The newspaper series caused Georgia-Pacific’s chairman to pen an op-ed in the same paper, claiming that “throughout the years we’ve dealt with the legal consequences of asbestos fibers, we have worked diligently and in good faith to resolve a staggering 250,000 individual legal claims,” and that “we have consistently acted responsibly-for victims, our employees and shareholders.”Įven if the company did act as it claimed up to 2002, by 2005-under the guidance of the same chairman-Georgia-Pacific had turned to counterfeit science to fend off lawsuits. An unflattering three-part series in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that year revealed that Georgia-Pacific was aware of the science showing the dangers of asbestos for several years before the company put a warning label on Ready-Mix. In 1977, as the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) moved to ban asbestos-containing joint compound, Georgia-Pacific’s chairman even wrote to CPSC that “We support a total ban on spackling compound containing asbestos,” as Georgia-Pacific had already “ceased using asbestos in our product and switched to a substitute.” Despite that public statement, however, the company privately worried about its liability for having sold the asbestos-containing product for many years.īy 2002, concern about asbestos-related legal claims had severely damaged Georgia-Pacific’s stock. Since the 1970s, its use has been heavily regulated, although it is not banned in the US. Both domestic and international government agencies now classify it as a known human carcinogen, linked to asbestosis, mesothelioma, and other lung cancers. In so doing, the company created a life-threatening hazard by deceiving those who rely on science to understand the health risks of asbestos exposure.Īsbestos-which is not a single mineral at all, but rather a collective name for six fibrous minerals-has been shown by many scientific studies to be extremely dangerous to human health. Rather than face those claims honestly, beginning in 2005, Georgia-Pacific crafted and published counterfeit science-seeding the literature with articles intended to raise doubts about the dangers posed by asbestos. As the dangers from asbestos became publicly known, Georgia-Pacific, like many other companies that had made asbestos-containing products, became swamped with a deluge of legal claims from people who had contracted lung disease from exposure to the company’s product. One such product-a version of the construction material known as joint compound, sold under the name Ready-Mix-contained asbestos from 1965 to 1977 and proved to be a major problem for its manufacturer Georgia-Pacific, a conglomerate now owned by Koch Industries that specializes in wood and paper products. The so-called “ magic mineral” was in fireproof theater curtains, gas masks, prison-cell padding, brake linings, and thousands of other products. From the turn of the century through the 1970s, asbestos was inescapable.
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