J&J knew about asbestos in baby powder

[Greg Bernhardt]

J&J shares plunge 11% after report that the company knew for decades about asbestos in baby powder
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/14/joh...r-decades-of-asbestos-in-its-baby-powder.html

Is it inherent that asbestos is in talc powder? Like if it were removed the powder would be different?

 

[phinds]

This looks like a case of media and market hysteria over a nothing-burger. The trace amounts that are sometimes in the power are apparently harmless.

 

[russ_watters]

This looks like a case of media and market hysteria over a nothing-burger. The trace amounts that are sometimes in the power are apparently harmless.

This one rings an alarm bell for me too. I had thought the ovarian cancer thing seemed unlikely and that was before I heard of a link to asbestos. I need to read up on it more though.

American Cancer Society on the subject:
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/talcum-powder-and-cancer.html

At best, the signal to noise ratio is extremely low.

 

[Bystander]

https://www.google.com/search?q="af...ome..69i57.46714j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[phinds]

https://www.google.com/search?q="african+asbestos"+"canadian+asbestos"&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS577US577&oq="african+asbestos"+"canadian+asbestos"&aqs=chrome..69i57.46714j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Your link merely points to sites that (correctly) discuss the danger of asbestos, but that does not address the fact that the J&J power did not (apparently) contain harmful amounts

 

[CWatters]

Not sure about back then but these days i get the impression there is no real safe level of exposure...

https://www.asbestosnetwork.com/Worker-Safety/

Asbestos is extremely hazardous. According to the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH) "all levels of asbestos exposure studied to date have demonstrated asbestos-related disease" and "there is no level of [asbestos] exposure below which clinical effects do not occur." Therefore, all avoidable exposures to asbestos should be prevented whenever possible.

The Occupational Safety and Health Commission (OSHA) has set a permissible asbestos exposure limit (PEL) of 0.1 fiber per cubic centimeter (f/cc) for work in all industries, including construction, shipyards, and asbestos abatement work. This standard has also been adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency. OSHA is quick to add, however, that the asbestos PEL is a target guideline for regulatory purposes only, and does not establish any level of "safe" asbestos exposure. As OSHA writes in its Asbestos Final Rule: "The 0.1 f/cc level leaves a remaining significant risk."

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

The trace amounts that are sometimes in the power are apparently harmless.

Then why did they hide it for 40 years?

 

[phinds]

Then why did they hide it for 40 years?

Any hint of it would do what happened today. The fact that they hid it doesn't really prove anything other than that big companies are MASSIVELY averse to bad publicity. It is certainly possible that there was a danger here but I've seen no evidence so far.

EDIT: and by the way, this is a PRIME example of a tenet that we're hearing a lot on the news these days, which is that the coverup often creates much more trouble than the crime. Had J&J fessed up to this years ago it would likely not have caused them as much grief, but honesty is not something one frequently gets from corporations (other than in lip service).

 

[Tom.G]

The previously referenced report and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) refer to airborne Asbestos subject to inhalation and subsequent increased risk of Lung damage.

There is also a standard for Asbestos content in drinking water of >7 million fibers per liter may have "Increased risk of developing benign intestinal polyps" (https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/national-primary-drinking-water-regulations)

Any body entry through a body cavity that is moist and essentially self-cleaning due to normal drainage seems at best grasping at straws (or wallets).

Note that there may be an inherent bias in this thread in that all the posters here so far do not have the anatomy required for an empirical test.

 

[256bits]

Any body entry through a body cavity that is moist and essentially self-cleaning due to normal drainage seems at best grasping at straws (or wallets).

People do have tendency of putting objects in places where they were not meant to be.
And of cleaning and tidying up around particular areas that may leave a residue that could work its way farther interior by means of a blunt object.

 

[256bits]

Then why did they hide it for 40 years?

Mined talc has asbestos.
The industry knew.
I didn't know.
My mother did not know.
Chances that I will get cancer of the ovaries due to talc usage is nil, zero, for obvious reasons.
In the early days, they removed as much as they thought warranted, to make a product called baby powder.
Asbestos became a bad word, and I imagine they, JJ, improved their asbestos removal technology, so as to avoid future liability as much as possible.

Is it. JJ baby powder, 100% free of asbestos as they claim.
In retrospect, they maybe could have put such a claim on their product, and deal with occasional product recalls.
California did not subject their powder to "This product may cause cancer."
Sue California.

 

[phinds]

Sue California.

Why? Do you seriously think J&J baby power is going to cause cancer?

 

[256bits]

Why? Do you seriously think J&J baby power is going to cause cancer?

I f your going to sue...
Doesn't CA have bigger pockets than JJ?

I seriously think that JJ baby powder is one of the safest products there is.
( Besides cigarettes hha hha NO that's a joke :) )

 

[russ_watters]

Then why did they hide it for 40 years?

Even if there is no difference in terms of health risk, there is a big difference in terms of marketing and liability between "sometimes contains trace amounts of asbestos" and "conatains no asbestos".

There's a bottled water or filtration commercial out right now where they do a taste test where the facilitator introduces a sample by saying something like "this water contains an amount of lead considered acceptable by federal standards" [paraphrase], and the response by the subjects is predictably negative.

The J&J responses cited in the article appear to me to be excuse-making, for the purpose of keeping the floodgates closed and I frankly neither believe them nor blame them. Juries are not savvy enough and lawyers are malicious enough to turn almost nothing into tens of billions of dollars of liability.

The talc/ovarian cancer link doesn't pass the smell test to me for a couple of reasons:
1. The link was first attempted without asbestos link, indicating to me that it is predatory litigation.
2. I don't see an easy means of exposure.

More on the second one: Shipyard workers wrapping insulation around pipes in poorly ventilated metal boxes (pieces of ships) inhaled asbestos directly into their lungs, from clouds they created while working. That's an obvious exposure path. Not to be too graphic, but it strikes me as very difficult for talc/asbestos to find a way into a woman's ovaries even if applied topically and then a tampon is inserted. And that's assuming there is more than a trace amount of asbestos in the talc -- for the shipyard workers, it's all asbestos and it was being pulled directly into their lungs.

It should not be surprising then that the evidence for asbestos causing mesothelioma is extremely strong and the evidence for asbestos or talc causing cervical cancer is extremely weak.

The article itself is very thin on relevant data and very heavy on emotion-stroking. About the only piece of any relevance is this:

In July 1971, meanwhile, J&J sent a delegation of scientists to Washington to talk to the FDA officials looking into asbestos in talcum powders. According to an FDA account of the meeting, J&J shared “evidence that their talc contains less than 1%, if any, asbestos.”

That's 47 years ago and it's still very vague. What are the actual concentrations measured in what fraction of samples? I don't know if there is a mechanism for this, but IMO, the FDA should step in, conduct an investigation and either shut down production of talc or shut down the lawsuits.

This is promising moving forward, but doesn't inform to past risk and current cancers:

In 2009, the FDA, responding to growing public concern about talc, commissioned tests on 34 samples, including a bottle of J&J Baby Powder and samples of Imerys talc from China. No asbestos was detected.

 

[russ_watters]

EDIT: and by the way, this is a PRIME example of a tenet that we're hearing a lot on the news these days, which is that the coverup often creates much more trouble than the crime. Had J&J fessed up to this years ago it would likely not have caused them as much grief, but honesty is not something one frequently gets from corporations (other than in lip service).

Disagree. Even setting aside that the article cites decades of FDA-J&J action on the issue (so, what coverup?), what J&J gained here was decades of hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. If talc is destroyed, it will be destroyed by litigation over the danger or flippant regulation like requiring a meaningless but ominous warning label. You can't claim harm from a coverup and J&J isn't a politician trying to win an election.

 

[russ_watters]

California did not subject their powder to "This product may cause cancer."
Sue California.

This is one of California's more insane insanities. That law was pushed through by a lawyer who has since earned a nice living suing companies over the label. The law does not exist to prevent cancer, it exists to enable lawsuits about poorly produced paperwork...and that's even setting aside the face-value idiocy of it.

And I don't think you could sue CA over this. It's difficult to sue the government because they write the laws. You can't easily sue them over laws that should exist but don't.

 

[phinds]

Disagree. Even setting aside that the article cites decades of FDA-J&J action on the issue (so, what coverup?), what J&J gained here was decades of hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. If talc is destroyed, it will be destroyed by litigation over the danger or flippant regulation like requiring a meaningless but ominous warning label. You can't claim harm from a coverup and J&J isn't a politician trying to win an election.

Good points.

 

[russ_watters]

Good points.

...it does make the article sexier though.

 

[Astronuc]

J&J shares plunge 11% after report that the company knew for decades about asbestos in baby powder
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/14/joh...r-decades-of-asbestos-in-its-baby-powder.html

Is it inherent that asbestos is in talc powder? Like if it were removed the powder would be different?

The timing of the drop in J&J shares is interesting, considering that "On July 12, 2018, a Missouri jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay a record $4.69 billion to 22 women who alleged the company’s talc-based products, including its baby powder, contain asbestos and caused them to develop ovarian cancer.[8]"
[8] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...n-missouri-asbestos-cancer-case-idUSKBN1K234U

"Talc or talcum is a clay mineral composed of hydrated magnesium silicate with the chemical formula H₂Mg₃(SiO₃)₄ or Mg₃Si₄O₁₀(OH)₂. In loose form, it is (in ratio with or without corn starch) one of the most widely used substances known as baby powder." from the Wikipedia article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talc

Asbestos refers to six types of silicate materials, so it's possible that some asbestos will be found in talc or talcum powder. See the section on Talc under
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos#Asbestos_contaminants_in_other_products

"By 1973, US federal law required all talc products to be asbestos-free," so in theory, J&J complied with Federal regulations.

From the Wikipedia article: "Amosite and crocidolite are considered the most hazardous asbestos fiber types; however, chrysotile asbestos has also produced tumors in animals and is a recognized cause of asbestosis and malignant mesothelioma in humans, . . . ."
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos#Health_impact

Chrysotile's forumula: Mg₃(Si₂O₅)(OH)₄

Supposedly, J&J has no contamination, or levels lower than required by federal regulation. I'm wondering what objective evidence was provided to the jury such that they concluded J&J is liable.