31Perth 1961
Neil Smith had told Vivienne that he frequently wondered why he even bothered subscribing to the British Journal of Industrial Medicine. It was the department that paid for the subscription, but he was the one that read the journals. He had hoped to acquire more information about the hazards of asbestos exposure, but the journal’s editors seemed to have greater fervour for the pitfalls of coal mining or ship building than asbestos mining. His knowledge about asbestos diseases had effectively stalled. Even the copy of White and Richards’ report into the asbestos cement industry he had received “with compliments” from his counterpart in New South Wales, Cecil White, had not told him anything he did not already know. It was common knowledge that asbestos cement sheets were harml
