Evidence proves that the asbestos industry knew from about the 1920s on that asbestos killed and sickened workers who were exposed to it. Because its use was so widespread for so long, hundreds of US companies used the fibrous mineral to make many thousands of products until the dangers of asbestos became widely known in the 1970s. When inhaled, asbestos can lead to a range of deadly and debilitating diseases such as mesothelioma cancer.

As early as the 1930s, executives at asbestos companies were covering up the fact that employees were getting sick and dying in large numbers from asbestos-related diseases. These executives concealed or destroyed memos about the dangers of asbestos, paid off doctors to suppress results or ignored reports altogether, and quietly offered compensation to individuals affected by their daily work with the hazardous mineral, making them promise never to tell their co-workers about their disease. This malfeasance became known as the “conspiracy of silence.”

1. W.R. Grace and Company

W.R. Grace is perhaps most famous for being the villain in the 1996 book “A Civil Action” (later made into a movie starring John Travolta), which detailed the company’s negligence in poisoning the drinking water in Woburn, Massachusetts.

But Grace’s malfeasance in Woburn could not match the devastation it wrought on tiny Libby, Montana. Grace bought the Zonolite mine near Libby in 1963, which produced a very profitable but hazardous vermiculite mineral that was used widely for insulation, gardening, and fireproofing.

Grace knew that the vermiculite was contaminated with tremolite asbestos, a particularly dangerous form of the mineral that causes asbestosis and mesothelioma, but never warned their workers or the public. Grace vermiculite has killed and injured thousands, including children who played on piles of contaminated waste rock that lay outside of its processing plants and played on the town baseball field that was covered in mine waste rock. Until 1990 when the mine was finally closed down, 80 percent of the world’s vermiculite came from Grace.

Grace has never admitted to wrongdoing in Libby, and continues to be a profitable company located in Cambridge Massachusetts to this day, despite having filed for bankruptcy protection in the 1990s. Their new company slogan is “Enriching lives everywhere.”

2. Johns-Manville

Johns-Manville was for decades the largest and most powerful asbestos company in the world. J-M produced countless tons of asbestos insulation, cement, plasters and other products during its 100 plus years as leading asbestos manufacturer before it filed bankruptcy 1982 to avoid paying the avalanche of lawsuits from its victims.
There is overwhelming evidence that J-M executives knew as early as the 1930s that its products were killing its workers, but hid the findings in the face of enormous profits.

J-M, like other asbestos companies denied right up to the end that asbestos is dangerous.

One famous 1966 internal corporate J-M letter states:

“My answer to the [asbestos] problem is: if you have enjoyed a good life while working with asbestos products why not die from it. There’s got to be some cause.”

Johns Manville (sans hyphen) was bought by Berkshire Hathaway in 2001 and continues to be a highly profitable company.

3. Owens Corning

In the 1940s Owens Corning was a fiberglass insulation manufacturer struggling to complete with the rising dominance of asbestos as an insulation product. Drawing from the volumes of published medical literature showing that asbestos was a health hazard, Owens Corning attempted to discredit asbestos and gain approval from the labor unions.

When the strategy failed, Owens Corning joined the fray and became a major asbestos producer itself, adopting the new strategy of the conspiracy of silence.

4. Bendix Corporation

Bendix manufactures brakes and brake linings for the automotive and aerospace industries. Although asbestos-free today, Bendix products were once made from asbestos. Like the rest of the asbestos industry, Bendix knew for decades that asbestos exposure caused deadly and painful diseases such as asbestosis and lung cancer, but did nothing to protect their workers or the public.

In 1970 Bendix sponsored a contest for employees to figure out what to do with the 15 tons of asbestos-filled brake dust that poured out of the factory every day. Despite knowing that asbestos causes mesothelioma cancer even in small amounts, some of the ideas floated by the company were filler for asphalt products, undercoating for automobiles, and filler for bowling balls.

5. John Crane

John Crane has the dubious distinction of being the most popular defendant in the asbestos mass tort. This is because for several decades, almost all of Crane’s gasket material, rope, valve packing, and tape contained asbestos. Not only did Crane knowingly expose its workers to dangerous levels of exposure to asbestos and put them at risk of developing mesothelioma, it also exposed anyone who came into contact with these products.

Unlike many of its fellow asbestos manufacturing friends, John Crane was never forced into bankruptcy and remains a solvent company today.

Thanks to a long paper trail left behind by asbestos industry executives, asbestos attorneys were able to prove that many of these companies knew their products were dangerous yet failed to warn their workers and the public. Asbestos law has emerged as a viable path for victims to receive compensation for their suffering.