EPA "Gold Book" warned auto mechanics of asbestos dangers

The EPA "Gold Book" -- titled "Guidance for Prevention Asbestos Disease Among Auto Mechanics" -- was written in 1986 after full review by EPA, OSHA, NIOSH, and others. This 16-page pamphlet (with the gold cover) was uncontroversial at the time it was published. It warned that mechanics grinding asbestos-containing brake and clutch parts urgently needed to have dust controls on the grinding wheels.

Compressed air blow-out of brake drums, which would be forbidden by an OSHA standard issued the same month the EPA pamphlet came out, was advised against, unless it could be done inside a transparent glove-box enclosure designed to draw away the dusty air to a high-efficiency air filter.

Significant exposures were otherwise going to occur and place people at risk of dying from asbestosis and cancer, warned the Gold Book. It was distributed to all of the vocational and technical schools in the country, in an exemplary government public health information effort.