An historical perspective on one company's manipulation of the science of occupational arsenic and lead exposure: The American Smelting and Refining Company

American Smelting and Refining Company, once owned by the Guggenheim family and at one time the largest producer of non-ferrous metals, owned and operated both mines and smelters across the US for much of the 20th Century. Some remain in operation, though the company is in bankruptcy, and many suspect, trying to escape billions of dollars in environmental clean-up liabilities.

This presentation concerns Asarco's role in the 1950s, 60s and 70s in manipulating research on both occupational lead and arsenic exposure. Through their Department of Industrial Hygiene, the company conducted secret research in the 1960s on the health effects of lead exposure among their workers and buried findings when they showed excess mortality from cancer. With respect to arsenic exposure, Asarco's research on workers at the Tacoma copper smelter began in the early 1950s and helped to shape scientific discourse on this occupational carcinogen for the next two decades. When the National Cancer Institute (NCI) conducted a study of workers at the Anaconda Smelter in Montana which found an increased risk of lung cancer, Asarco scientists worked to influence the NCI's findings or prevent publication of the study altogether.

Historical documents along with scientific publications and other primary sources provide a window into this company's manipulation of research and callousness toward its' workers as it fought against growing scientific evidence that arsenic and lead exposure posed serious health threats in occupational settings.