Here is the
Lancet obituary (registration requried) of Dr. Thomas Mancuso to supplement the
NY Times obit last month.
"He changed the standards for occupational health concerns", says Peter Infante, a former Director of Standards Review at the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). "He had undying energy to protect blue collar workers at all costs. He didn't trust the government and with good reason."
And according to Dr. Barry Castleman:
Mancuso was hired in the 1950s by the Philip Carey Manufacturing Company, which produced asbestos insulation in Ohio, to provide evidence refuting compensation claims from plant and construction workers who were dying from respiratory complications caused by asbestosis. Mancuso's report to management not only supported the workers' claims, but became the basis for additional lawsuits and governmental regulation, including the attachment of warning labels to asbestos insulation. "The development of the carcinogenic risk due to asbestos or any other carcinogenic agent does not cease when the exposure ceases", Mancuso wrote in the foreword to Castleman's book, "but rather the individual carries the increased cancer risk for the remaining years of life".