When cigarette filters were made of asbestos

Attorney Nathan Schachtman discusses asbestos and its bizarre use by the P. Lorillard Tobacco Company in the quest for a safer cigarette

In 1952, using the popular new medium of television, the P. Lorillard Tobacco Company sponsored “scientific” demonstrations to show the efficacy and implied health benefits of its Kent Micronite filter. The campaign also featured advertisements in medical journals. 

Although the ads did not disclose the composition of “Micronite,” the material that Lorillard touted as “so safe, so effective it has been selected to help filter the air in hospital operating rooms” and that was used “to purify the air in atomic energy plants of microscopic impurities”—was asbestos. 

This exhibition features a display of the Kent Micronite filter created in 2005 for the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society by asbestos expert Anthony G. Rich.

Also in this exhibit, Alan Blum, director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, interviews attorney Nathan Schachtman, whose 35-year law practice has focused on the defense of product liability suits, with an emphasis on the scientific aspects of exposures to toxic substances from products and environmental sources. He has also taught a course at the Columbia Law School on probability and statistics in the law. 

Twenty-six years ago, when Mike Neal first interviewed for a new position with the American Cancer Society, he kept hearing mention of something called Relay For Life. 

“It was new, and it was exciting,” said Neal. “People were telling me you’d go and stay overnight at a high school track. I thought, ‘That sounds like the strangest idea.’” 

Despite his reservations, Neal and his family created a team and headed to their closest Relay For Life in Moon Township, Pennsylvania. His team also brought along a putt-putt golf game, hoping that a sunny day would allow event goers to stop by their tent and try out the game for a chance to win prizes.

Unfortunately, the weather had different plans. Gusts of winds and rain would blow down tents, and event participants would continually have to put them back up.  

During that day, two young blond children kept visiting Mike’s tent, hoping to play the putt-putt game between rain downpours. 

As the night went on, the rain did not let up. Mike walked laps around the track for his team, hoping to be relieved around 2 A.M. But when he saw that the rest of his family was sleeping soundly, he kept walking. 

He eventually took up stride alongside a young man, who was also braving the dark and cold. 

“We started talking, and he said he was from a town in Virginia that was about 5 hours away,” Neal recalled. “I asked him why he’d decided to come all the way here for this Relay For Life.” 

Neal soon learned that the man had lost his wife to cancer earlier that year. Those blond boys who had been playing the putt-putt game, the man said, were his two sons. 

“He said that when he heard there was going to be a Relay For Life in his wife’s hometown, at the high school she attended, he knew he had to come,” said Neal, who now serves as Chief of Organizational Advancement at the American Cancer Society. “He said he needed to be able to do something in memory of her fight against cancer.” 

It was at that moment, Neal said, that he understood what Relay For Life was about. He stopped complaining about the rain, and he continued to walk for the rest of the night. 

“That was my introduction to what Relay For Life has done for so many people.”