
5 to believe that people were getting sick.
6 And it kind of — you, you showed
7 me Dr. Hueper’s paper, it kind of goes back to
8 that same principle of looking to see if you
9 have people in an area suffering from a
10 particular disease and I think even one of the
11 issues around those three mesothelioma cases, if
12 all of them had occurred in one spot, in one
13 workplace, it may have been some indicator that
14 there’s something going on in a workplace.
15 Those three mesothelioma cases
16 were actually scattered in three different
17 locations within DuPont and when they went back
18 and looked at records, only one person actually
19 worked with asbestos and that wasn’t even clear,
20 you know, that person, uh, had not been working
21 there for a long period of time.
22 So I think, certainly, they had
23 the concept of let’s go look and see if we have
24 a health effect that we are seeing that may be
25 related to asbestos after Dr. Stopps’s trip
0208
1 report, that was one of the first things under
2 evaluation of a problem that they did.
3 Q. What was my question?
4 A. I don’t even know now, but it was
5 about actually if people died do you have, um,
6 an issue and I think that one of the first
7 things you need to find out is do those people
8 who are working at your plant sites have any
9 kind of health effects that we should have
10 recognized as coming from asbestos.
11 Q. What was the recognized latency
12 for asbestos in 1960 when you got Dr. Wagner’s
13 report?
14 A. Um, latency for mesothelioma was a
15 lot longer than for some other kinds of
16 asbestos.
17 Q. Twenty to forty years?
18 A. It was maybe…it was twenty to
19 forty years for mesothelioma, but I think for
20 other cancers associated with asbestos it was a
21 shorter period of time depending upon the
22 exposures.
23 Q. Yes, ma’am, and if somebody was
24 exposed to asbestos at DuPont in 1955, you
25 wouldn’t expect them to get cancer until at
0209
1 least 1975 or at least mesothelioma; would you
2 agree with that?
3 A. I certainly know that now. I’m
4 not sure there was that much awareness of it at
5 the time because there was a range given, I
6 think, and even in Dr. Wagner’s paper there was
7 a range and so you really couldn’t say, you
8 know…
9 Q. Well, the range was twenty –
10 A. But we know now that if we were to
11 look at that data it — you would have to say
12 that people who were showing up with
13 mesothelioma would have had to be exposed many
14 years prior to that.
15 Q. Well, this is a pretty important
16 point. When is it –
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, side-bar.
18 Q. — that DuPont first realized that
19 there was a latency period for mesothelioma?
20 A. I don’t, I don’t really know. I’m
21 sure those papers that were published, like,
22 in…1960, certainly that paper indicated a
23 latency period of time and Dr. Newhouse’s paper
24 certainly showed that when it came out in 1965,
25 so I think this is kind of –
0210
1 Q. Right.
2 A. — information where people are
3 beginning to…
4 Q. Right.
5 A. Understand better.
6 Q. So if Wagner said there was a
7 relation — latency period of twenty to forty
8 years in 1960 and DuPont looked at its records,
9 there was no assurance that the people who were
10 in its plants weren’t going to get mesothelioma
11 in the future. True?
12 A. That’s correct.
13 Q. So the fact that they looked at
14 their records and determined that only three
15 people got mesothelioma didn’t mean that there
16 wasn’t going to be a whole bunch of other
17 employees that weren’t going to mesothelioma.
18 True?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. We certainly understand that in
21 terms of latency now, now we understand just how
22 long.
23 Q. You knew it then, too, didn’t you?
24 A. But DuPont had used –
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection. Let her
0211
1 answer, please.
2 A. DuPont had used asbestos for quite a
3 number of years, so, you know, you had people
4 that were probably using or working with
5 asbestos long enough to have gotten mesothelioma
6 if they were exposed for the kind of exposures
7 that could have resulted in that.
8 So when you’re looking at the
9 records, you’re not just looking at people that
10 started work last year, you’re looking at a big
11 history of use of asbestos within DuPont and you
12 were looking at workers who possibly had, you
13 know, been working with asbestos for forty
14 years.
15 Q. You and I are on the same page.
16 When did –
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, side-bar.
18 Q. — DuPont first start using
19 asbestos extensively in its plants?
20 A. Um, I don’t really know, but I
21 know that DuPont started getting involved in
22 chemicals and chemical plants and acquisition of
23 chemical plants back around 1915 and so
24 somewhere from that point forward they would
25 have been constructing chemical plants and then
0212
1 ultimately using asbestos and I have no idea
2 when they really first started or even if there
3 was asbestos in some of the plants that they
4 acquired.
5 Q. Well, let’s just take Chambers
6 Works. That’s a big plant. When did that first
7 get built?
8 A. I don’t know.
9 Q. Was it in the thirties?
10 A. I don’t know.
11 Q. All right. Well, let’s make an
12 assumption that Chambers Works was built in the
13 thirties and there’s a forty-year latency
14 period. When would you expect people to get
15 mesothelioma who worked at Chambers Works?
16 A. Could –
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
18 A. It could be any time after that.
19 You would certainly expect fifteen, possibly
20 twenty years later?
21 Q. Well, what was going on is the
22 doctors, we agree, were trying to do the right
23 thing. Can we agree?
24 A. Yes, I think they certainly were.
25 Q. The hygienists were trying to do
0213
1 the right thing.
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. But somehow the executives got in
4 the way.
5 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
6 Q. Right?
7 A. I don’t know about that.
8 Q. Okay. Well, in 1968, or even
9 before that, even though Dr. Stoop {sic} said no
10 more asbestos in the plants, DuPont was tracking
11 the people who were exposed in their facilities,
12 correct?
13 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
14 A. DuPont didn’t necessarily track
15 exposures to asbestos. DuPont did say so-and-so
16 worked in this area doing this kind of job,
17 those kinds of things.
18 Q. Well, you were keeping lists of
19 who you were exposing.
20 A. They –
21 Q. I mean, you weren’t telling them,
22 but you were keeping lists, though, right?
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
24 A. Everybody knew from, uh, the
25 records. For instance, let’s say at Chambers
0214
1 Works. As an operator for some particular
2 chemical, you could then move to another,
3 another building, another operation and they
4 kept records where people worked during, you
5 know, their, their working lifetime.
6 Q. Yeah, but that’s not what I’m
7 talking about.
8 A. That’s not specific I was exposed
9 to this or I was exposed to that.
10 Q. No, but what I’m saying is the
11 executives at DuPont, they were keeping records
12 of the people at these various facilities who
13 were being exposed significantly.
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 A. I –
16 Q. And they weren’t telling the
17 workers.
18 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
19 A. I don’t know that.
20 Q. You don’t know? You’ve never seen
21 documents where they keep lists of –
22 A. Some executive record –
23 Q. — people who are being exposed to
24 it?
25 A. — no.
0215
1 MR. COTTEN: Y’all are speaking over
2 each other. Objection, form.
3
4 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-18 is marked
5 for identification.)
6
7 Q. You have in front of you P-18.
8 This is a memo from Dr. Nolan to the Medical
9 Director at DuPont and to the Employee Relations
10 Department about Chattanooga, correct?
11 A. Uh, yes.
12 Q. And in this memo DuPont lists the
13 people in that plant who were exposed to
14 asbestos, right?
15 A. That’s the way it’s worded and I
16 — and then it goes on to say they work as
17 insulators, so they are using asbestos.
18 Q. This is a list of our employees
19 who are exposed to asbestos, right? I’m not
20 making that up.
21 A. No, that’s –
22 Q. This is four years after Dr.
23 Stoops {sic} said no more exposure, right?
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
25 A. The way I would interpret this is
0216
1 it was…it was actually the time frame that was
2 the reply when Dr. Alonzo asked the medical
3 people, the plant physicians, to try to identify
4 how many people at their plant sites were
5 actually working with asbestos and so this is a
6 list of employees that they had at Chattanooga.
7 Q. Right, this is –
8 A. It’s expressed as they are exposed
9 to asbestos. I think, you know, if I were to
10 write this I might express it a little
11 differently, but it was certainly at that time,
12 as I think I said earlier, they were trying to
13 get a handle on who the people were who were
14 working with asbestos and, in fact, the whole
15 concept was, at least initially, was trying to
16 then delve into medical records to see if people
17 had any asbestos-related disease.
18 And you had to identify who the
19 people were first, that was a general, you know,
20 industrial hygiene principle says the people who
21 are working directly with something are going to
22 be — if anybody’s going to have disease and if
23 we have an asbestos disease problem, we are
24 going to go with those people.
25 So that concept was let’s identify
0217
1 those people working directly with asbestos and
2 find out, then, if we have, uh, asbestos
3 diseases from their medical records.
4 Q. Ma’am, would you agree with me
5 that an honest and unbiased witness can answer a
6 simple question with a simple answer?
7 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
8 A. I don’t think that it was that
9 simple a question.
10 Q. Ma’am, in four — 1964 Dr. Stoop’s
11 {sic} recommendation –
12 A. Dr. Stopps.
13 Q. Dr. Stopps, who went out –
14 recommendation went out to every plant doctor in
15 the company said no more asbestos exposure;
16 true?
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
18 A. I think he expressed that as an
19 opinion, he was not in a position to tell
20 everyone do as I say.
21 Q. In 1964 the head medical director
22 for DuPont sent out the report from Dr. Stopps
23 saying no more asbestos exposure; true or false?
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
25 A. The director, the medical director,
0218
1 sent out the trip report, yes.
2 Q. And it said no more asbestos
3 exposure.
4 A. And it –
5 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
6 A. It contained Dr. Stopps’s
7 recommendation that people not be exposed to
8 asbestos.
9 Q. Right. And in 1968, according to
10 this memo, DuPont was keeping lists at the
11 Chattanooga plant of people still being exposed
12 to asbestos; true?
13 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
14 A. Uh, I don’t think that’s necessarily
15 true that they were keeping lists. They made a
16 list and –
17 Q. Okay. They made a list.
18 A. The whole, the whole principle, if
19 I may, is that Dr. Stopps made that
20 recommendation.
21 Q. Okay.
22 A. What the medical department
23 decided to do was first try to find out who was
24 being exposed to it and they also tried to find
25 out whether they already had any kind of
0219
1 recognizable asbestos disease among those
2 workers.
3 Q. Okay. That took four years?
4 A. They started –
5 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
6 A. — out by doing some initial work at
7 one of the plant sites and trying to recognize
8 whether there was any disease in sort of a pilot
9 study and then they started expanding it
10 throughout the company.
11 Q. Yes, ma’am, they took four years
12 to start that from the time that Dr. Stopps said
13 no more asbestos exposure; isn’t that true?
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 Q. All right, let’s –
16 A. I would say they started a
17 program, um. It took a long time to actually
18 get it implemented.
19
20 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-19 is marked
21 for identification.)
22
23 A. They were doing many other things
24 during that period of time.
25 Q. I’m sure they were.
0220
1 MR. COHEN: That’s not necessary.
2 Commentary like that. Move to strike. And
3 don’t do it again.
4 MR. PLACITELLA: Is that your red
5 face or is that just…
6 MR. COHEN: That’s my, that’s my
7 inappropriate lawyer face.
8 MR. PLACITELLA: Okay.
9 (Brief pause.)
10 Q. You have in front of you P-19.
11 October 11th, 1968, would you agree that’s four
12 years after Dr. Stopps said no more asbestos
13 exposure?
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 A. That was, uh, four years following
16 his trip report.
17 Q. Where he said no more asbestos
18 exposure.
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 Q. Correct?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. And this was sent out by the
23 medical director to all the plant physicians,
24 correct?
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0221
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. And he says we’ve gotta look at
3 this and see what’s going on. Right?
4 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
5 A. Well, he, he said that he had
6 previously sent out a letter and he had gotten
7 some questions from several physicians and,
8 um…and then he defined a little better exactly
9 what population he was, um, looking for reports
10 on.
11 Q. Right, and his letter went out on
12 August 1, ’68, four years after the directive
13 came down no more asbestos exposure.
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 Q. Right?
16 A. I’ve already said yes to that.
17 Q. Okay. And he said that he wants
18 to see those people who are regularly exposed,
19 he wants to include in the survey laggers, pipe
20 coverers, insulators and others who work in
21 contaminated areas, right?
22 A. That’s what the memo says, yes.
23 Q. And after that is when DuPont
24 started making their lists of people who were
25 exposed.
0222
1 A. That’s correct.
2 Q. Okay. So they also made a
3 list…for the people who were exposed at the
4 Chambers Works facility, didn’t they?
5 A. Um, they, they developed a list of
6 pipe coverers that they were going to examine.
7 That was actually where they did the pilot study
8 to try to get a handle on what kind of questions
9 they needed to ask and to do some sampling among
10 those people.
11 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Off the video
12 record, 3:05.
13 MR. PLACITELLA: You want to take a
14 break?
15 MR. COHEN: Yeah, let’s take a
16 break.
17
18 (Whereupon, a brief recess is
19 taken.)
20
21 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Back on the video
22 record at 3:12.
23
24 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-20 is marked
25 for identification.)
0223
1
2 Q. You have in front of you P-20. Do
3 you have an October 8th, 1968 memo?
4 A. Uh, October 18th?
5 Q. Right, sorry.
6 A. Yes, I have that.
7 Q. Okay. This is a memo concerning
8 workers at Chambers Works, right?
9 A. Uh…yes.
10 Q. Right here in New Jersey.
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Okay. And this is a list that was
13 compiled of people who were exposed to asbestos
14 in 1968 at Chambers Works.
15 A. Well, it does say were “engaged
16 full-time in asbestos insulation work.”
17 Q. Right. This is, again, four years
18 after Dr. Stopps said no more exposure, right?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 (Brief pause.)
21 Q. I’m sorry, did you answer my
22 question?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Okay, thank you.
25 A. I think I’ve answered that several
0224
1 times.
2 Q. Okay. And they keep lists of the
3 people with the day they started, their
4 birthday, what their jobs were. Right?
5 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
6 A. They developed this list of people
7 who had — were doing full-time asbestos
8 insulation work.
9 Q. Okay. And –
10 A. I don’t — in other words, it’s
11 not like it’s a list they pull out of somewhere,
12 they developed it when requested.
13 Q. No, they made the list. Right?
14 We’re on the same page.
15 A. Okay.
16 Q. Do you find any evidence that any
17 of these people were told that they were being
18 exposed to asbestos?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. Well, I think that it’s important to
21 say these are people who were engaged in
22 full-time in asbestos insulation work. It
23 doesn’t say you were exposed to airborne, uh,
24 asbestos.
25 Q. So people who applied and took
0225
1 down the insulation in the plant, they weren’t
2 being exposed to asbestos; is that what you’re
3 telling me?
4 A. Uh –
5 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
6 A. — they have the potential for
7 exposure, but I wouldn’t characterize it as they
8 were exposed, they may have been –
9 Q. Well, what happens –
10 A. — wearing, you know…some sort
11 of respiratory protection. I have no idea and I
12 think part of this whole thing was ultimately to
13 try to find out whether they actually were being
14 exposed.
15 Q. Okay. So you’re saying that in
16 1968 DuPont didn’t know that the people whose
17 only job was to apply and remove asbestos were
18 being exposed to asbestos; is that what you’re
19 telling us?
20 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
21 A. I’m saying that I know that
22 essentially what happened from this…from this
23 kind of survey was that they then went back and
24 actually did industrial hygiene sampling, they
25 used the cassettes with the personal sampling,
0226
1 that kind of thing once they identified who
2 these workers were and they did this throughout
3 the company.
4 So — and it was 1968 before they
5 actually had developed a good method for
6 sampling for asbestos fiber, so…
7 Q. Well –
8 A. My answer to you, because you keep
9 saying they were exposed to asbestos, I think
10 that it’s important to say they had the
11 potential for exposure because they were doing
12 this kind of work, but –
13 Q. How about if they –
14 A. — what their actual exposures
15 were…
16 Q. How about if they found that the
17 people had asbestos in their lungs in 1968;
18 would that be enough evidence for you that they
19 had asbestos exposure?
20 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
21 A. That they had, uh, asbestos exposure
22 somewhere. Yes.
23 Q. So if all these people were found
24 to have asbestos in their lung in 1968, you’re
25 still not going to give in and say that they had
0227
1 asbestos exposure at DuPont?
2 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
3 A. I think it’s very difficult to say.
4 Q. Okay. The…am I correct that it
5 wasn’t until after OSHA made DuPont stop using
6 asbestos that they finally put an edict out that
7 said no more asbestos insulation in the plant?
8 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
9 Q. No more installation of insulation
10 in the plant.
11 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
12 A. I don’t think — I think DuPont made
13 its own decision to stop using asbestos, OSHA
14 never told them they had to stop using asbestos.
15 Q. So the OSHA regulations in 19 –
16 when did OSHA — DuPont edict come down no more
17 asbestos insulation to be installed in the
18 plant?
19 A. I don’t know, um –
20 Q. It was ’72, wasn’t it?
21 A. Um, I do not know. There were,
22 there were a lot of different rulings. The
23 first recognized thing was we’re not going to
24 use any more crocidolite because that was
25 associated with mesothelioma and that was in, I
0228
1 think, ’66 or so.
2 Q. But they did it anyhow. That was
3 a rule, but it wasn’t followed, was it?
4 A. There was, there was definitely
5 within the Construction Division, Mr. Keuper put
6 out the rule to say within the Construction
7 Division we’re not going to use any more
8 crocidolite and, of course, at that time the TLV
9 was lower, then said we can’t — crocidolite was
10 associated with mesothelioma at the time, so
11 there was a belief.
12 But I’m just saying that DuPont’s
13 rules and regulations from your question,
14 you’re, you’re looking for one date DuPont –
15 Q. No.
16 A. — stopped using crocidolite at
17 one point, then they stopped using certain kinds
18 of spray-on asbestos at another point and, you
19 know, eventually they got to just plain no more
20 asbestos is to be used.
21 And I think all of that was a
22 process as they began to find…
23 Q. You know, I’m –
24 A. Different things.
25 Q. — we’re never going to finish.
0229
1 Please listen to my question –
2 A. But there’s not one date. That’s
3 my answer.
4 Q. In 1972 did DuPont come down with
5 the edict no more asbestos insulation will be
6 installed in our plants?
7 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
8 Q. Yes or no.
9 A. I do not know.
10 Q. Okay. If it was 1972, was that
11 before or after OSHA was enacted?
12 A. OSHA was enacted in 1970 and its
13 first OSHA, uh…asbestos standard was in the
14 middle of 1971.
15 Q. Okay. And after that is when
16 DuPont said no more installing asbestos
17 insulation in the plant, right?
18 A. It was some time after that.
19 Q. Right. And that was seven to
20 eight years after Dr. Stopps said no more
21 asbestos exposure in the plant, right?
22 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
23 A. Dr. Stopps made the recommendation.
24 Q. All right.
25 A. In 1964 and it was some years
0230
1 afterward that DuPont totally stopped using
2 asbestos.
3 Q. Well, I’m not talking about
4 totally. Right now I’m just talking about
5 insulation.
6 A. Installing insulation.
7 Q. Installing insulation. It took
8 them eight years to do that, right?
9 A. That’s right.
10 Q. How many human beings were
11 unnecessarily exposed to asbestos while working
12 at DuPont during those eight years?
13 A. I can’t answer that.
14 Q. Even though DuPont put out the
15 edict in 1971, ’72 no more installation of
16 asbestos insulation, it took no affirmative
17 steps to remove the asbestos in place until some
18 time in the 1980s.
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 Q. True?
21 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
22 A. I think it was well known in
23 industrial hygiene that removing asbestos in
24 many instances would cause more exposure than
25 leaving it in place.
0231
1 Q. My question is as follows. Am I
2 correct that no affirmative steps were taken by
3 DuPont to remove the asbestos in place in its
4 plants, the insulation, until the 1980s at the
5 earliest.
6 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
7 A. I can’t, I can’t comment on specific
8 dates.
9 Q. All right.
10 A. There may still be asbestos in
11 place as long as it’s covered up and there’s no
12 friable dust exposure.
13 Q. You continued to use asbestos in
14 your plants throughout the 1970s and into the
15 1980s to be installed despite Dr. Stopps’s
16 recommendation in 1964; true or false?
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
18 A. Dr. Stopps made the recommendation
19 and DuPont certainly did its best to try to
20 reduce exposures, but, no, it did not eliminate
21 the use of asbestos and, certainly, OSHA
22 standard did not require that.
23 Q. In 1976 you were still using
24 asbestos in ovens at DuPont, right?
25 A. That could be; I can’t comment on
0232
1 date.
2
3 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-21 is marked
4 for identification.)
5
6 Q. You have in front of you a memo of
7 October 7, 1976. Does this memo indicate that
8 as of this date you were still using asbestos in
9 most, if not all, of your GC oven closures?
10 (Brief pause.)
11 A. Um, according to this, yes. I do
12 not know that this was DuPont-wide or if this
13 was in some one location.
14 Q. You’re aware, are you not, you
15 ever heard of a product known as transite?
16 A. I have heard of that.
17 Q. You understand that transite
18 contains crocidolite asbestos?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. I have no idea what it obtains.
21 Q. Okay.
22
23 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-22 is marked
24 for identification.)
25
0233
1 Q. This is a 1978 document entitled
2 “Process Chemicals Record of Initial Risk
3 Appraisal.”
4 Have you ever seen this before?
5 A. Um, not that I recall.
6 Q. Okay. This indicates, does it
7 not, in 1978 you were using asbestos braiding
8 and asbestos covered heaters for piping and heat
9 treatment?
10 A. That’s what this says, yes.
11 Q. Does it also say on the next page
12 that you were still sawing transite siding…in
13 1978 at DuPont?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. And does it also say that as of
16 1978, two pages later, that you were still using
17 asbestos tape on piping?
18 (Brief pause.)
19 A. I don’t see where it says anything
20 about tape.
21 Q. Wrapping of asbestos tape on
22 piping and instruments.
23 MR. COTTEN: Next page.
24 THE WITNESS: Oh. Okay. Sorry.
25 A. Okay.
0234
1 Q. So although you weren’t using
2 preformed insulation you were still using
3 asbestos on piping fourteen years after Dr.
4 Stopps said no more asbestos.
5 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
6 Q. At DuPont. Right?
7 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
8 A. I think it’s important here, for
9 instance you have something like asbestos tape,
10 um…these documents also show how they were
11 taking, um…industrial hygiene measures to
12 prevent exposure to dust.
13 Q. Yes, ma’am, I’m not quarreling
14 with that. I’m asking you that if fourteen
15 years later, after there was supposed to be no
16 more asbestos in the plant, were you still using
17 asbestos on piping in the DuPont facilities.
18 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
19 A. Again, you just said there’s
20 supposed to be no more asbestos in the plant and
21 I think that you’re taking further what Dr.
22 Stopps said which was –
23 Q. Okay.
24 A. — his recommendation, uh, to not
25 have exposures to asbestos.
0235
1 Q. Well, in that same year what you
2 did, did you not, was actually assign a
3 carcinogenic rating to every asbestos product
4 that you were using in the plants at the time?
5 A. I don’t know about the year of
6 that.
7 Q. You know about it, though, right?
8 A. I know that there were
9 carcinogenic ratings given by DuPont.
10 Q. Okay.
11 A. To various chemicals and other
12 materials being used.
13 Q. Well, you did a carcinogenic
14 rating for all the asbestos products that were
15 in use in 1978, didn’t you?
16 A. I don’t know, I haven’t seen that
17 document.
18 MR. PLACITELLA: Mark this please.
19
20 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-23 is marked
21 for identification.)
22
23 MR. COHEN: Chris, we’re going to
24 live you some latitude here, but you know
25 as well as we do that there are no facts in
0236
1 this case that go this far in time.
2 MR. PLACITELLA: Well, my guy says
3 he doesn’t know if he was exposed in the
4 eighties when he was there and I guess
5 we’re about to find out.
6 MR. COHEN: Well, like I said, there
7 are no facts…
8 MR. PLACITELLA: Okay, there are no
9 facts.
10 MR. COHEN: Which support that.
11 MR. PLACITELLA: Okay.
12 Q. You have in front of you an April
13 12, 1978…memo from a Mr. Ingalls entitled
14 “Asbestos.” Correct?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. And it’s given to a whole bunch of
17 people. Do you know who any of these people
18 are?
19 A. No, I don’t.
20 Q. Okay. And if you turn to the…by
21 the way, this talks about the fact that you are
22 getting cited by OSHA in 1978 for asbestos
23 exposure, right?
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
25 Q. You can answer it.
0237
1 A. I’m sorry, I don’t see that, I’m
2 still reading this document.
3 Q. I’m sorry, uh, paragraph under
4 asbestos, “however, recent OSHA citations.”
5 A. “Indicate additional monitoring is
6 necessary.”
7 Q. Right. Does that indicate to
8 you –
9 A. So it doesn’t say that the people
10 were being exposed. It said they needed to do
11 more monitoring.
12 Q. Says you are being cited. Does
13 that mean you were doing a good thing or a bad
14 thing?
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 A. In certain instances it was just a
17 need for more data.
18 Q. Okay.
19 A. Doesn’t mean that things were
20 being done incorrectly.
21 Q. Okay. And you have — if you’ll
22 go to page three. See where it says “Trade
23 Names With Carcinogenic Hazards”?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Okay. And it gives you the trade
0238
1 name of the product, the hazard and it says
2 asbestos all the way down, right?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. The percentage of the hazard,
5 correct?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. See, and it’s titled on the top
8 “Trade Names With Carcinogenic Hazards,” right?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. And then it lists the manufacturer
11 by number that corresponds to the DuPont
12 records. Right?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. Okay. So if you look at, for
15 example, the first one and you wanted to know
16 who was a supplier of DuPont for that product,
17 you could look in the back and it gives you the
18 corresponding supplier number.
19 Right?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. All right. And what they do
22 here…
23 (Brief pause.)
24 Q. I count about twenty-five to
25 twenty-four entries per page and about nine to
0239
1 ten pages of asbestos products used at DuPont
2 with a carcinogenic hazard, correct?
3 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
4 A. I — it doesn’t say that they’re in
5 use at the time. They may have been previously
6 used and maybe…installed or — you know,
7 it’s –
8 Q. Well, if you –
9 A. These are things and these are
10 hazards is what it says.
11 Q. Well, if you didn’t care, why did
12 you go out and try to figure out what the
13 carcinogenic hazard is for each one of these
14 products –
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 Q. — if they weren’t being used?
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
18 A. I think it was a compilation of
19 products that had been used and were possibly in
20 place.
21 Q. So they were either being
22 installed or already in place and what you
23 wanted to do is make sure that people knew what
24 the dangers were if they wanted to tell them.
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0240
1 A. And I — yeah, I think this was an
2 awareness that these are — not everything’s
3 named asbestos something or other, so it was an
4 attempt to say this material potentially, you
5 know, has asbestos in it, um, there can be a
6 hazard involved and, obviously, this still
7 doesn’t address the risk of actually getting
8 exposed to airborne levels.
9 Q. I gotcha. It says here
10 “asbestine.” Do you see that on the first page?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Do you understand that was a
13 talc-like product that was put in paints that
14 were manufactured by DuPont?
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 A. I have no idea what it is.
17 Q. And what does it say, what’s its
18 carcinogenic rating in 1978?
19 A. I think it says percentage of the
20 product that actually contain — I mean, what
21 that column means is percentage of the product
22 that actually, uh, contains asbestos.
23 Q. Right, and did it get a rating of
24 ninety-nine percent?
25 A. To me that would say it’s
0241
1 ninety-nine percent asbestos.
2 Q. Is that dangerous?
3 A. I’m…I think it just depends on
4 how it’s in the product.
5 Q. Okay. So if somebody’s handling
6 that product raw in the plant, would that be
7 dangerous?
8 A. I don’t know because I would have
9 to know more about the situation.
10 Q. Okay. There’s a product here on
11 the second page called Calidria {sic}. That was
12 a product that was sent over by Union Carbide in
13 Boundbrook.
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 Q. You gave that a ninety-two percent
16 carcinogenic rating, right?
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
18 A. Yeah, I’m having problems with the
19 concept of a carcinogenic rating. That’s not
20 what the…heading on the column says.
21 Q. All right, it says –
22 MR. COHEN: You also said Calidria
23 and that’s not what it says, it says
24 Calidra.
25 MR. PLACITELLA: That’s just my
0242
1 Italian pronunciation.
2 Q. The…Heading says –
3 A. It says percentage of hazard in
4 trade name product and in the first column it
5 says hazard, so –
6 Q. Okay.
7 A. — I would assume what that means
8 is the percentage of asbestos –
9 Q. Okay.
10 A. — in the trade name product.
11 And this has to come from a list
12 of trade names of carcinogenic hazards, many of
13 which were different from asbestos, and so
14 that’s why they don’t say at the top of the
15 column percentage of asbestos in the product,
16 but…
17 Q. Right.
18 A. It’s a big, long list and so
19 whatever the hazard is then in the first column
20 you would apply to the next, but I wouldn’t…
21 Q. But every –
22 A. Use the word rank or rating.
23 Q. All right. But everything on this
24 ten-page list is an asbestos-containing product,
25 right?
0243
1 A. Yes, everything in this particular
2 part of the list has asbestos in the hazard
3 column.
4 Q. And then what you have next to it
5 is the percentage of asbestos in the product.
6 A. That’s correct.
7 Q. Okay. So if you look at, for
8 instance, the page with Fisher specification
9 1145, it’s in alphabetical order…it would say
10 that that product was twenty-six percent
11 asbestos, right?
12 A. That’s correct.
13 Q. Okay. Did you ever tell any of
14 the workers in the plant that you actually did a
15 rating for how much cancer-causing substances
16 were in the products that were in place or that
17 they were installing?
18 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
19 A. Again, you’re using the word rating
20 and I’m not sure –
21 Q. Right.
22 A. — that’s an appropriate word.
23 Q. Well, you would agree you were
24 pretty sophisticated as a company if you were
25 able to tell what percentage of asbestos was in
0244
1 each one of these products, correct?
2 MR. COTTEN: Objection.
3 A. What — I think –
4 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
5 A. I think that was probably
6 information garnered from the manufacturer.
7 Q. Okay. And so, for instance, when
8 somebody was working with a product, did you
9 tell them that this one was fifty percent
10 asbestos and this one was ten percent asbestos?
11 Were they given that full information that we
12 talked about before?
13 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
14 A. My understanding is this would be an
15 attempt to try to distribute that information.
16 I don’t know whether people at that point in
17 time, certainly today people would get an MSDS
18 with the product when it comes in and it would
19 give you percentages. Um –
20 Q. Well, do you have any evidence as
21 you sit here today that DuPont was telling the
22 workers in its plants what the percentage of
23 asbestos was that they were encountering in each
24 product that they would encounter?
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0245
1 A. I have no knowledge one way or the
2 other.
3 Q. All right. Well, you didn’t find
4 any evidence to disclose that in your weeks of
5 research, did you?
6 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
7 A. I found nothing that would indicate
8 they were or were not told how much asbestos was
9 actually in the product.
10 Q. In nineteen…well, let me ask you
11 this. Do you know who got this information
12 other than the executives at DuPont?
13 A. Uh, this would have been the kind
14 of thing that would have had some wider
15 distribution, particularly among health workers.
16 I’ve seen others of these kinds of things even
17 when I was working for DuPont of trying to
18 identify. This is more of the kind of thing
19 that an industrial hygienist would put together,
20 what products are coming in the front door.
21 So this was probably done as an
22 overall, as I said, a much bigger list of other
23 carcinogens and making people aware that they
24 were actually handling carcinogens.
25 Q. Okay. Do you have any evidence
0246
1 that people were made aware that they were
2 handling these products as carcinogens?
3 A. I have –
4 Q. In the DuPont facilities.
5 A. I have no knowledge of this
6 particular list and how it was used.
7 Q. Okay. In 1979 you were still
8 using asbestos in lab equipment at DuPont,
9 correct?
10 A. That’s correct.
11 Q. All right. In 1979 you were still
12 using asbestos gloves in the Power Houses at
13 DuPont, right?
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 A. That’s correct.
16 Q. Even though there was a directive
17 two years earlier that said you can’t use any
18 more asbestos gloves at DuPont, right?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. I don’t know about a directive.
21 Q. Okay.
22
23 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-24 is marked
24 for identification.)
25
0247
1 Q. You have in front of you an
2 October 14th, ’77 memo?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. Safety Bulletin Number 17,
5 asbestos gloves.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Correct?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. It says “all areas which have been
10 using asbestos gloves should check supply
11 cabinets and replace any asbestos-containing
12 gloves with the aforementioned gloves. This
13 should be accomplished by 11/1/77.”
14 Correct?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. All right. But two years later
17 you’re still using gloves in the Power Houses,
18 right?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 Q. Ma’am?
21 A. Uh, that’s certainly possible if
22 they were gloves that had been there before
23 this.
24 Q. Well, you’re…you were using them
25 as a regular course in the Power Houses in 1979,
0248
1 were you not?
2 A. I don’t know about it being a
3 regular course.
4 Q. Okay.
5
6 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-25 was marked
7 for identification.)
8
9 Q. You have in front of you a memo
10 dated June 22nd, 1979 with a DuPont Bates
11 number. Do you see that?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Do you see where it says Power
14 House facilities?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Section D?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. It says “asbestos gloves are still
19 used routinely in the Power House even though
20 site policy recommends that substitutes such as
21 Kevlar or Nomex glove be used,” right?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. That’s clearly an instance where
24 DuPont broke its own rules; would you agree?
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0249
1 A. Well, it says “two pairs of asbestos
2 gloves,” so if two pairs of gloves were there
3 that weren’t supposed to be, um…
4 Q. Well, ma’am, it was –
5 A. That was the finding.
6 Q. Ma’am, it says asbestos gloves are
7 still routinely used, correct?
8 A. That’s what it says.
9 Q. Okay. Even though you got a
10 directive in October of 1970 — in November of
11 1977 saying you can’t do it anymore, right?
12 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
13 Q. Correct?
14 A. That’s correct.
15 Q. So you broke your own rules.
16 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
17 A. It looks like two pairs of gloves
18 were available, yes.
19 Q. It doesn’t say just two, it says
20 routinely used, doesn’t it?
21 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
22 Q. And they’re just using that as an
23 example.
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
25 A. It says two pairs of asbestos
0250
1 gloves were noted available for use.
2 Q. It also says that gloves were
3 routinely used, wasn’t it?
4 A. Yeah, it could be that those two
5 pairs were routinely used.
6 Q. Okay. And in 1980 you were still
7 using asbestos tape at DuPont, correct?
8 A. That is certainly possible from
9 the other memo you handed me.
10 Q. And asbestos tape, am I correct,
11 is made up of asbestos cloth?
12 A. I don’t know how it was made; I
13 don’t know what it looked like.
14 Q. You don’t know that asbestos tape
15 was made of asbestos cloth?
16 A. I have no knowledge of what the
17 tape looked like.
18 Q. Did you have a cancer rating for
19 asbestos tape?
20 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
21 A. I have no idea.
22 Q. I’m looking at one thing on your
23 cancer chart that says sixteen percent, no drip
24 tape.
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0251
1 A. And, again, that’s not a rating;
2 that’s how much asbestos is in the product.
3 Q. Okay. Didn’t you, by the way,
4 have an edict in 1966 that said no more asbestos
5 cloth be used at DuPont?
6 A. Well, I think at that time they
7 were looking at things like the A cloth that was
8 used for, um, welding and to catch the drips
9 from welding to prevent fires.
10 Q. 1966 you had an edict no more
11 asbestos cloth, but you were still using
12 products made out of asbestos in 1980, asbestos
13 cloth in 1980, weren’t you?
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 A. There certainly could have been some
16 materials, as I think I said before, where there
17 was no substitute available, there were places
18 they were using asbestos.
19 And, again, I’m sure they looked
20 at the potential for any kind of risk of
21 airborne exposure and in the case of things that
22 would not have the, um, the dust generation and
23 so forth, you know, they were still using some
24 of those products until they could find a
25 substitute.
0252
1 Q. 1980 is how many years after Dr.
2 Stopps’ recommendation no more asbestos at
3 DuPont?
4 A. Well, Dr. Stopps recommended that
5 from his trip report in 1964.
6 Q. Now, you used asbestos-containing
7 gaskets well into the 1980s, correct?
8 A. That’s correct.
9 Q. And there was a determination some
10 time in the mid-1980s that you should stop using
11 asbestos gaskets, right?
12 A. I don’t know if it was stop using
13 them or just that they would not, um…use new
14 ones, that they would, um, try to find
15 substitutes and there were at least — there was
16 at least one process that I know of in the
17 hydrofluoric acid process that they could not
18 find a substitute that wouldn’t disintegrate so
19 they continued to use asbestos and may still be
20 doing so today.
21 Q. Right. And the directive was that
22 for the asbestos that’s still in stock, use it
23 all up, don’t get rid of the asbestos in stock
24 yet, use it all up.
25 A. I don’t know that.
0253
1 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
2 (Brief pause.)
3 Q. So to your knowledge DuPont could
4 still be using asbestos-containing gaskets
5 today.
6 A. They would certainly cover them
7 and so forth and I…I don’t know –
8 Q. Well –
9 A. — the specifics if they have
10 found a material that could be substituted in
11 the processes where other gasket materials would
12 disintegrate.
13 Q. How do you remove an asbestos
14 gasket without causing exposure?
15 A. You can put someone in an
16 air-supplied respirator. If they have to work
17 in that kind of, um, function.
18 Q. So if you’re removing an asbestos
19 gasket, the way to protect yourself is to use an
20 air-supply respirator.
21 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
22 A. You asked how could you; that’s one
23 way. I’m not saying that’s the way that’s used,
24 I don’t know.
25 Q. You agree that an asbestos gasket
0254
1 being put in is probably not that dangerous; we
2 agree?
3 A. Probably not, um, you know –
4 Q. But if –
5 A. — the danger in an HF,
6 hydrofluoric acid, process is pretty great
7 anyway.
8 Q. But remove an asbestos gasket and
9 scraping it out, that can create exposure.
10 A. I’ve never seen it done; I can
11 only speculate that it might.
12 Q. Okay.
13 A. If it disintegrated.
14 Q. Now, in 1979…DuPont was still
15 being cited by OSHA for safety violations
16 related to Du — to asbestos; true?
17 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
18 A. Um, I’ve seen some records about
19 citations, I don’t know specific ones.
20 Q. Okay.
21 A. I know that, you know, I think
22 1979 is one of the ones you mentioned before.
23 Q. I looked at testimony you provided
24 in a Texas case. Do you recall testifying in
25 Texas a few months ago?
0255
1 A. I recall –
2 Q. In a Texas case?
3 A. I recall testifying in a case.
4 Q. A nice young man by the name of
5 Mr. Madecsho (ph) asked you questions?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. He was sweeter than me. And Mr.
8 COTTEN was there defending the deposition?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. All right. And did you testify
11 under oath…that during the period between ’65
12 and ’70, DuPont had no evidence that people were
13 getting sick from handling asbestos in any of
14 its plants?
15 A. That was my understanding, yes.
16 Q. But that’s not correct, is it?
17 A. I think that, uh, certainly when
18 they looked at the medical records from people
19 who were using the asbestos, they did not have
20 indication at that time that there was an
21 asbestos-related disease in any area.
22 Q. So you stand by your sworn
23 testimony under oath today that there was no
24 evidence between ’65 and ’70 that DuPont had
25 that anybody was getting — had any type of
0256
1 asbestos-related injury from any of its plants.
2 That’s your testimony under oath.
3 A. I can only say that I know about
4 those mesothelioma cases in the one individual
5 who worked with asbestos, but, again, no one can
6 say that that particular exposure to asbestos is
7 what caused his mesothelioma, so it’s not
8 possible.
9 Q. Uh-huh.
10 A. And the data’s not there that
11 people were getting sick from asbestos from
12 exposures at DuPont.
13 Q. Okay.
14
15 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-26 is marked
16 for identification.)
17
18 Q. This is an October 25th, 1966 memo
19 from the Medical Director for DuPont, right?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. Why would the Medical Director for
22 the entire company, hundred thousand people,
23 worry about the diagnosis of one person?
24 A. I think that, um, I’ve described
25 this before. They actually identify –
0257
1 Q. You did? Then I’ll withdraw the
2 question.
3 A. Yeah, they identified three
4 individuals.
5 Q. All right.
6 A. Then wrote to the plant sites to
7 get their work history.
8 Q. All right. This is a memo from
9 Dr. Alonzo to a Mr. Martin at the Baltimore
10 plant with copies to Dr. Stopps, correct?
11 A. Um, to Mr. Martin at the Baltimore
12 plant. If Dr. Stopps’s name is on it — oh,
13 yes, there it is.
14 Q. And it’s entitled “Mesothelioma of
15 the Pleura.”
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. And it says “we have on record
18 that a 50-year-old employee of your plant
19 expired some time in 1963 from mesothelioma of
20 the pleura.”
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Okay. Do you know what
23 investigation was done in 1963 when this person
24 died of mesothelioma? Of the pleura?
25 A. I had no idea at that point
0258
1 whether there was any investigation.
2 Q. And this was certainly after Dr.
3 Wagner’s study. Correct? Correct?
4 A. Uh, yes.
5 Q. And it was certainly after Dr.
6 Scheepers wrote in the DuPont textbook about
7 mesothelioma, correct?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. So there was no question that
10 DuPont knew that if you had mesothelioma, you
11 look for asbestos. Right?
12 A. Well, I think that mesothelioma
13 does exist among people not exposed to asbestos
14 and I’m not sure that –
15 Q. Okay.
16 A. — at that point in time they had
17 a reason to actually investigate that
18 mesothelioma.
19 Q. So they wrote a book on it and the
20 guy died from it, but they had no reason to
21 investigate it.
22 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
23 Q. Is that your testimony?
24 A. Uh, individuals at DuPont wrote a
25 textbook and there was a chapter on asbestos and
0259
1 they mentioned mesothelioma.
2 Q. Well, it wasn’t just
3 individuals –
4 A. I think the connection –
5 Q. — it was the people –
6 MR. COTTEN: Wait, wait, wait,
7 wait.
8 Q. — who wrote the textbook that are
9 on this memo, right?
10 MR. COTTEN: Counsel, wait, you
11 interrupted the witness. She wasn’t
12 finished with her answer.
13 A. Dr. Alonzo was one of the editors of
14 the textbook, Dr. Scheepers actually is the
15 person who wrote the chapter on lung diseases
16 and this was an isolated case at this particular
17 point in time. I think that there was just
18 really no connection made to asbestos exposure
19 at that plant site.
20 Q. Okay. So we have the man who
21 wrote the textbook, who edited the textbook,
22 that included stuff about mesothelioma on this
23 memo about somebody who died at your company
24 before they ever went to Dr. Selikoff’s
25 conference, right?
0260
1 A. Well, in 1968 they were — they
2 had looked to see if there were any deaths
3 within the company from mesothelioma and they –
4 Q. Ma’am, this is 1966.
5 A. That’s when he died.
6 Q. The date of the memo is 1966.
7 A. Oh, I’m sorry, 1966.
8 Q. Okay.
9 A. So they went and they asked at
10 that point in time.
11 Q. All right.
12 A. And I think at the time he died
13 there was no real association made with what he
14 was doing at the plant site. It was not until
15 they started asking these questions.
16 Q. And what the doctor says is now he
17 thinks they got a problem, right? So he wants
18 them to do an investigation.
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 Q. Correct?
21 A. No, I don’t think he necessarily
22 felt they had a problem and they were asking
23 about the mesothelioma and I think one of the
24 things here — and I think I’ve said this
25 before. Out of the tens of thousands of workers
0261
1 that DuPont had they, they recognized three
2 mesothelioma cases and they were all in
3 different places and so –
4 Q. Okay.
5 A. — they were looking for some sort
6 of pattern and at this point in time, they were
7 asking what did this person do when they worked
8 for DuPont.
9 Q. These people on here, Alonzo and
10 Stopps, they were the same people in ’64 who
11 corresponded about worrying about lawsuits,
12 right?
13 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
14 Q. Right?
15 A. Uh, one of the things that you
16 showed me they were talking about lawsuits, yes.
17 Q. Okay. And what Dr. Stopps –
18 Alonzo says here is go check this out and see if
19 you can pin the exposure on something other than
20 at DuPont, right?
21 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
22 A. No, he didn’t say that at all.
23 Q. He says “if at all possible, try
24 to ascertain whether there’s any information
25 that this individual worker worked as a roofer,
0262
1 pipe coverer or any other type of exposure prior
2 to joining DuPont.”
3 Correct?
4 A. Yes, and I think, you know, Dr.
5 Stopps even said in his memo you need to look at
6 people’s hobbies and all –
7 Q. Right.
8 A. — the potential for anything that
9 they did.
10 Q. So are you saying that you have a
11 memo in your possession that says that they
12 checked this out and determined the man was not
13 exposed at DuPont?
14 A. All I know is the reply memo to
15 this memo and that is also in my records. As to
16 what –
17 Q. And what did the reply memo say
18 specifically?
19 A. I don’t remember the specifics of
20 this individual and what this person did.
21 Q. So there is a specific reply memo
22 in your records that you did not bring with you
23 today.
24 A. Correct.
25 Q. And that memo to your knowledge
0263
1 says, no, this man was not exposed at DuPont.
2 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
3 A. I think they, um, they identified
4 what this individual did and it did not appear
5 the individual was necessarily exposed to
6 asbestos.
7 Q. Did the –
8 A. In the workplace.
9 Q. Did the –
10 A. But I, I would have to see the
11 memo in front of me, uh, at this time. There
12 were three different cases, three memos and I –
13 I’ve just generalized essentially what those
14 memos said, so I can’t tell you what the
15 specifics were from the man from the Baltimore
16 plant.
17 Q. Let me be specific. Did the memo
18 in response say there was no exposure at DuPont?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form, asked
20 and answered.
21 A. I think it said this man did this
22 particular job and from that you might
23 assume…I could read this and say it doesn’t
24 look like his main job was working with asbestos
25 or anything like that, but I’d have to look at
0264
1 the memo to see what exactly it says.
2 Q. Well –
3 MR. PLACITELLA: Mr. Cohen, do you
4 have that memo?
5 MR. COHEN: I’m not sure what memo
6 you’re talking about.
7 MR. PLACITELLA: The memo the
8 witness has been describing for the last
9 ten minutes. Do you have a copy of that
10 memo so I can ask her questions about it?
11 MR. COHEN: I don’t happen to have
12 one with me.
13 MR. PLACITELLA: Do you have it here
14 in the office?
15 MR. COHEN: No, I do not.
16 MR. PLACITELLA: Okay. Can it be
17 faxed here from national counsel’s office
18 so I can ask the witness about that memo?
19 MR. COHEN: Don’t know.
20 MR. PLACITELLA: I’ll reserve the
21 right to bring the witness back and ask her
22 about the memo since I don’t have it.
23 MR. COHEN: She’ll apparently be
24 here tomorrow.
25 MR. PLACITELLA: So you can produce
0265
1 it for me tomorrow morning?
2 MR. COHEN: If we can look at what
3 you’re talking about, we’ll do the best we
4 can.
5 MR. PLACITELLA: I’m not look –
6 I’m…
7 Q. Can someone read you the date of
8 the memo at your house and tell you what it is,
9 ma’am?
10 A. Um…I doubt anyone there could
11 find it.
12 Q. Did the memo indicate that the man
13 was exposed to asbestos in some place other than
14 DuPont?
15 A. I don’t remember.
16 Q. So the only way I can get the
17 information from you is to have the memo in
18 front of me and ask you questions about it.
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. That’s right.
21 Q. Okay. And the memo was from whom
22 to whom?
23 A. It would have been back, I guess,
24 to Dr. Alonzo and I don’t really recall whether
25 the individual this was addressed to replied or
0266
1 someone else did.
2 Q. In the same year…you documented
3 a case of mesothelioma from somebody who died in
4 1964 who was a chemical operator with no regular
5 exposure to asbestos, correct?
6 A. That sounds familiar from one of
7 the memos.
8 Q. Right.
9
10 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-27 is marked
11 for identification.)
12
13 Q. You have in front of you –
14 A. This is the, uh, individual, the
15 first one came from Baltimore.
16 Q. This is the reply memo?
17 A. This is the reply memo.
18 Q. Oh. Okay, so this is the one
19 we’re talking about.
20 A. That’s correct.
21 Q. This is the reply to –
22 A. This memo to Baltimore plant.
23 Q. Okay, and –
24 MR. COHEN: See that?
25 A. And it comes back from –
0267
1
2 (Whereupon, the court reporter
3 requests clarification.)
4
5 A. It comes back from Mr. Martin.
6 The person to whom it was — the other one was
7 addressed.
8 Q. And it said we looked in our
9 records, right?
10 A. That’s correct.
11 Q. He was hired in 1951 as a chemical
12 operator.
13 A. That’s correct.
14 Q. Right? He was promoted to an
15 operating supervisor and died in 1964, right?
16 A. Yes. This, this one was confusing
17 because it says he was in that occupation
18 until –
19 Q. Right, they did it backwards.
20 A. — 1944, so that’s…backwards.
21 Q. They did it backwards, it should
22 be ’44 and ’51, right?
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
24 A. I don’t know what it should be or if
25 there’s just a wrong number in the second date;
0268
1 I have no idea.
2 Q. It says during his work career he
3 had no regular exposure to asbestos, correct?
4 A. That’s what it says.
5 Q. It does not say that he was
6 exposed to it at some place other than DuPont,
7 correct?
8 A. No, it doesn’t say that.
9 Q. It does not say that he had no
10 exposure to asbestos, correct?
11 A. No, it doesn’t.
12 Q. It says he had no regular exposure
13 to asbestos, correct?
14 A. Correct.
15 Q. Meaning that there is no –
16 scratch that. There is no memo, is there, that
17 says that we investigated this man’s exposure
18 and he wasn’t exposed to asbestos at DuPont, is
19 there?
20 A. There’s nothing that says anything
21 one way or the other –
22 Q. Right.
23 A. — and I’m sure there was probably
24 no record to indicate one way or the other.
25 Q. And this, this was before Dr.
0269
1 Stopps ever went to the Selikoff conference,
2 correct?
3 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
4 A. The individual died in February,
5 1964, the memo is 1966.
6 Q. Right. So as of February ’64
7 DuPont had in its files information indicating
8 that this man died from mesothelioma and that
9 was before Dr. Stopps went to the Selikoff
10 conference, right?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. And that was after Dr. Scheepers
13 wrote his book chapter partially devoted to
14 mesothelioma, correct?
15 A. One sentence or two.
16 Q. All right. And you said under
17 oath that there was no evidence between ’65 and
18 ’70 that people were getting sick from asbestos
19 in any DuPont plant, correct?
20 A. That’s right.
21 Q. And you stick to that even in
22 light of this memo.
23 A. I think that this memo doesn’t
24 give evidence that –
25 Q. Okay.
0270
1 A. — that’s where he got…exposure
2 that caused meso.
3 Q. All right. During this period of
4 time DuPont — who is, by the way, Mr. — who’s
5 Maxfield?
6 A. I do not know.
7 Q. Okay. During this period of time,
8 what DuPont did is they went back and looked at
9 all the X-ray reports for the people who worked
10 at Chambers Works who they thought might have
11 been asbestos-exposed, right?
12 A. They took a group of individuals
13 who were pipe coverers –
14 Q. Right.
15 A. — and they looked at their
16 medical records.
17 Q. All right, so those same guys that
18 you had listed by name in 1968 as being exposed
19 at Chambers Works, right? That’s what they did.
20 A. Um –
21 Q. Right? The same group of pipe
22 coverers.
23 A. I honestly — I cannot relate
24 whether those are the same individuals that were
25 investigated. I know that –
0271
1 Q. Well.
2 A. — they did the study. I’ve not
3 seen the name of individuals who were in the
4 study. I’ve seen reports of the study, but they
5 blanked out the people’s names.
6 Q. Who blanked them out?
7 A. Uh, the medical records people,
8 the people who issued a report would not have
9 put — they just put employee identification
10 numbers on there or something, they don’t put
11 people’s names.
12 Q. So are there individual records
13 available to DuPont concerning the people who
14 were diagnosed in the sixties with asbestos
15 disease?
16 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
17 A. I’ve not seen anybody diagnosed
18 there with asbestos disease.
19 Q. Okay. Well, you know what, in ’68
20 am I correct that DuPont listed by name the pipe
21 coverers who they thought were potentially
22 exposed to asbestos at the Chambers Works
23 facility, right?
24 A. Um, they would have listed
25 individuals who were in that job classification
0272
1 who had the potential for exposure.
2 Q. Right, and we looked that the
3 together, correct?
4 A. Yes, we did.
5 Q. But two years before that they had
6 already figured out who had abnormal X-rays of
7 that group of people, didn’t they?
8 A. Well, they had accumulated and put
9 together in sort of a pilot study the pipe
10 coverers and what their X-rays looked like.
11 Q. Right, so — and their X-rays,
12 some of them showed evidence of asbestos in
13 their lungs, right?
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 A. Mm, I don’t recall that.
16 Q. Okay.
17
18 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-28 is marked
19 for identification.)
20
21 Q. You have in front of you Plaintiff
22 Exhibit 28 which is an August 19th, 1966 memo to
23 Dr. Stopps, correct?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. It’s called “Asbestosis Study,
0273
1 Pipe Coverers Chambers Works,” correct?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Have you ever seen this before?
4 A. Yes, I have.
5 Q. And in saying that there was no
6 evidence of disease under oath, under penalty of
7 perjury you were aware of this document, right?
8 A. Yes.
9 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
10 Q. Okay. And –
11 A. And that’s the name of the study
12 because they were looking, um, for asbestos
13 disease in these individuals.
14 Q. Right.
15 A. But there — as I recall, they did
16 not identify asbestos in these individuals.
17 Q. Well, they didn’t tell anybody
18 they had asbestosis until the 1980s, right?
19 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
20 A. Um…
21 Q. That was part of –
22 A. I cannot agree with.
23 Q. — the company policy.
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
25 A. I –
0274
1 MR. COTTEN: Is that a comment or a
2 question?
3 MR. PLACITELLA: That’s a question.
4 Q. Isn’t it true that until the
5 1980s, nobody at Chambers Works was told they
6 had asbestosis?
7 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
8 A. I really can’t agree with that.
9 Q. Okay. You’re aware of people
10 before 1980 who were told they had asbestosis at
11 Chambers Works?
12 A. I’m not aware of any — either
13 telling people or not telling people.
14 Q. Okay.
15 A. I know what the purpose of this
16 study was and it was to look for cancer in
17 ind — in the pipe coverers and it certainly did
18 not report anyone in this group where they
19 looked at them — even though it’s called
20 asbestosis study they do not report asbestosis
21 among these people.
22 Q. Ma’am, where does it say on this
23 document they’re looking for cancer?
24 A. I know what the purpose of the
25 study –
0275
1 Q. How do you know? You were there?
2 A. No, I’ve read other memos –
3 Q. You’ve talked to somebody who was
4 there?
5 A. — and so forth.
6 MR. COTTEN: Objection.
7 Q. You’ve talked to somebody who was
8 there?
9 A. I’ve read memos.
10 Q. What memos?
11 A. About this.
12 Q. Do you have them home with you?
13 A. Um, I would say that they’re
14 probably memos in my collection.
15 Q. Okay. It says here — it’s
16 entitled “Asbestosis Study Pipe Coverers
17 Chambers Works,” right?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Doesn’t say cancer study pipe
20 coverers at Chambers Works; we agree?
21 A. That’s correct.
22 Q. Okay. And there are designations,
23 condition and the number of workers found with
24 that condition, right?
25 A. Yes.
0276
1 Q. And if you go to page two where it
2 says “From X-ray Reports”…
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. It talks about fibrosis; do you
5 see that?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Do you understand that fibrosis is
8 an indication of asbestosis?
9 A. Fibrosis is a very general
10 condition of the lung. It may or may not be
11 related to asbestosis. Asbestosis is a form of
12 fibrosis, but fibrosis occurs from many
13 different causes.
14 Q. And asbestos pipe coverers, what
15 is — causes fibrosis other than asbestos?
16 A. Um, you can get fibrosis as a
17 result of inflammation, you can get fibrosis as
18 a result of some chemical exposures; there’s a
19 number of different things. Um, silicosis is
20 probably the best example.
21 So there are a number of different
22 ways to get fibrosis and because it can come
23 from inflammation, it’s often been associated
24 with smoking.
25 Q. All right. So in this –
0277
1 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Off the record
2 at 4:13.
3
4 (Brief interruption.)
5
6 (Whereupon, an off-the-record
7 discussion takes place.)
8
9 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Back on the
10 record at 4:14.
11 Q. In this asbestosis study memo, it
12 talks about stuff they got from physical
13 examination cards. Do you see that?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. And it says chest pain.
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Do you see that? Can chest pain
18 be associated with asbestosis?
19 A. It could.
20 Q. All right. It talks about
21 enlarged hearts; do you see that?
22 A. Uh, yes.
23 Q. Three to four people had enlarged
24 hearts. Can enlarged hearts be associated with
25 asbestosis?
0278
1 A. It could.
2 Q. It talks about hypertensive
3 disease. Can that be associated with
4 asbestosis?
5 A. Uh, possibly.
6 Q. It talks about rales on page two.
7 You know what rales are?
8 A. Uh, rales?
9 Q. Right.
10 A. That’s when you make sort of funny
11 noises –
12 Q. Right.
13 A. — when you breathe.
14 Q. Right. Can that be associated
15 with asbestosis?
16 A. That can be a symptom.
17 Q. And they had four people with
18 rales, correct?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Okay. They had a cough. Can that
21 be associated with asbestosis?
22 A. It could be.
23 Q. Chronic expiration, ex,
24 ex…exportation?
25 A. Expectoration?
0279
1 Q. Right, expectoration. Can that be
2 associated with asbestosis?
3 A. It could be.
4 Q. Then it goes down to X-ray
5 reports. See that?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Fibrosis, mild. Two to four
8 people had mild fibrosis, correct?
9 A. Ye — two to six.
10 Q. Two to six.
11 A. I think. Oh, no, oh, not graded
12 was two to six. Mild was two to four.
13 Q. Can that be associated with
14 asbestosis?
15 A. It could be.
16 Q. Then it says mild to moderate six
17 people. With fibrosis. Can that be associated
18 with asbestosis?
19 A. It could.
20 Q. Then it says moderate to severe
21 fibrosis, ten to fifteen people. Can that be
22 associated with asbestosis?
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection. Counsel, I
24 think you misstated what the document
25 reads.
0280
1 MR. PLACITELLA: Moderate, dash,
2 severe.
3 A. Moderate is ten to fifteen.
4 Q. I’m sorry. Moderate –
5 A. Moderate to severe.
6 Q. — fibrosis, can that be
7 associated with asbestosis?
8 A. It could be.
9 Q. That’s ten to fifteen people,
10 correct?
11 A. That’s correct.
12 Q. Moderate to severe…can that be
13 associated with fibrosis?
14 A. It could be.
15 Q. When you have severe fibrosis of
16 the lung, you’re almost suffocating to death;
17 true?
18 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
19 A. I do not know because I was not part
20 of any kind of grading system. I don’t know
21 what they were using as criteria.
22 Q. And it had people with severe
23 fibrosis. Can that be associated with
24 asbestosis?
25 A. It could be. It can be associated
0281
1 with a lot of other things, too, so…
2 Q. Right. And then it has pleural
3 thickening.
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. Do you know of any condition that
6 causes pleural thickening other than asbestos,
7 any other toxin?
8 A. I know there are others; I can’t
9 name anything right now.
10 Q. In here they have five to
11 seventeen individuals –
12 A. I’ve not researched that.
13 Q. With pleural thickening –
14
15 (Whereupon, the court reporter
16 requests clarification.)
17
18 A. I’ve not researched that.
19 Q. Do you agree that pleural
20 thickening is related to asbestos exposure?
21 A. It can be, yes.
22 Q. And here they have five to
23 seventeen pipe coverers in 1966 with pleural
24 thickening, correct?
25 A. That’s correct.
0282
1 Q. All right. And you still stand by
2 your statement that DuPont had no evidence
3 between 1965 and 1970 that anybody who worked in
4 their plants had any evidence of abnormal
5 physiologic conditions related to asbestos?
6 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
7 A. The way you stated that I would say
8 I can’t agree with you at all. I think that the
9 way these results were interpreted there was no
10 evidence of asbestosis, they reported no
11 asbestos bodies, they certainly re — did not
12 report any cancers of the lung among these
13 workers.
14 One of the criticisms of this
15 study was that they did not have a control group
16 of people not exposed to asbestos to make
17 comparisons, but I think that these were very
18 typical things that were found in the lungs
19 they — the individuals looking at this data did
20 not find these findings particularly significant
21 and did not identify these people as being –
22 potentially having asbestosis or asbestos
23 disease at that time.
24 So, um, I stand by my statement
25 that –
0283
1 Q. Some of these same people –
2 A. — this was not.
3 Q. Some of these same people died
4 from asbestos-related disease years later,
5 didn’t they?
6 A. I don’t — I have no knowledge of
7 that.
8 Q. The people who were the subject of
9 this study, does DuPont maintain their records?
10 A. Um, I will — I believe they do.
11 Q. Would DuPont have their X-ray
12 reports that underlie the study?
13 A. Um, they — that’s what they were
14 looking at, yes.
15 Q. I’m talking about today.
16 A. Um, I have no idea how long they
17 maintain those records. X-ray records.
18 Q. Right. Would DuPont maintain the
19 X-rays?
20 A. Um, I have no idea if they would
21 keep the X-rays all this time and whether the
22 X-rays would even be any good by now.
23 (REQUEST) MR. PLACITELLA: I would make a
24 request for the underlying records for all
25 the people that were part of this
0284
1 asbestosis study.
2 Q. By the way, is there any statement
3 in this document that says we found no
4 asbestosis?
5 A. There are — there was some sort
6 of cover letter that I’ve got with this. This
7 is sort of the results of this study, but I
8 found — um, I had some other document and I
9 can’t tell you, but it was more of a cover to
10 this whole thing.
11 Q. You’re aware, are you not, that
12 DuPont was eventually fined for not telling some
13 of these people that they had asbestos disease
14 in their bodies?
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 A. I have no idea whether these people
17 were involved in the lawsuit that you mentioned
18 earlier.
19 Q. Okay. The contractors that worked
20 at DuPont, you knew at around this time that
21 they were filing lawsuits because they alleged
22 that people died while exposed to asbestos,
23 correct?
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
25 A. I’m sorry, I don’t know at what time
0285
1 you’re talking about, we’re, we’re going from
2 one time to another.
3 Q. This same year when you were –
4 the year that you were tabulating who was
5 exposed to asbestos, ’68, in this time frame
6 where you said you had no indication anybody got
7 sick, you were keeping tract of lawsuits that
8 were being filed by contractors who worked on
9 your premises, correct?
10 A. I –
11 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
12 A. I have no knowledge of lawsuits. I
13 have not seen any lawsuits.
14 MR. PLACITELLA: I’m sorry, I only
15 have one of these.
16
17 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-29 is marked
18 for identification.)
19
20 (Brief pause.)
21 Q. You have in front of you P-29,
22 March 4, 1968. Have you seen this memo before?
23 A. I don’t recall seeing it.
24 Q. So in your testimony that no one
25 ever got sick or you never had any indication,
0286
1 you were not aware of this memo?
2 A. No.
3 Q. Okay. And this memo is entitled
4 “Asbestos Exposure Hazards,” correct?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. And it’s on DuPont letterhead.
7 Correct?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. And one of the things it talks
10 about is legal problems, right?
11 (Brief pause.)
12 Q. Does this memo discuss the legal
13 problems that DuPont was having in 1968 related
14 to asbestos exposure?
15 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
16 A. It indicates that there were, uh,
17 two workers who, um, said their doctors had
18 indicated they had asbestosis and…another
19 worker at Chattanooga.
20 Q. No, but my question was does this
21 memo talk about legal problems that DuPont was
22 experiencing.
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
24 A. I think that they’re talking about
25 the title legal problems in another…um, paper
0287
1 that they used referring to the page entitled
2 legal problems, so…
3 Q. And it says — where is Waynesboro
4 by the way?
5 A. I’m not exactly sure.
6 Q. What it says here is there are
7 “two instances at Waynesboro concerned workers
8 who informed construction supervision.”
9 That was your Construction
10 Division, right?
11 MR. COTTEN: Object.
12 A. Um…I don’t know, I — from this…
13 Q. You see right down in the
14 paragraph below, it talks about your
15 Construction Division?
16 A. It talks about they informed
17 construction supervision, so that would be
18 supervisors within the Construction Division.
19 Q. Right. That their personal
20 doctors told them they had asbestosis, correct?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. And that DuPont has taken no
23 action in response, correct?
24 A. Well –
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0288
1 A. — it just says no further action
2 has been taken, so I’m not –
3 Q. Right.
4 A. — sure who that’s referring to.
5 Q. And then it indicates further that
6 there was a death from “an Armstrong insulation
7 contractor at Chattanooga,” right?
8 A. Uh, yes.
9 Q. Chattanooga was a DuPont plant,
10 correct?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. “His widow has been asking
13 questions about asbestos exposure health hazards
14 and making overtones of a lawsuit. No formal
15 action or declaration of intent has been made to
16 date.”
17 Right?
18 A. That’s what it says.
19 Q. So when you gave your testimony
20 that there was no information in the possession
21 of DuPont during the 1960s that people who
22 worked there had asbestos disease, you were not
23 aware of this document, correct?
24 A. I –
25 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
0289
1 A. I have not seen this document before
2 and, um, I’m not sure that this particular memo
3 actually links exposure at DuPont with the
4 disease as –
5 Q. Well, it talks –
6 A. — indicated.
7 Q. You’re not gonna give on anything,
8 are you?
9 A. Well, you know –
10 Q. Okay, so let me go back then.
11 A. — I’m sorry, but I was not aware
12 of this document.
13 MR. COTTEN: Objection to your
14 side-bar.
15 Q. All right.
16 A. Okay.
17 MR. COHEN: Objection — move.
18 Q. This statement would make your
19 prior testimony — this document would make your
20 prior testimony untrue, correct?
21 A. If I had known about this
22 document, I could have at least indicated that
23 some individuals had asbestos disease. Again,
24 as far as I am concerned, this document does not
25 make the connection between exposure at DuPont
0290
1 and disease.
2 Q. Okay, it says “two instances at
3 Waynesboro concern workers.” Presumably your
4 workers, correct?
5 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
6 Q. Correct?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. Who informed the construction
9 supervisor, correct?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. That’s who they work for.
12 A. Um-hum.
13 Q. Right?
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 Q. That their personal doctors said
16 they had asbestosis.
17 A. Correct.
18 Q. And no further action was taken.
19 Right?
20 A. That’s what it says.
21 Q. All right. How come your lawyers
22 didn’t give you this document before you
23 prepared for the deposition?
24 MR. COTTEN: Objection, to form.
25 MR. COHEN: Objection.
0291
1 (DIRECTION) MR. COTTEN: You don’t have to
2 answer that question.
3 Q. Well, didn’t your lawyers give you
4 the other documents to review?
5 (DIRECTION) MR. COTTEN: You don’t have to
6 answer that question, either.
7 Q. Would you have hoped that someone
8 would have showed you this document before
9 putting you under oath and having you swear
10 under oath that there was no indication that
11 anybody at DuPont ever got sick from asbestos in
12 the 1960s?
13 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
14 Q. Would you have hoped that you
15 would have been made aware of this document?
16 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
17 A. I still do not — if I had seen this
18 document I still do not believe that there was a
19 connection made between exposure and the disease
20 in this document and I don’t know what happened
21 later, if they showed that or not.
22 Q. What causes asbestosis other than
23 asbestos?
24 A. You can — you get asbestosis from
25 asbestos. Where you get the exposure and what
0292
1 you’ve been doing to get that exposure and where
2 it occurs and linking it, um, to DuPont does not
3 occur in this memo.
4 Q. Okay. That woman eventually filed
5 a lawsuit for the death of her husband; did you
6 know that?
7 A. No, I didn’t.
8 Q. Is that something you would like
9 to have known before you came here and testified
10 today?
11 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
12 Q. Since he worked at DuPont at the
13 Chattanooga facility?
14 MR. COTTEN: Objection, form.
15 A. I really have not, um, looked at
16 lawsuits at all.
17 Q. The industrial work producing
18 airborne dust particle contamination was
19 recognized by DuPont as a primary contributor to
20 employee health program — problems in 1968, was
21 it not?
22 A. I’m sorry, could you repeat that?
23 Q. Ma’am, internally at DuPont, it
24 was recognized…that exposure to asbestos was a
25 primary health problem in the DuPont facilities,
0293
1 correct?
2 A. I think that after the 1964
3 meeting at New York University people began to
4 realize that there could be the potential risk
5 of exposure to airborne asbestos.
6 Q. Exposure to asbestos at DuPont was
7 a serious industrial concern during this period
8 of time, correct?
9 A. I think many people took this
10 potential very seriously and that’s why they
11 started investigating and trying to do things
12 about it, so from a serious thing, I would say,
13 uh, individuals in charge of safety and health
14 were very serious about trying to investigate
15 whether people were getting exposed to asbestos,
16 how they could cut down on exposures, how they
17 could do sampling and what they could do about
18 this, so from a serious concern, yes.
19 Q. Industrial work producing airborne
20 dust particle contamination was recognized by
21 DuPont as a primary contributor to their
22 employee health problems, was it not?
23 MR. COTTEN: Objection to form.
24 A. I really don’t know whether they
25 considered it their primary concern.
0294
1 MR. PLACITELLA: Mark this, please.
2
3 (Whereupon, Exhibit P-30 is marked
4 for identification.)
5
6 Q. You have in front of you P-30,
7 which is an April 5th, 1968 memo. This is right
8 about the time when they were — DuPont was
9 making lists of people who were exposed to
10 asbestos, right?
11 A. Yes, this is — this memo is from
12 the time they, they put in, um, dust — uh, a
13 special dust control program and what that
14 program was to consider including air monitoring
15 and dust control and respiratory protection.
16 Q. Right. No quarrel with that. And
17 this was, um…
18 A. And this was specifically to the
19 Construction Division.
20 Q. Correct. And copied on the memo
21 is Dr. Stopps, right?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. And a bunch of other executives
24 and field project managers, right?
25 A. Yes.
0295
1 Q. And the first line of the memo
2 states, does it not, “industrial work producing
3 airborne dust particle contamination is
4 recognized as a primary contributor to employee
5 health problems,” correct?
6 A. Yes, and that’s — I think — I
7 interpret that as a very generic statement.
8 Q. Doesn’t say potential health
9 problems, doesn’t say may be health problems; it
10 says primary contributor to employee health
11 problems. Correct?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Okay.
14 MR. PLACITELLA: Off the record.
15 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Off the record,
16 4:35.
17
18 (Whereupon, an off-the-record
19 discussion takes place.)
20
21 (Proceedings adjourned at 4:36
22 p.m.)
23
24
25
0296
1 C E R T I F I C A T E
2
3 I, TABITHA DENTE, a Certified Shorthand
4 Reporter and Notary Public of the State of New
5 Jersey, do hereby certify that prior to the
6 commencement of the examination, the witness was
7 duly sworn by me to testify to the truth, the
8 whole truth and nothing but the truth.
9 I DO FURTHER CERTIFY that the foregoing
10 is a true and accurate transcript of the
11 testimony as taken stenographically by and
12 before me at the time, place and on the date
13 hereinbefore set forth, to the best of my
14 ability.
15 I DO FURTHER CERTIFY that I am neither a
16 relative nor employee nor attorney nor counsel
17 of any of the parties to this action, and that I
18 am neither a relative nor employee of such
19 attorney or counsel, and that I am not
20 financially interested in the action.
21
22
23 _____________________________________
24 TABITHA DENTE, CSR NO. 1592
25
