Asbestos Podcast EP25 Transcript

Episode 25: The Navy Comes Calling

Full transcript from Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making — a 52-episode documentary podcast produced by Danziger & De Llano, LLP.

Episode Information
Series	Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making
Season	1
Episode	25
Title	The Navy Comes Calling
Arc	Arc 6 — The War Effort (Episode 1 of Arc)
Produced by	Charles Fletcher
Research and writing	Charles Fletcher with Claude AI
Listen	Apple Podcasts · Spotify · Amazon Music

Episode Summary

At the New York World's Fair in April 1939, Johns-Manville's centerpiece exhibit is a character called Asbestos Man — a muscled superhero in a fireproof suit, wrestling fire while children line up for photographs. Brochures call asbestos "the magic mineral." Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's chief counsel, is simultaneously managing the Saranac Laboratory coverup: editing and suppressing studies that show asbestos kills the workers who handle it.

Two months later, Congress passes the Strategic Materials Act, authorizing $100 million to stockpile asbestos and other strategic materials for a war not yet entered. Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah introduces it. President Roosevelt signs it June 7, 1939. A reading of the Congressional Record — every page of the floor debate, every amendment offered — finds zero worker safety language. Not one provision. The hazard was documented. The Act didn't address it.

The buildup that follows is the largest industrial mobilization in American history. The Two-Ocean Navy Act (July 19, 1940) authorizes four billion dollars and over a million tons of new ships. Each vessel contains approximately 300 different asbestos-containing products. The 1944 War Production Board describes asbestos textiles as "a non-substitutable component in all combat vessels." There is no plan B.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard's workforce grows from 9,195 (October 1939) to 27,258 (October 1941). Nationally, the shipyard workforce reaches 1.7 million by December 1943 — the largest industrial workforce America had ever assembled. All of them working with asbestos. Dust measurements taken inside ship compartments during this period reach 142 million particles per cubic foot — 28 times the established safe threshold.

The study recording those measurements — Fleischer et al., 1946 — concludes that asbestos pipe covering is "a relatively safe occupation." The explanation is methodological: 95% of the 1,074 workers examined had fewer than ten years of exposure, and asbestosis takes 10 to 25 years to develop. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Borel v. Fibreboard (1973), called that conclusion "misleading." The study could not be published without Navy clearance; every author was a Naval Reserve officer.

On March 11, 1941, Commander Charles S. Stephenson, Director of the Division of Preventive Medicine, writes to Surgeon General of the Navy Admiral Ross T. McIntire: "I am certain that we are not protecting the men as we should. This is a matter of official report from several of our Navy Yards." There is no written response in the record. McIntire was also FDR's personal physician, recommended for the post because of his ability to "keep a close mouth." A federal court later described the Navy's institutional posture as "official connivance at a coverup of the hazards of asbestos in the shipyards."

By December 1943, the workers who answered the call — 1.7 million of them — did not know about the Stephenson memo, the Fleischer methodology, or the Surgeon General's selection criteria. They knew there was a war. They walked into the dust.

Key Takeaways

Strategic Materials Act, June 7, 1939: $100 million, zero safety language. Every page of the floor debate, every amendment offered — no worker safety provision. This is not oversight; it is the established pattern. The hazard had been documented for twenty years by 1939. The shipyard workforce nearly quadrupled in 18 months. Brooklyn Navy Yard: 9,195 (October 1939) → 27,258 (October 1941). Nationally: 168,000 (June 1940) → 1.7 million (December 1943). Approximately 300 asbestos-containing products per vessel. The 1944 War Production Board called asbestos textiles "non-substitutable" in all combat vessels. The "1922 Navy knew" claim is a myth. The Naval Medical Bulletins are digitized. No asbestos article exists. A 2011 Inhalation Toxicology study confirmed no U.S. government documents addressed asbestos hazards before 1929. The first verified Navy document is the 1939 Jenkins memo recommending respirators. Two studies, same yard, same year, opposite conclusions. Captain Ernest Brown (Navy Medical Corps), 1941: no cases of asbestosis at New York Navy Yard. Separate study, same yard, same year: "a very real asbestosis hazard." That is the Navy's record on its own desks in 1941. Fleischer study: 142 million particles/cubic foot → "relatively safe." Twenty-eight times the safe limit. Ninety-five percent of workers studied had fewer than ten years of exposure — not long enough to develop diagnosable asbestosis. Fifth Circuit in Borel v. Fibreboard: conclusion was "misleading." Published by permission of the U.S. Navy. The Stephenson memo: "I am certain we are not protecting the men as we should." Written March 11, 1941 by Commander Stephenson, Director of Preventive Medicine, to Surgeon General McIntire. Not one yard — several, by official report. No written response in the record. McIntire: FDR's physician, selected for his "close mouth." The Surgeon General who received the warning about asbestos in the yards was the man who saw the President daily. FDR was recorded as opposing Public Health Service inspections of Navy yards because they "might cause disturbance in the labor element." The Navy inspected itself. A federal court called this "official connivance at a coverup."

Key Concepts

The 1922 Myth: How a Citation Survives Without a Source

The claim that "the Navy knew about asbestos in 1922" appears widely in mesothelioma litigation materials and veteran advocacy resources. The sourcing is traceable: it references the U.S. Naval Medical Bulletin, Volumes 16 and 17. Those bulletins are digitized through the National Library of Medicine and related archives. Their tables of contents are public.

There is no article on asbestos. There is no article on occupational dust hazards. What exists is a pattern familiar to anyone who has traced secondary citations in historical research: a source cites another source, which cites another source, and at the bottom of the chain there is nothing. A 2011 peer-reviewed study published in Inhalation Toxicology examined this directly, concluding that "no documents from the Navy or other US government agencies were identified" addressing asbestos hazards before 1929.

The first verified Navy document acknowledging asbestos risk is from 1939: Medical Officer H.E. Jenkins, memo to the manager of the Boston Navy Yard, recommending respirators and protective gloves and specifying that amosite "should be kept sufficiently moist at all times." By the time the shipyard buildup began, there was documented Navy awareness of the hazard — but its origins were in 1939, not 1922.

The Fleischer Study Methodology: Why the Frame Is Wrong

The Fleischer study's central finding — three cases of asbestosis out of 1,074 workers examined — is accurate. The conclusion the authors draw from it is what the Fifth Circuit identified as "misleading."

The methodological problem is explicit in the paper's own data: 95% of the workers examined had been at the trade for fewer than ten years. Asbestosis requires 10 to 25 years of significant exposure before it manifests in diagnosable form. Fleischer was not measuring a population that had been exposed long enough to develop the disease. He was measuring workers in the early stage of what would, for many of them, become fatal illness. The absence of disease in that population is not evidence that the work is safe; it is evidence that the latency period had not elapsed.

The dust measurements Fleischer recorded — and published, with Navy clearance, alongside the "relatively safe" conclusion — were unambiguous: 142 million particles per cubic foot in ship compartments, against a safe threshold of 5 million. The paper published both the measurement and the conclusion. The Fifth Circuit in Borel v. Fibreboard (1973) looked at both and used the word "misleading."

The Stephenson Memo and the Closed Chain of Command

The significance of the Stephenson memo is not only its content but its destination.

Commander Stephenson was Director of the Division of Preventive Medicine. The proper recipient of a warning about inadequate worker protection across multiple Navy yards was the Surgeon General — which is who Stephenson wrote to. What the chain of command produced in response was silence. There is no written response in the record.

Admiral McIntire's dual role — Surgeon General of the Navy and personal physician to the President — meant that the warning Stephenson sent arrived at a man who had been selected for his ability not to surface sensitive information. Stephenson's own memo records that FDR had expressed opposition to Public Health Service inspections of Navy yards because such inspections "might cause disturbance in the labor element." The memo documents both the warning and the institutional architecture that would prevent it from producing action.

The result: the Navy inspected itself. A federal court later characterized that self-inspection arrangement as "official connivance at a coverup of the hazards of asbestos in the shipyards."

"Security of Position": The Arsenal of Democracy Speech

On December 29, 1940 — six months before Stephenson wrote his memo — FDR delivered his sixteenth fireside chat to approximately 50 million Americans: the Arsenal of Democracy speech. Its central argument was that the United States must become the supplier of materiel to nations fighting fascism. The obligation of American workers was explicit and patriotic.

In the speech, FDR told Americans that workers "possess the same human dignity and are entitled to the same security of position as the engineer or the manager or the owner." The phrase "security of position" — not "security of health," not "protection from the work itself" — is the formulation that appears in the record. The distinction is not rhetorical. By December 1940, the decision about whether to inspect Navy yards, whether to enforce dust controls, whether to respond to warnings from the Division of Preventive Medicine, was already being made. The answer was wartime production. The workers' health was a secondary consideration, if it appeared in the calculus at all.

Borel v. Fibreboard and the Legal Legacy of the Fleischer Study

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Borel v. Fibreboard Paper Products Corporation (1973) is the landmark in asbestos personal injury law — the case that established manufacturer liability for failure to warn of known hazards.

The court's treatment of the Fleischer study is one of its notable analytical contributions. Rather than deferring to the study's "relatively safe" conclusion, the Fifth Circuit examined the methodology and called it misleading. This treatment established a precedent for how courts would handle industry-funded research that reached conclusions inconsistent with its own data — a precedent that would become central to asbestos litigation for the next fifty years.

Borel also established the continuing-tort doctrine for latent occupational diseases: that the statute of limitations does not begin to run until the plaintiff knows or should know of the disease and its relationship to occupational exposure. Given asbestosis's 10–25 year latency period, this was essential to making mesothelioma litigation viable for workers exposed during the wartime buildup.

Full Transcript

The World's Fair and the Strategic Materials Act

Host 1: April 1939. Flushing Meadows, Queens. The New York World's Fair opens to the public, and seventeen acres of Johns-Manville pavilion gleam under the spring sun.

Host 2: What was the centerpiece exhibit at that pavilion?

Host 1: A character called Asbestos Man. A muscled superhero in a fireproof suit, wrestling fire itself into submission. Children lined up for photos. Brochures called asbestos "the magic mineral."

Host 2: And what was happening behind the scenes while Asbestos Man was posing for kids?

Host 1: Vandiver Brown, chief counsel for Johns-Manville, was managing the Saranac Laboratory coverup. The studies that showed asbestos killed the workers who handled it — those studies were being edited, suppressed, and rewritten before publication.

Host 2: So the same company funding the superhero was funding the silence.

Host 1: The same company. The same month. From the same boardroom.

Host 2: [pause] That's the world we're walking into.

Host 1: Episode 25. The Navy Comes Calling.

Host 1: Two months after Asbestos Man took his bow, the United States Congress passed the Strategic Materials Act.

Host 2: What was the Strategic Materials Act and what did it authorize?

Host 1: Signed June 7, 1939, by President Roosevelt. It authorized one hundred million dollars to stockpile strategic materials the country would need for a war it hadn't entered yet. Rubber. Tin. Chromium. Asbestos.

Host 2: Where was the asbestos coming from?

Host 1: Chrysotile from Canada. Amosite and crocidolite from South Africa. The British Empire controlled most of the global supply.

Host 2: Who introduced the bill?

Host 1: Senator Elbert Thomas. Democrat. Utah. A mining state. By October 1940, twenty thousand short tons of asbestos — three million dollars' worth — had been allocated for the strategic stockpile.

Host 2: Did the Act include any worker safety provisions?

Host 1: I went into the Congressional Record. April 27, 1939. May 11, 1939. Every page of the floor debate. Every amendment offered.

Host 2: And?

Host 1: Zero language on worker safety. Zero amendments for protective measures. Not one senator stood up and said, "If we're going to mine and mill and weave this much asbestos, we should think about the men handling it."

Host 2: Was that an oversight, or was the hazard not yet known?

Host 1: [slower] The hazard was known. We've spent twenty-four episodes establishing that. The Saranac studies. The Merewether report. The 1935 Lanza correspondence. The hazard was documented. The Act simply didn't address it.

Host 2: And then a year later, the buildup got bigger.

Host 1: July 19, 1940. The Two-Ocean Navy Act. Four billion dollars. Seven battleships. Eighteen aircraft carriers. One hundred fifteen destroyers. One million three hundred twenty-five thousand tons of new ships.

Host 2: How much asbestos went into a single combat vessel?

Host 1: Approximately three hundred different asbestos-containing products. Pipe insulation. Boiler lagging. Gaskets. Bulkhead panels. Electrical cloth. Brake linings. A 1944 War Production Board memo described asbestos textiles as "a non-substitutable component in all combat vessels."

Host 2: Non-substitutable.

Host 1: There was no plan B. The fleet would be built with asbestos or it would not be built.

Host 1: To build that fleet, the Navy needed workers. A lot of workers.

Host 2: How fast did the shipyards grow?

Host 1: Brooklyn Navy Yard. October 1, 1939: nine thousand one hundred ninety-five workers. January 3, 1941, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle runs a headline: "Boro Navy Yard Employment at Peak of 20,200." More than doubled in fifteen months.

Host 2: And by the end of that year?

Host 1: October 1941: twenty-seven thousand two hundred fifty-eight. Nationally, June 1940: one hundred sixty-eight thousand shipyard workers. December 1941: six hundred fifty-six thousand.

Host 2: Nearly four times the workforce in eighteen months.

Host 1: Three-point-nine times. And by December 1943, one million seven hundred twenty-three thousand. The largest industrial workforce America had ever assembled.

Host 2: All working with asbestos.

Host 1: All working with asbestos.

Host 2: Did anyone inspect the conditions those workers were going into?

Host 1: There's a record of one. February 4, 1938. Building 10, Brooklyn Navy Yard. Inspector William Stewart walks through what the report calls "the asbestos mixing room."

Host 2: What did he find?

Host 1: Workers mixing magnesia and fibre for insulation work. Half-mask respirators. Sleeves rolled up with bands. A pail of water nearby for dampening dust.

Host 2: That sounds like they knew the dust was a problem.

Host 1: They knew. Stewart noted that the exhaust fan "sparked excessively and needed repair" and was "too small."

Host 2: When was the fan replaced?

Host 1: September 1941. Three and a half years later.

Host 2: [pause] Three and a half years.

Host 1: While the workforce in that yard tripled.

Sponsor Break 1

Host 2: This episode is brought to you by Danziger and De Llano. Thirty years of turning corporate records into family justice. Dan-Dell dot com.

The 1922 Myth and What the Navy Actually Knew

Host 1: Now. There's a claim you'll see everywhere in mesothelioma litigation and veteran advocacy materials. The claim is: "The Navy knew about asbestos as early as 1922."

Host 2: Where does that 1922 date come from?

Host 1: It's traced to the U.S. Naval Medical Bulletin. Volume 16. Volume 17. The bulletins are digitized. I went and looked.

Host 2: What did you find?

Host 1: The tables of contents are public. I read every entry. There is no article on asbestos. There is no article on occupational dust hazards. The 1922 Navy Medical Bulletin entry on asbestos does not exist.

Host 2: How does a citation like that survive for decades if the source is empty?

Host 1: Every source cites another source. You follow the trail and at the bottom — nothing. A 2011 peer-reviewed article in Inhalation Toxicology said it directly: "No documents from the Navy or other US government agencies were identified" addressing asbestos hazards from 1900 to 1929.

Host 2: So that's myth one. What did the Navy actually know, and when?

Host 1: The first verified Navy document is from 1939. H.E. Jenkins, Medical Officer, U.S. Navy. Memo to the manager of the Boston Navy Yard. Recommends respirators and protective gloves. Says, "Amosite should be kept sufficiently moist at all times."

Host 2: So by 1939 the Navy's own medical officers were putting asbestos protection requirements in writing.

Host 1: In writing. To a yard manager.

Host 2: What about studies of the workers themselves?

Host 1: 1941. Captain Ernest Brown, Navy Medical Corps. Surveys workers at the New York Navy Yard. His finding: no cases of asbestosis.

Host 2: How could a survey find zero cases when those men were working with asbestos every day?

Host 1: Hold that question. Because in September 1941, a separate study at the same location concluded: "The conditions in this shop present a very real asbestosis hazard and immediate steps should be taken to segregate the dusty processes into well ventilated areas."

Host 2: Two studies. Same location. Same year. One says no problem. One says very real hazard.

Host 1: That's the Navy's record on its own desks in 1941.

Host 1: And then there's the study that became the Navy's public defense for the next thirty years. The Fleischer study.

Host 2: What is the Fleischer study and why does it matter?

Host 1: Full citation: Fleischer, Viles, Drinker, and others. 1946. "A Health Survey of Pipe Covering Operations in Constructing Naval Vessels." Journal of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology. The data was collected during the war.

Host 2: How many workers did they examine?

Host 1: One thousand seventy-four pipe coverers. They found three cases of asbestosis. Each of those three had been a pipe coverer for more than twenty years.

Host 2: And what was the paper's conclusion?

Host 1: I'll read it. "Since only three workers out of the one thousand seventy-four X-rayed had asbestosis, it would appear that asbestos pipe covering of naval vessels is a relatively safe occupation."

Host 2: What were the actual dust measurements those workers were breathing?

Host 1: Band saw cutting: up to seventy-three million particles per cubic foot. Cement mixing: up to eighty-four million. Installation on board ship: up to one hundred forty-two million particles per cubic foot.

Host 2: What was the safe threshold at the time?

Host 1: Five million particles per cubic foot.

Host 2: [flat] How do you get from a hundred and forty-two to "relatively safe"?

Host 1: The same paper that reported six to nearly thirty times the safe limit called the occupation safe.

Host 2: How did a court eventually treat that conclusion?

Host 1: The Fifth Circuit, in Borel v. Fibreboard, called the "safe occupation" finding "misleading." And here's why. Ninety-five percent of the workers Fleischer examined had been at the trade less than ten years.

Host 2: What's the latency period for asbestosis?

Host 1: Ten to twenty-five years before it's diagnosable. Fleischer was looking for a disease in workers who hadn't been exposed long enough to develop it yet. He didn't find it. And he called the job safe.

Host 2: Was the Navy involved in the publication?

Host 1: The front page reads "Published by permission of the U.S. Navy." Every author was a Naval Reserve officer. The data was collected during the war. The paper couldn't reach the public without Navy clearance first.

Host 2: So the study measuring dust at twenty-eight times the safe limit, in workers too young to show the disease, cleared Navy review and concluded the occupation was safe.

Host 1: That is the published record.

Sponsor Break 2

Host 2: When you have a mesothelioma diagnosis and you start asking where the exposure came from, you need a firm that has spent more than thirty years finding the documentation that proves it. Danziger and De Llano. Dan-Dell dot com.

Commander Stephenson and the Surgeon General

Host 1: Back to 1941. Six months before Pearl Harbor. And a memo that began quietly and ended up in federal court records.

Host 2: What happened with the September 1941 very-real-asbestosis-hazard finding?

Host 1: That finding went up the chain. And in the same period, Commander Charles S. Stephenson sat down at his typewriter.

Host 2: Who was Stephenson?

Host 1: Director of the Division of Preventive Medicine, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. Writing to the Surgeon General of the Navy, Admiral Ross T. McIntire.

Host 2: What did the memo say?

Host 1: [slower, weight on each phrase] "We are having a considerable amount of work done in asbestos and from my observations, I am certain that we are not protecting the men as we should. This is a matter of official report from several of our Navy Yards."

Host 2: [slower] Several of our Navy Yards.

Host 1: Not one yard. Several. Official reports. And he put it in writing to the Surgeon General.

Host 2: What was the response?

Host 1: There is no written response in the record.

Host 2: Who was Admiral McIntire?

Host 1: Surgeon General of the Navy. And personal physician to Franklin Roosevelt since 1932.

Host 2: What was McIntire's other role?

Host 1: He was the President's doctor. Recommended for the position, on the record, because of his ability to "keep a close mouth."

Host 2: [beat] The Surgeon General receiving the warning about asbestos in the yards was the same man who saw FDR every day.

Host 1: And the Stephenson memo records what the President thought about outside inspections. FDR "thought U.S. Public Health Service inspections at Navy yards might not be the best policy, due to the fact that they might cause disturbance in the labor element."

Host 2: This is Stephenson's account. Not FDR's own words.

Host 1: We don't have a direct FDR document. What we have: Stephenson's record of what he was told. And the outcome. The Public Health Service did not conduct systematic inspections of Navy shipyards during the buildup. The Navy handled it internally. A federal court later described that arrangement as "official connivance at a coverup of the hazards of asbestos in the shipyards."

Host 2: Production over protection.

The Arsenal of Democracy

Host 1: December 29, 1940. Six months before Stephenson wrote that memo, FDR delivered his sixteenth fireside chat. Approximately fifty million Americans — roughly fifty-nine percent of the radio audience — tuned in.

Host 2: What did he tell them?

Host 1: [measured, deliberate] "We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself."

Host 2: Did he say anything about the workers who would build that arsenal?

Host 1: He said American workers possess "the same human dignity and are entitled to the same security of position as the engineer or the manager or the owner."

Host 2: Security of position.

Host 1: [slower] Not security of health. Security of position.

Host 1: December 7th, 1941. Pearl Harbor.

Host 2: How quickly did the workforce respond?

Host 1: By December 1943, one million seven hundred twenty-three thousand shipyard workers. The largest industrial workforce America had ever assembled.

Host 2: What did those workers know when they walked into the yards?

Host 1: They knew there was a war. They knew their country needed ships. They knew the work paid. What they didn't know: that Commander Stephenson had written "we are not protecting the men as we should." They didn't know the Surgeon General who received that memo was also the man who saw the President daily. They didn't know the one published study measuring the dust in the compartments where they worked needed Navy clearance to see print.

Host 2: They knew they were answering the call.

Host 1: And they walked into the dust.

Sponsor Break 3

Host 2: Icom served on the USS Kearsarge and the USS John A. Bole. Boiler tender — the most dangerous job on a Navy ship for asbestos exposure. When he was diagnosed, his doctor said it might go away.

Host 1: [flat] Cancer doesn't go away.

Host 2: Icom found specialists. Became the first VA patient to receive a cutting-edge treatment protocol. Walked into surgery saying —

Host 1: "It's a beautiful day."

Host 2: Eight years later, he's still here. His story — and others like it — are in a book called Beating the Odds. Dave Foster, Executive Director of patient advocacy at Danziger and De Llano, compiled stories from survivors who defied the statistics.

Host 1: It's on Amazon. But if you or someone you love is facing a mesothelioma diagnosis, call Dave directly. He'll send you a copy for free.

The Veterans Who Came After

Host 2: Nearly thirty percent of mesothelioma cases are veterans.

Host 1: Why is that number so high?

Host 2: Because of everything we just walked through. Three hundred mandated products per vessel. A broken exhaust fan that took three and a half years to replace. A Surgeon General chosen for his ability to keep a close mouth.

Host 1: If that's your family's story, Larry Gates can help. His own father died of mesothelioma after years at the Shell refinery in Pasadena, Texas.

Host 2: [direct] Dan-Dell dot com. That's D-A-N-D-E-L-L dot com.

Host 1: Next time on "Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making" — we go inside the yards.

Host 2: The dust so thick you couldn't see across the compartment.

Host 1: The heat so intense men stripped to their waists. Twelve-hour shifts, six days a week.

Host 2: We'll hear from the workers themselves. What they saw. What they breathed. What they were never told.

Host 1: Episode 26: "The Shipyards Never Sleep." The workers are walking in now.

Host 2: That's next time.

External Links

Primary Documents and Legal Records

• Mesothelioma Compensation Guide — Danziger & De Llano
• Veterans and Mesothelioma — Danziger & De Llano
• Strategic Materials Act, Pub. L. 76-117 (1939) — GovInfo

Medical and Scientific Resources

• Wagner GR, "Asbestos and silica," Inhalation Toxicology 2011 (PMID: 21302025) — Context for Navy 1922 myth analysis
• NCI Malignant Mesothelioma — National Cancer Institute
• NIOSH Asbestos Information — Centers for Disease Control
• Schepers 1995 AJIM publication (PMID: 7793430) — Asbestos cancer discoveries chronology

Asbestos History and Industry Records

• UK Health and Safety Executive — Asbestos — Context on international regulatory history
• Asbestos Exposure by Occupation — Danziger & De Llano

Compensation and Legal Resources

• Veterans Mesothelioma — Danziger & De Llano
• Asbestos Trust Fund Payouts — Danziger & De Llano
• Mesothelioma Compensation Guide — Danziger & De Llano

Podcast Resources

• Episode 25: The Navy Comes Calling — MLNM podcast landing page
• Asbestos Podcast Hub — All episodes and series information
• Episode 25 on Apple Podcasts
• Episode 25 on Spotify

Series Navigation

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making — Arc 6: The War Effort
Previous: Episode 24: The Paper Trail	Episode 25: The Navy Comes Calling (Arc 6, Episode 1)	Next: Episode 26: The Shipyards Never Sleep

Related Wiki Pages

• Vandiver_Brown — Johns-Manville general counsel managing the Saranac coverup during the World's Fair
• Saranac_Laboratory — The suppressed cancer research Vandiver Brown managed in the same period (Episodes 22–24)
• Asbestos_Podcast_EP26_Transcript — The shipyard interior: workers' testimonies, Howard Zinn, Clarence Borel
• Asbestos_Podcast_EP27_Transcript — The women who built the ships: household exposure, Newhouse 1965, Jeanette Franklin
• Asbestos_Occupational_Exposure_Quick_Reference — High-risk occupations and exposure statistics
• Asbestos_Trust_Fund_Quick_Reference — Compensation mechanisms for occupationally exposed workers and veterans
• The_Asbestos_Podcast — Main podcast page with all episodes

About This Series

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is a 52-episode documentary podcast tracing the complete history of asbestos from 4700 BCE to the 2024 EPA ban. The series is produced by Danziger & De Llano, LLP, a nationwide mesothelioma law firm with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims.

Episode 25 opens Arc 6 ("The War Effort"), the arc covering the wartime shipyard buildup and its consequences through the present. Arc 5 (Episodes 20–24) established the corporate conspiracy — the Simpson vault, the Lanza study alteration, the Saranac cancer suppression. Arc 6 turns to the industrial scale: the largest asbestos exposure event in American history, the workers who experienced it, and what happened to them.

Approximately 3,000 Americans are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year. Nearly 30% of mesothelioma cases involve veterans, the direct consequence of asbestos use aboard every Navy combat vessel built during and after World War II. Mesothelioma has a latency period of 20–50 years, meaning veterans exposed during the 1940s–1960s are still being diagnosed today. Over $30 billion remains available in asbestos trust funds for victims and their families.

If you or a loved one were exposed to asbestos through Navy service or shipyard work, contact Danziger & De Llano for a free case evaluation. Call (866) 222-9990. Available seven days a week.