The CTFA, which now does business as the Personal Care Products Council, declined to comment. When Reuters told him about the evidence that had emerged in recent litigation, he said: “They knew what the problems were, and they hid it.” J&J’s records would have made a “100% difference” in Coker’s case. As early as 1976, Ashton, J&J’s longtime talc overseer, recognized as much in a memo to colleagues. Bicks said that Zeitz was not reporting on actual test results. This is especially true of talc-based powders, with their small, easily inhaled particles. Most of the authors of these and other J&J records cited in this article are dead. The following year, Zeitz reported that based on weekly tests of talc samples over six months, “it can be stated with a greater than 99.9% certainty that the ores and materials produced from the ores at all Windsor Mineral locations are free from asbestos or asbestiform minerals.”Â. Since 2003, talc in Baby Powder sold in the United States has come from China through supplier Imerys Talc America, a unit of Paris-based Imerys SA and a co-defendant in most of the talc litigation. The reports identify contaminants in talc and finished powder products as asbestos or describe them in terms typically applied to asbestos, such as “fiberform” and “rods.”, In 1976, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was weighing limits on asbestos in cosmetic talc products, J&J assured the regulator that no asbestos was “detected in any sample” of talc produced between December 1972 and October 1973. As if that weren’t enough, there’s also actual diamond powder in the mix to impart the prettiest (and subtlest) shimmer. Johnson's Baby Powder for Delicate Skin, Hypoallergenic and Free of Parabens, Phthalates, and Dyes for Baby Skin Care, 4 oz. Read the documents cited in this article, After damaging Reuters report, J&J doubles down on talc safety message. Just two months after the Dartmouth professor reported his findings, Windsor Minerals Research and Development Manager Vernon Zeitz wrote that chrysotile, “fibrous anthophyllite” and other types of asbestos had been “found in association with the Hammondsville ore body” – the Vermont deposit that supplied Baby Powder talc for more than two decades. 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Hammondsville was the primary source of Baby Powder talc from 1966 until its shutdown in 1990. Since talc deposits are often laced with asbestos, the scientists reasoned, perhaps talcum powders played a role. The author of the review article concluded that the “concern that has been expressed about the possible health hazard from consumer exposure to cosmetic talc is unwarranted … There is no evidence that its normal use poses a hazard to health.”. In the morning, just shake out the baby powder or you can even leave it in for really bad odors. X-ray scanning is the primary method J&J has used for decades. 3 Ounce (Pack of 1) 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,761. The original version conveyed a blanket assurance of safety. I personally like to use a powder brush for an even and ‘light-handed’ application. They shared their preliminary findings with New York City’s environmental protection chief, Jerome Kretchmer. Baby powder is an inexpensive and effective way to keep your baby happy by preventing diaper rash, chafing, and irritation. J&J’s original records don’t always make that distinction. In terms of health risk, regulators since the early 1970s have treated small fiber-shaped particles of both forms the same. Most patients die within a year of diagnosis. Coker’s daughter Crystal Deckard was 5 when her sister, Cady, was born in 1971. J&J should use those records “for maximum benefit,” Ashton said in a May 8, 1973, letter to Dr Gavin Hildick-Smith, J&J’s director of medical affairs. Get your gloves off. Baby Powder Talc Free - USDA Certified Organic Dusting Powder for Excess Moisture & Chafing That’s Actually Good for Your Skin- Non Toxic, Non-GMO, Cruelty Free Era-Organics. Johnson’s Baby Powder grew out of a line of medicated plasters, sticky rubber strips loaded with mustard and other home remedies. Cornstarch came up again in a March 5, 1974, report in which Ashton, the J&J talc supply chief, recommended that the company research that alternative “for defensive reasons” because “the thrust against talc has centered primarily on biological problems alleged to result from the inhalation of talc and related mineral particles.”. By the early 1970s, asbestos was widely recognized as the primary cause of mesothelioma among workers involved in producing it and in industries that used it in their products. “We have replied,” the doctor wrote, that “we would not regard the usage of our powders as presenting any hazard.” Such assurances would be impossible, he added, “if we do include Tremolite in more than unavoidable trace amounts.”, The memo is the earliest J&J document reviewed by Reuters that discusses tremolite as more than a scratchy nuisance. Is Baby Powder Safe? Alle grafischen Leistungen werden in unserem Hause erstellt. As the FDA continued to investigate asbestos in talc, J&J sent powder samples to be tested at private and university labs. That approach was summed up by a J&J applied research director in a “strictly confidential” March 3, 1975, memo to managers of the baby products division, which used the talc in J&J’s signature Baby Powder. Asbestos, like many environmental carcinogens, has a long latency period. RJ Lee said it does not comment on the work it does for clients. The earliest mentions of tainted J&J talc that Reuters found come from 1957 and 1958 reports by a consulting lab. But internal documents examined by Reuters show that the company's powder was sometimes tainted with carcinogenic asbestos and that J&J kept that information from regulators and the public. Abfüllung, Verkopfung, Konfektion werden zu 100% in Handarbeit durchgeführt. Hildick-Smith sent money to the Italian talc exporter-physician to hire a team of researchers. By 1973, Tom Shelley, director of J&J’s Central Research Laboratories in New Jersey, was looking into acquiring patents on a process that a British mineralogist and J&J consultant was developing to separate talc from tremolite. In a Sept. 6, 1974, letter, J&J told the FDA that since “a substantial safety factor can be expected” with talc that contains 1 percent asbestos, “methods capable of determining less than 1% asbestos in talc are not necessary to assure the safety of cosmetic talc.”, Not everyone at the FDA thought that basing a detection method on such a calculation was a good idea. J&J didn’t tell the FDA about a 1974 test by a professor at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire that turned up asbestos in talc from J&J – “fiberform” actinolite, as he put it. (And it's hard to keep powder out of the air when you're using it.) On June 29, 1971, Kretchmer informed the Nixon administration and called a press conference to announce that two unidentified brands of cosmetic talc appeared to contain asbestos. “Some of them seem rather high,” the private lab wrote in its cover letter. Buy top selling products like Baby Brezza® Formula Pro Advanced Formula Dispenser and Noodle & Boo® 8.8 oz.& Delicate Baby Powder. “J&J respectfully disagrees with the Judge’s comments,” Bicks said. J&J didn’t tell the FDA that at least three tests by three different labs from 1972 to 1975 had found asbestos in its talc – in one case at levels reported as “rather high.”. Coker sued Johnson & Johnson, alleging that “poisonous talc” in the company’s beloved product was her killer. “I suppose I was antagonistic,” Langer told Reuters. He told the New York Times that the agency’s investigation a decade earlier had prompted the industry to ensure that talc was asbestos-free. In 1886, Robert Wood Johnson enlisted his younger brothers in an eponymous startup built around the “Safety First” motto. It was cited in a review article titled “The Biology of Talc,” published Nov. 1, 1976, in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine. Shop now! Clinically Proven to Soothe The Skin, and Absorb Moisture. Before it came in, J&J asked the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that Coker had “no evidence” Baby Powder caused mesothelioma. Our Asbestos lawyers serving Ann Arbor understand that specific jobsites are the most common source of asbestos exposure, however residents may be also exposed from damaged homes or buildings where asbestos could be disturbed, even household and consumer products such as talc-based baby powder … At the time, J&J’s Baby Powder franchise was consuming 20,000 tons of Vermont talc a year. The judge gave him more time but turned down his request to resume discovery. J&J has said it will appeal the recent verdicts against it. Talcum powder, also commonly referred to as baby powder is linked to ovarian cancer. That’s one of six minerals – along with chrysotile, actinolite, amosite, anthophyllite and crocidolite – that occur in nature as crystalline fibers known as asbestos, a recognized carcinogen. An early 1970s study of 1,992 Italian talc miners shows how it worked: J&J commissioned and paid for the study, told the researchers the results it wanted, and hired a ghostwriter to redraft the article that presented the findings in a journal. “She wanted answers,” her daughter Cady Evans said. Years later, it did set limits on asbestos in talc used in drugs. Sanchez, the RJ Lee geologist whose firm has agreed to provide him as a witness in up to 100 J&J talc trials, has testified that tremolite found decades ago in the company’s talc, from Italy and later Vermont, was not tremolite asbestos at all. Rather, he has said, it was “cleavage fragments” from non-asbestiform tremolite. Before law school, Herschel Hobson worked at a rubber plant. Then, in 1992, three years after J&J sold its Vermont mines, the new owner, Cyprus Minerals, said in an internal report on “important environmental issues” in its talc reserves that there was “past tremolite” in the Hammondsville deposit. Nor did the company tell the FDA about a 1975 report from its longtime lab that found particles identified as “asbestos fibers” in five of 17 samples of talc from the chief source mine for Baby Powder. “We didn’t have it.”. He also said that today, J&J’s X-ray scans can detect suspect minerals at levels as low as 0.1 percent of a sample. The concentrations were great enough that users “would have, more likely than not, been exposed,” the plaintiffs’ lab report presented in several cases this year concluded. Some of the lawyers knew from those earlier cases that talc producers tested for asbestos, and they began demanding J&J’s testing documentation. “Our current posture with respect to the sponsorship of talc safety studies has been to initiate studies only as dictated by confrontation,” the memo said. Plant-based and completely natural, this baby powder without talc keeps skin dry. Later that year, another Mount Sinai researcher, mineralogist Arthur Langer, told J&J in a letter that the team had found a “relatively small” amount of chrysotile asbestos in Baby Powder. “How bad is Tremolite medically, and how much of it can safely be in a talc base we might develop?”. Hobson is still practicing law in Nederland, Texas. In emailed responses, Bicks rejected Reuters’ findings as “false and misleading.” “The scientific consensus is that the talc used in talc-based body powders does not cause cancer, regardless of what is in that talc,” Bicks wrote. Johnson & Johnson is abandoning a product that it may be most identified with and has been selling for more than 100 years -- talc-based baby powder. “It seems to me that the Italian records give us the opportunity to fortify a position on talc safety.”, At the time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was considering a limit on asbestos in talcs. Our most popular products based on sales. Ten years after tremolite turned up in the Italian talc, it showed up in Vermont talc, too. In an Oct. 18, 1973, memo, Hildick-Smith advised J&J: “The risk/benefit ratio of conducting an epidemiological study in these mines must be considered.”, By early 1974, the study was a go. It has blamed its losses on juror confusion, “junk” science, unfair court rules and overzealous lawyers looking for a fresh pool of asbestos plaintiffs. That assertion, backed by decades of solid science showing that asbestos causes mesothelioma and is associated with ovarian and other cancers, has had mixed success in court. Me? 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This cancer link has been found in women who have used the product for perineal hygiene. "This is a great lightweight setting powder that leaves the skin glowy and natural looking. 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. In a pair of reports from 1957 and 1958, the lab said the talc contained “from less than 1 percent to about 3 percent of contaminants,” described as mostly fibrous and “acicular” tremolite. The FDA’s own examinations found no asbestos in J&J powder samples in the 1970s. Darlene Coker knew she was dying. J&J issued a statement: “Our fifty years of research knowledge in this area indicates that there is no asbestos contained in the powder manufactured by Johnson & Johnson.”. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. Talcum Powder Lawsuits. Ashton had obtained a summary of miners’ medical records compiled by an Italian physician, who also happened to control the country’s talc exports. The American Academy of Pediatrics points out that baby powder can cause breathing trouble and serious lung damage for babies if they inhale the particles. Homemade Baby Powder: A Natural Chamomile & Lavender Powder Regulation was in the air. 92 ($0.48/Ounce) $1.82 with Subscribe & Save discount. While the agency’s cosmetics division was considering similar action on talcum powders, it asked companies to suggest testing methods. When applied to the skin, it can help prevent rashes and other skin irritations like chafing. Hammondsville mine records, according to a 1993 J&J memo, “were destroyed by the mine management staff just prior to the J&J divestiture.”. In each case, a single fiber was recorded – a finding deemed “BDL” – below detection limit. Bicks described the finding as “background asbestos” that did not come from any talc source. Baby Powder Lyrics: I'ma tell you the truth / Not like these girls on the loose / I'll put up with you, babe / There're somethings I won't take / Baby, don't feed me false / Yeah, that turns me off Two decades later, the material Coker and her lawyer sought is emerging as J&J has been compelled to share thousands of pages of company memos, internal reports and other confidential documents with lawyers for some of the 11,700 plaintiffs now claiming that the company’s talc caused their cancers — including thousands of women with ovarian cancer. The proposal to study the health of miners of the Italian talc used in Baby Powder for decades came from William Ashton, J&J’s longtime talc supply chief. Even so, in a subsequent test of J&J powders in 1976, he didn’t find asbestos – a result that Mount Sinai announced. In 2002 and 2003, Vermont mine operators found chrysotile asbestos fibers on several occasions in talc produced for Baby Powder sold in Canada. Video: Zachary Goelman, Jane Lee, Mike Wood and Krystian Orlinski, Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder. “I recognize the concern,” he told Reuters. In a memo, a J&J lab supervisor said the concentration technique, which the company’s own researchers had earlier used to identify a “tremolite-type” asbestos in Vermont talc, had one limitation: “It may be too sensitive.”, “No mother was going to powder her baby with 1% of a known carcinogen irregardless of the large safety factor.”. But in an April 9, 1969, memo to a company doctor, Ashton said it was “normal” to find tremolite in many U.S. talc deposits. Apply powder close to the body away from child’s … Though a private lab in Chicago found trace amounts of tremolite, it declared the amount “insignificant” and the samples “substantially free of asbestiform material.” J&J reported that finding to the FDA under a cover letter that said the “results clearly show” the samples tested “contain no chrysotile asbestos.” J&J’s lawyer told Reuters the tremolite found in the samples was not asbestos. Other records, they have argued, referred to non-asbestos forms of the same minerals that their experts say are harmless. A small portion of the documents have been produced at trial and cited in media reports. A few months after Petterson’s recognition that talc purity was a pipe dream, the FDA proposed a rule that talc used in drugs contain no more than 0.1 percent asbestos. For more than two months, it turned down repeated requests for an interview with J&J executives. $9.89 $ 9. An early test, for example, was incapable of detecting chrysotile fibers, as an FDA official recognized in a J&J account of an Aug. 11, 1972, meeting with the agency: “I understand that some samples will be passed even though they contain such fibers, but we are willing to live with it.”. In 1967, J&J found traces of tremolite and another mineral that can occur as asbestos, according to a table attached to a Nov. 1, 1967, memo by William Ashton, the executive in charge of J&J’s talc supply for decades. The group said the more sensitive electron microscopy was impractical. Facing thousands of lawsuits alleging that its talc caused cancer, J&J insists on the safety and purity of its iconic product. Fighting for every breath and in crippling pain, Coker hired Herschel Hobson, a personal-injury lawyer. And while talc products contributed just $420 million to J&J’s $76.5 billion in revenue last year, Baby Powder is considered an essential facet of the healthcare-products maker’s carefully tended image as a caring company – a “sacred cow,” as one 2003 internal email put it.