Asbestos Touted for Paper Use, ‘60s Memo Says

A document recently discovered through litigation describes efforts by Union Carbide to promote the use of asbestos in facial tissues, a development that prompted Kleenex maker Kimberly-Clark Corp. to issue a denial Tuesday.

The memo, believed to be from the late 1960s, indicates that Union Carbide sold asbestos to at least one paper manufacturer for use in facial tissues.

Union Carbide’s Asbestos Information Bulletin promotes the use of asbestos as a softening agent in facial tissues and towels and mentions “Clark softness values,” an apparent reference to Kimberly-Clark.

“This trial indicated that this paper company can save $174,000 per year in their facial operation alone,” the memo says. “Result of this work with this paper company: The company now uses asbestos in all products--tissue, towels and facial tissue.”

“At no time did Kimberly-Clark commission the use of asbestos as an ingredient in the manufacture of any Kimberly-Clark tissue product,” the company said in a statement issued Tuesday.

Paper companies are among the latest targets of asbestos lawsuits. Kimberly-Clark is named in 142, according to the annual report it filed this week.

Asbestos--once used in insulation, floor tile, hair dryers, automotive brakes and thousands of other products--is associated with several diseases, including a rare cancer that appears decades after exposure. The discovery that there were asbestos-laden facial tissues on the market would be an alarming development, given the possibility of consumers breathing in asbestos fibers.

Lawyers representing victims of asbestos-related diseases discovered the memo several months ago in a Union Carbide document repository. They are investigating and have pressed Kimberly-Clark and other tissue makers to disclose whether they used asbestos in consumer products.

Representatives of Union Carbide, which was acquired last year by Dow Chemical Co., could not be reached for comment.

Kimberly-Clark said it reviewed historical documents and interviewed current and retired plant workers, scientists, engineers and executives. That investigation showed that the company “never permitted asbestos to be used as an ingredient in any tissue product it sold,” the statement said.

Spokesman Dave Dickson also noted that tests on 16 boxes of tissues provided by lawyer Mark Lanier found no trace of asbestos.

“It appears the plaintiff is casting a wide net over a number of companies,” Kimberly-Clark said. “The plaintiff’s claim seems to be based upon marketing materials which are nearly 40 years old.”

But Lanier, a Houston lawyer representing more than 100 plaintiffs in three lawsuits against Kimberly-Clark, said he suspects that the company put asbestos in facial tissues because of the Union Carbide memo’s use of the phrase “Clark softness values.”

“I also have information that Kimberly-Clark was buying asbestos from the late ‘60s through 1976,” Lanier said. “So they are buying asbestos. What are they doing with it? I do believe they were putting it in some kind of paper product.”

Lanier said the tissues that were tested were from the 1930s and 1940s, earlier than the period under suspicion. Since then, he said, he has obtained 20 more boxes through the Internet auction site EBay. Those boxes, which are from a “variety of periods,” have yet to be tested, he said.

“I don’t have lock-down proof yet,” he said.

The discovery within the last six months of other documents showing Union Carbide sold asbestos to paper companies has brought more than a dozen manufacturers and mills into the sights of plaintiffs’ lawyers.

Georgia-Pacific Corp., Scott Paper Co. and Weyerhaeuser Co. are among thousands of companies that have been sued for exposing people to asbestos.

Fifty-four companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as a result of asbestos lawsuits, and the litigation is expected to eventually cost companies $275 billion.

More than 500,000 people have filed lawsuits against thousands of companies alleging they were injured by exposure to asbestos, and some experts believe as many as 2 million more claims will be filed.