Episode 12: Raybestos and the Brake Pad Revolution

Did the auto industry know brake dust was killing mechanics? By 1935, yes—and they agreed to stay quiet. On October 1, 1935, Raybestos president Sumner Simpson wrote to Johns-Manville: "I think the less said about asbestos, the better off we are." That silence lasted 50 years, excluded 900,000 brake workers from health studies, and left Connecticut playgrounds paved with asbestos waste.

Key Takeaways

• 900,000 brake mechanics worked in the U.S. by 1975—none appeared in corporate health studies for 50 years.
• October 1, 1935: Simpson-Brown correspondence established agreement to suppress asbestos health information.
• 47-year gap between documented danger (1930s) and first successful brake manufacturer lawsuit (1985).
• Stratford, Connecticut had the state's highest mesothelioma rates 1958-1991—particularly among individuals under 25.
• $113 million allocated for ongoing Superfund cleanup at the Stratford Raymark site.

FAQ

Were brake mechanics at risk for mesothelioma?

Yes. Brake linings contained 40-60% asbestos. By 1975, 900,000 Americans worked in brake servicing—none tracked in health studies. The 47-year gap between documented danger and first successful lawsuit (1985) left a generation unwarned.

What is the Sumner Simpson quote?

On October 1, 1935, Raybestos president Simpson wrote to Johns-Manville attorney Vandiver Brown: "I think the less said about asbestos, the better off we are." Brown acknowledged their "ostrich-like attitude."

What happened in Stratford, Connecticut?

Raymark gave away asbestos waste as "free fill" for playgrounds and schoolyards. Stratford had Connecticut's highest mesothelioma rates 1958-1991—particularly among those under 25, indicating childhood exposure.

Can families of brake mechanics file claims?

Yes. Over $30 billion remains in asbestos trust funds. Contact Danziger & De Llano for a free evaluation: dandell.com/contact-us/

Expert Source

Paul Danziger — Founding Partner, Danziger & De Llano. 30+ years mesothelioma litigation.

https://dandell.com/paul-danziger/

Resources

• Asbestos Exposure: dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/
• Compensation Options: dandell.com/mesothelioma-compensation/
• Free Evaluation: dandell.com/contact-us/

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making — 52 episodes tracing asbestos from ancient pottery to the 2024 EPA ban. Produced by Danziger & De Llano.

Next: Episode 13 — The Magic Mineral Goes Mainstream.

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/

Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/

Episode 11: The Corporate Architects

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making

In 1898, a British government inspector described asbestos particles as "sharp, glass-like, jagged" and documented workers dying from lung disease. That same year, Henry Ward Johns—founder of America's largest asbestos company—died of his own product at age 40. Three years later, the Johns-Manville merger created an empire while public health warnings sat on file, ignored.

In Episode 11 of Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making, hosts trace how corporations built global empires while evidence of worker deaths accumulated in government reports, medical testimony, and insurance actuarial tables.

What this episode covers:

• Lucy Deane's 1898 British Factory Inspectors' Report—the first government documentation that asbestos dust caused "evil effects" and "injury to bronchial tubes and lungs"

• Henry Ward Johns dies of asbestosis at age 40—three years before his company merges to create Johns-Manville

• Dr. H. Montague Murray's 1906 Parliamentary testimony: a patient who reported 10 coworkers dead, all in their thirties

• Denis Auribault's 1906 French report: approximately 50 worker deaths in a single Normandy factory over five years

• Frederick Hoffman's 1918 finding that insurance companies refused to cover asbestos workers "on account of the assumed health-injurious conditions"

• The 1921 Bureau of Mines propaganda film promoting Johns-Manville—still streamable today from the Library of Congress

Who this episode is for:

Families researching asbestos exposure history, mesothelioma patients seeking to understand corporate suppression, historians examining early industrial health documentation, and anyone following the evidence trail from ancient history to modern conspiracy.

Expert perspective:

"Companies kept meticulous production records—shipping manifests, insurance policies, inventory logs. They just didn't track what happened to the workers. After 30 years in mesothelioma litigation, we've learned that the paper trail always exists. Someone just has to know where to look." — Paul Danziger, Founding Partner, Danziger & De Llano (https://dandell.com/paul-danziger/)

Resources:

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Mesothelioma compensation options: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma-compensation/

→ Attorney profile — Rod De Llano: https://dandell.com/rod-de-llano/

→ Free consultation: https://dandell.com/contact-us/

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/

Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/

Episode 10: The Mines Open

Arc 3: The Industrial Revolution — Premiere Episode

How did a 'miracle fix' for deadly boiler explosions become a century-long catastrophe? In 1880, 159 boilers exploded in a single year—killing workers and bystanders with scalding steam and flying metal. Asbestos insulation solved the problem. But boiler explosions killed dozens per year. Asbestos would kill hundreds of thousands. The cure was worse than the disease—by orders of magnitude.

Episode 10 marks the premiere of Arc 3: The Industrial Revolution. After nine episodes covering 4,500 years of asbestos as rare curiosity, we examine the century (1828-1900) when it became cheap enough to wrap every steam pipe in America—and deadly enough to kill the founder of the American asbestos industry.

In this episode:

• The 1836 Patent Office fire that erased the identity of America's first asbestos patent holder—the fireproof mineral, lost to fire

• Quebec's production explosion: 50 tonnes (1878) to 10,000+ tonnes (1890s)—and zero worker injury records for the entire century

• Thomas Reily: killed by flying boiler metal while walking home in 1853, his death blamed on 'a man in Canada'

• Henry Ward Johns: founded the American asbestos industry, died in 1898 from breathing his own product

• The 1899 Charing Cross case: a textile worker who knew all 10 of his coworkers had died—and became the first documented victim

• Why corporate origin myths always involve blueberries and tea kettles, never 'dust and coughing'

Who this episode is for: Anyone researching asbestos industry history, families tracing occupational exposure in mining or manufacturing, historians interested in Industrial Revolution workplace safety, and listeners following the series from ancient origins into the modern conspiracy.

Expert perspective: "The conspiracy doesn't start with what companies knew—it starts with who they didn't bother counting," notes Paul Danziger, founding partner of Danziger & De Llano and a mesothelioma attorney with over 30 years of experience. "The bodies were always there. Someone just had to decide they mattered."

Resources:

→ Asbestos Exposure Pathways: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Attorney Rod De Llano: https://dandell.com/rod-de-llano/

→ Mesothelioma Compensation Options: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma-compensation/

→ Free Consultation: https://dandell.com/contact-us/

About this series: Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making traces the full history of asbestos—from 4700 BCE Finnish pottery to the 2024 EPA ban—revealing how corporations suppressed evidence while workers died. Produced by Danziger

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/

Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/

When did science finally kill the salamander myth? Not in 1646, when Thomas Browne published his famous debunking—the myth was already dead by then. Renaissance physicians had been burning salamanders and publishing the results since 1537. Browne's contribution was compiling evidence that was nearly a century old. The real question: why did it take 350 years for Marco Polo's explicit 1298 debunking to reach English scholars?

This episode closes our three-part examination of the salamander legend by tracing how myths persist even when evidence contradicts them.

In this episode:

• Pietro Andrea Mattioli's 1554 salamander experiment—published in a book that sold 32,000 copies, the Renaissance's bestseller
• The "citation laundering" that kept Polo's debunking out of English translations for 350 years
• The Royal Society's 1684 experiments with asbestos cloth, measured down to the grain
• Why the Salamander Association formed in the 1900s—six years after physicians documented lung disease in asbestos workers (1897)
• How 54 years separated Werner's 1774 mineralogy textbook from the first US asbestos patent—and the industrial era that followed

Who this episode is for: History enthusiasts interested in how misinformation persists across centuries. Researchers tracing the asbestos industry's knowledge timeline. Family members of mesothelioma patients seeking to understand the corporate cover-up's deep roots. Anyone who's wondered how workers could be exposed for decades before anyone "officially" knew the dangers.

Expert perspective: "The salamander myth didn't leave a paper trail. The asbestos industry did," notes Paul Danziger, founding partner of Danziger & De Llano with over 30 years of mesothelioma litigation experience. "Understanding how misinformation persisted helps us trace how companies suppressed evidence—and why those documents matter in court today."

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma overview: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Free consultation: https://dandell.com/contact-us/

About the sponsor: Danziger & De Llano is a nationwide mesothelioma law firm with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. The team includes advocates who have lost their own family members to asbestos-related diseases—Dave Foster lost his father to asbestos lung cancer; Anna Jackson lost her husband. For a free consultation, visit dandell.com.

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/

Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/

Description

In 1298, Marco Polo named his source: a Turkish mining supervisor called Zurficar who spent three years directing asbestos operations for Kublai Khan. There's just one problem — Zurficar appears in no Chinese, Persian, or Mongol records. He exists in 150 manuscript copies of one document and nowhere else.

Episode 8 of Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making investigates why Marco Polo's detailed, accurate account of asbestos production stands virtually alone in the historical record — and why his debunking of the salamander myth failed to displace four centuries of institutional authority.

In this episode:

• The Genoese prison cell where Marco Polo dictated his memoirs to an Arthurian romance writer who'd been imprisoned for fourteen years
• Zurficar — the named eyewitness who described mining, processing, and fire-cleaning asbestos cloth, yet left no trace in any other historical record
• Chinese documentation of "fire-wash cloth" from 237 CE — a thousand years before Marco Polo — complete with their own mythology about fire mice instead of salamanders
• Why the nickname "Il Milione" (Marco of the Million Lies) first appears in 1559, 235 years after Marco Polo's death — and evidence his contemporaries actually believed him
• Christopher Columbus's annotated copy of Marco Polo's Travels, with 366 handwritten notes including a reference to the asbestos passage
• The Vatican's asbestos cloth that Marco Polo attributed to Kublai Khan — which actually came from a Roman-era pagan tomb on the Appian Way
• Why 350 years passed before physician Thomas Browne finally threw a salamander in a fire and proved Marco Polo right

Marco Polo documented what medieval institutions — trade, law, church — never bothered to write down. A material too rare to trade, too exotic to prosecute, too foreign to archive. The institutions that create records never captured it.

Next episode: Thomas Browne throws a salamander into a fire. The myth that wouldn't die finally does.

Resources

Understanding Asbestos Exposure: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

Mesothelioma Compensation Options: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma-compensation/

About the Firm: https://dandell.com/about/

Free Consultation: https://dandell.com/contact-us/

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/

Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/

• The Prester John Letter (c. 1165): A forged document invents the salamander-asbestos connection—469 surviving manuscripts spread across Latin, French, German, Italian, Hebrew, Serbian, and Russian
• Medieval encyclopedias as misinformation engines: Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum Maius (4.5 million words) and Bartholomaeus Anglicus's De proprietatibus rerum (9 printings before 1500) gave the myth institutional authority
• The one skeptic nobody believed: Albertus Magnus identified "itinerant peddlers" inventing the salamander story to charge higher prices—but encyclopedia beat eyewitness
• Why misinformation wins: Demonstrable fire resistance + geological rarity + Church theology = a medieval business model that mirrors modern asbestos industry tactics

• Learn about mesothelioma compensation
• Understand asbestos exposure sources
• Read client testimonials
• Request a free consultation

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/

Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/

Ancient writers described asbestos cloth in extraordinary detail—funeral shrouds for emperors, fire-cleaned napkins for Roman banquets, eternal lamp wicks for Greek temples. But when archaeologists search for physical evidence, they find almost nothing. The Mediterranean sources that documented asbestos obsessively left no artifacts behind.

This is the paradox at the heart of ancient asbestos history. And it's the template for everything that comes after: evidence that should exist but doesn't, documentation that conveniently disappears, questions nobody thought to ask until it was too late.

In this Arc 1 finale, we examine:

• Why systematic archaeological surveys at Karystos (Greece)—375+ sites, 9,000+ artifacts—found zero evidence of the asbestos production ancient writers described
• How Finnish Neolithic pottery provides better physical evidence of ancient asbestos use than all Mediterranean literary sources combined
• What we can actually verify (Byzantine 1196 AD, Franklin's 1725 purse) versus claims that circulate without primary documentation

The pattern matters today. The same gap between what was known and what was documented—between evidence that existed and evidence that survived—shaped how asbestos companies operated in the 20th century. Internal memos buried. Health studies suppressed. Workers kept in the dark for decades.

If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the attorneys at Danziger & De Llano have spent 30+ years uncovering the evidence asbestos companies tried to hide. Unlike ancient sources, modern corporate paper trails don't disappear—if you know where to look.

Resources from Danziger & De Llano:

→ Understanding your mesothelioma diagnosis: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Common asbestos exposure sources by occupation: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30+ billion available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/

→ Veterans and mesothelioma (30% of cases): https://dandell.com/veterans-mesothelioma/

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/

Book: "Beating The Odds: Surviving with Mesothelioma" by Dave Foster — Real survival stories from patients given months to live. Available on Amazon or request a free copy from the firm.

Related listening: Katherine Keys, the longest documented mesothelioma survivor (18+ years), shares her story in a three-part interview on our sister podcast, MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast.

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/

Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/

Episode Title: Episode 5: The Economics of Magic—What Fireproof Cloth Cost the Ancient World

Episode Number: 5
Season: 1
Publish Date: December 22, 2025

Episode Description

Medieval monks once paid a fortune for what they believed was the towel Jesus used at the Last Supper. The proof? It wouldn't burn. It was asbestos—a mineral worth more than pearls in the ancient world, and the foundation of a 4,000-year con.

In Episode 5 of Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making, we follow the money behind the "magic mineral"—from Cleopatra's 60-million-sesterces pearl collection to the enslaved workers whose suffering never made it into the historical record.

In this episode:

• Why Pliny the Elder compared asbestos cloth to "exceptional pearls"—and what that meant when a single pearl cost six times the Roman Senate qualification threshold
• The two tiny places on Earth—Karystos, Greece and Cyprus—that controlled the ancient asbestos supply, and why Emperor Augustus seized them as imperial property in 17 CE
• How the 1:5:28 cost ratio for ancient transport (sea to river to land) determined which asbestos sources were economically viable
• The invisible labor chain: enslaved miners sentenced to "damnatio ad metalla" and women spinners whose grave markers are all we know about them
• Why no one in antiquity could have detected the pattern that now kills 3,000 Americans annually—the 20-50 year latency period between asbestos exposure and mesothelioma diagnosis made the connection impossible to trace
• How Pliny believed asbestos was a plant growing in Indian deserts "amid terrible serpents"—and why that myth served everyone selling it

Who this episode is for: Anyone curious about how rare commodities become vehicles for deception—and how economic incentives shaped what ancient sources chose to record (and ignore) about dangerous materials.

Resources:

• Understanding asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/
• Mesothelioma overview and diagnosis: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/
• Free consultation for asbestos-related illness: https://dandell.com/

Coming in Episode 6: What the ancients left behind—Finnish pottery shards, the absence of mesothelioma in ancient remains, and the Amiantos site in Cyprus where modern mining began over ancient footprints.

Asbestos: A Conspiracy 4,500 Years in the Making is sponsored by Danziger & De Llano Mesothelioma Law Firm, a nationwide practice with over 30 years of experience and nearly $2 billion recovered for asbestos victims. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the exposure happened somewhere—and Paul Danziger and Rod De Llano know how to trace it back. For a free consultation, visit https://dandell.com.

Resources:

→ Mesothelioma legal rights: https://dandell.com/mesothelioma/

→ Asbestos exposure sources: https://dandell.com/asbestos-exposure/

→ Asbestos trust funds ($30B+ available): https://dandell.com/asbestos-trust-funds/

→ Free case evaluation: https://dandell.com/contact/

Sister Podcast - MESO: The Mesothelioma Podcast:

http://mesotheliomapodcast.com/