![]() ![]() Had the company responded to the dangers of asbestosis and lung cancer with extensive medical research, assiduous communication, insistent warnings, and a rigorous dust-reduction program, it could have saved lives and would probably have saved the stockholders, the industry, and, for that matter, the product. "Manville managers at every level were unwilling or unable to believe in the long-term consequences of these known hazards. He contends that management was in denial. Bill Sells, a manager with Johns Manville and the Manville Corporation for more than 30 years, wrote a Harvard Business Review article in which he analyzed what happened. But to keep this devastating secret for more than 40 years, throughout many changes in management, is a staggering notion to contemplate. It's one thing to hide something for a few years. One of the real mysteries surrounding this case is how so many senior executives over so many years could manage to live with themselves while keeping the awful secret of asbestos-related illness. The new corporation has a strong commitment to funding the costs of the claims filed against its former self, and Manville executives have voiced what appears to be a real commitment to ethics within the corporation in an effort to prevent what happened from happening again. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1982, has been reorganized, and has been renamed the Manville Corporation. As a result of the massive litigation, Johns Manville established a fund containing hundreds of millions of dollars to settle claims. Many of these deaths are lingering ones in which the quality of life diminishes greatly over many years. Many more thousands are expected to be filed as more workers develop fatal diseases that were the result of exposure during World War II. The company appeared to totally ignore the obligations it had to other stakeholder groups.īy 1982, more than 17,000 lawsuits had been filed against Johns Manville. The only stakeholder groups considered by Johns Manville during this period seem to have been the senior executives and the shareholders. Johns Manville executives hid scientific data lied to the public, the government, and their employees and kept quiet about the danger to which tens of thousands of workers were being exposed. In addition, company doctors lied to asbestos workers at Manville facilities and told them they had no health problems. Warning labels were not placed on asbestos packaging until 1964. ![]() (In fact, Prudential Insurance stopped insuring asbestos workers' lives in 1928.) Although some executives were disturbed by the connection between their products and workers' illnesses, the sentiments of the stonewallers prevailed. According to company documents, the management tier of Johns Manville became aware of the adverse health effects of asbestos exposure as early as the mid 1930s. Johns Manville was the largest manufacturer of products containing asbestos in the US for much of the twentieth century. ![]() However, by the mid-1970s tens of thousands of people who worked with asbestos were beginning to suffer from the fatal diseases we now know are characteristic of asbestos exposure. The danger of inhaling even minute amounts of asbestos was not publicly known until the 1970s, mainly because the incubation period for many of the asbestos-related lung diseases and cancers is anywhere from 10 to 40 years. Millions of homes, schools, workplaces and other buildings contained asbestos insulation thousands of ship workers in World War II installed asbestos in battleships and other watercraft and thousands of auto mechanics had fixed innumerable automobile brakes lined with asbestos. ![]() Some estimate that over 3,000 products contained one or more asbestos components. COMPANY: JOHNS MANVILLE INDUSTRY: ASBESTOS SITUATION HOW THE COMPANY HANDLED IT RESULTS COMMENTSįor decades, asbestos was the favored insulator in myriad construction products. ![]()
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