Sayers, Royd

One of the physicians, Royd Sayers (1885—1965), was new to industrial medicine. Born in the small Indiana town of Crothersville, where his father owned a jewelry store, Sayers had studied chemistry at the University of Indiana. After working as a chemist for three years, he enrolled in the medical school of the University of Buffalo, teaching chemistry while pursuing his studies. Upon completing his internship in 1915, he joined the Public... 

Harrington made similar points in Coal Age and the Journal of Industrial Hygiene, adding an appeal to company doctors to reveal what they knew to public health authorities. But objections from coal companies led the Bureau of Mines to prevent publication of the details of the studies. Royd Sayers contradicted Harrington and offered support for the mine owners view of the science. Coal dust, he contended, is nearly harmless only silica particles cause lung disease.23... 

Royd Sayers in 1932. (Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division.)... 

The handoff went with little incident Royd Sayers sat in on the meetings where the foundation was conceived and served on its board of trustees. 

The foundation committee, which was chaired by Anthony Lanza and counted Royd Sayers among its members, proposed a value of 5 million silica particles per cubic meter of air. The choice of this number was an exercise of discretion, carried out by a body responsible to its corporate sponsors rather than the general public. The committee recognized, in a publication intended for the foundation s membership, that it lacked the knowledge upon which to base such thresholds. 32... 

It is never easy to untangle human motivations, especially at a remove of decades. The scientists who provided rationalizations for pollution did so for many reasons. Honest mistakes and intellectual stubbornness were at work alongside conformism and careerism. But the life of Royd Sayers suggests that honest error cannot fully explain the triumph of industry s favored ideas about pollution. The recurrent theme of Sayers scientific career is willingness to twist research to yield predetermined answers. A taste for expensive homes and a conveniently timed political conversion complete an unmistakable portrait of opportunism. 

Cannon was not finished. If lead and arsenic were to be openly allowed in food, a scientific justification had to be concocted. For this he turned to Royd Sayers. The matchmaker who brought together the legislator and the Public Health Service was Felix Wormser, secretary of the Lead Industries Association and orchestrator of the defense of lead paint. In his efforts to protect the lead makers markets, Wormser was not fastidious. He used his control of industry research... 

The edifice of scientific orthodoxy erected by Royd Sayers, Anthony Lanza, Robert Kehoe, and their collaborators was under assault from more than one direction. On one side was the wave of popular and media attention that followed Silent Spring. From another came advances in environmental science, knocking out the underpinnings of the scientific defenses that polluters had labored diligently to build. 

A. D. Cloud, Profiles in Occupational Health Royd Ray Sayers, Industrial Medicine and Surgery, vol. 28, pp. 586-591 (1959) http //www.trumanlibrary. org/hstpaper/sayersrr.htm R. C. Williams, The United States Public Health Service, 7798 1950 (Washington, Commissioned Officers Association of the United States Public Health Service, 1951), pp. 283, 357-359. 

Cloud, Royd Ray Sayers Dr. Royd Sayers, Noted for Industrial Medicine, Washington Post, April 24, 1965. 

Drew Pearson syndicated column, March 14, 1949 Cloud, Royd Ray Sayers Derickson, BlackLung, pp. 115-119, 124-126. 

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