Bicks said that Zeitz was not reporting on actual test results. The Johnsons took note. The Link Between Talcum Powder and Cancer Talcum Powder Lawsuits. Plant-based and completely natural, this baby powder without talc keeps skin dry. The company has made some of the same arguments about lab tests conducted by experts hired by plaintiffs. An Imerys spokesman said the company’s tests “consistently show no asbestos. (63.49oz Total), Topwon Baby Powder Puff Kit Blue (2 Packed), Caldesene Medicated Protecting Powder with Zinc Oxide & Cornstarch, 5 oz (Pack of 3), Pipette Baby Cream to Powder, Keep Baby's Skin Happy, Talc-Free Baby Powder, Fragrance Free, 3-Ounce, Caldesene Baby Cornstarch Powder With Zinc Oxide 5 oz (Pack of 2), Farmstead Apothecary 100% Natural Baby Powder, Lavender Chamomile 4 oz (Pack of 4), Bee All Natural Organic Baby Powder, Talc-Free, 4-Ounce Bottle…. That’s one of the six minerals that in their naturally occurring fibrous form are classified as asbestos. “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. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the agency continues to receive a lot of questions about talc cosmetics. I show you how to make your own homemade baby powder using ingredients from your pantry. Burt's Bees Baby Daily Cream to Powder, Talc-Free Diaper Rash Cream - 4 Ounces Tube - Pack of 3 4.3 out of 5 stars 448 $25.95 $ 25 . 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.”. Bicks said the destroyed documents did not include talc testing records. 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 2002 and 2003, Vermont mine operators found chrysotile asbestos fibers on several occasions in talc produced for Baby Powder sold in Canada. “J&J did not withhold any relevant testing from FDA.”. 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. 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. Any suggestion that Johnson & Johnson knew or hid information about the safety of talc is false.”. As the FDA continued to investigate asbestos in talc, J&J sent powder samples to be tested at private and university labs. “And these might be classified as asbestos fiber.”, J&J should “protect our powder franchise” by eliminating as many tiny fibers that can be inhaled in airborn talc dust as possible, Petterson wrote. According to an FDA account of the meeting, J&J shared “evidence that their talc contains less than 1%, if any, asbestos.”, Later that month, Wilson Nashed, one of the J&J scientists who visited the FDA,  said in a memo to the company’s public relations department that J&J’s talc contained trace amounts of “fibrous minerals (tremolite/actinolite).”. In 1980, J&J began offering a cornstarch version of Baby Powder – to expand its customer base to people who prefer cornstarch, the company says. 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. 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. X-ray scanning is the primary method J&J has used for decades. “We didn’t have it.”. Dermatologist Tested to be Hypoallergenic. 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. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for example, “makes no distinction between fibers and (comparable) cleavage fragments,” agency officials wrote in a response to an RJ Lee report on an unrelated matter in 2006, the year before the firm hired Sanchez. Its researchers had strapped an air sampling device to a doll to take measurements while it was powdered, according to J&J memos and the minutes of a Feb. 19, 1974, meeting of the Cosmetic Toiletry and Fragrance Association (CTFA), an industry group. The company also periodically requires the more sensitive checks with electron microscopes. Children under 2 years: C hange wet and soiled diapers promptly, cleanse the diaper area, and allow to dry. In two cases earlier this year – in New Jersey and California – juries awarded big sums to plaintiffs who, like Coker, blamed asbestos-tainted J&J talc products for their mesothelioma. 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Me? Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. 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. As if that weren’t enough, there’s also actual diamond powder in the mix to impart the prettiest (and subtlest) shimmer. Unsere Philosophie. Hobson knew that talc and asbestos often occurred together in the earth, and that mined talc could be contaminated with the carcinogen. And as the product safety director for J&J’s talc supplier acknowledged in a 2008 email to colleagues: “(I)f a deposit contains ‘non-asbestiform’ tremolite, there is also asbestiform tremolite naturally present as well.”. 92 ($0.48/Ounce) $1.82 with Subscribe & Save discount. At various times from then into the early 2000s, reports by scientists at J&J, outside labs and J&J’s supplier yielded similar findings. Two years later, the FDA rejected a citizen request that cosmetic talc carry an asbestos warning label, saying that even if there were trace contamination, the use of talc powder during two years of normal diapering would not increase the risk of cancer. Baby Powder von Demeter Fragrance Library die volle Ladung lieblicher und extrem trockner Badypuder! It has blamed its losses on juror confusion, “junk” science, unfair court rules and overzealous lawyers looking for a fresh pool of asbestos plaintiffs. 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. This cancer link has been found in women who have used the product for perineal hygiene. 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.”. “The attached letters demonstrate responsibility of industry in monitoring its talcs,” the cover letter said. It is 100% free of talc, gluten, fragrances, dyes, as well as other common allergens. !OPEN ME!! It needed work to meet the “form and style” requirements of the target journal, he told colleagues in a March 31, 1975, memo. It does its job by absorbing moisture, which in turn keeps the delicate skin in the diaper area dry and smooth. At the time, J&J’s Baby Powder franchise was consuming 20,000 tons of Vermont talc a year. Therefore, he added, the “process may well be valuable property to us.”, At the end of March, Shelley recognized the sensitivity of the plan in a memo sent to a J&J lawyer in New Jersey: “We will want to carefully consider the … patents re asbestos in talc. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. They describe contaminants in talc from J&J’s Italian supplier as fibrous and “acicular,” or needle-like, tremolite. The group said the more sensitive electron microscopy was impractical. Neem has anti-inflammatory properties which protect a baby’s skin from rashes, inflammation. “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. By 1966, it was blasting and bulldozing white rock out of the Green Mountain state. J&J, based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, has dominated the talc powder market for more than 100 years, its sales outpacing those of all competitors combined, according to Euromonitor International data. Buy top selling products like Baby Brezza® Formula Pro Advanced Formula Dispenser and Noodle & Boo® 8.8 oz.& Delicate Baby Powder. Many were shielded from public view by court orders that allowed J&J to turn over thousands of documents it designated as confidential. Much of their contents is reported here for the first time. Most patients die within a year of diagnosis. Choose from contactless Same Day Delivery, Drive Up and more. Darlene Coker knew she was dying. He added that he would send it to a scientific ghostwriter “who will hold it in confidence and rewrite it.”, More Reuters investigations and long-form narratives, Got a confidential news tip? “She wanted answers,” her daughter Cady Evans said. 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. Johnson's Baby Powder for Delicate Skin, Hypoallergenic and Free of Parabens, Phthalates, and Dyes for Baby Skin Care, 4 oz. The method is not designed to detect the most commonly used type of asbestos, chrysotile, at all. A 1979 article in the Journal of Environmental Pathology and Toxicology detailing the findings of the study was not good news for talc. Until recently, the American Cancer Society (ACS) accepted the industry’s position, saying on its website: “All talcum products used in homes have been asbestos-free since the 1970s.”, After receiving inquiries from Reuters, the ACS in early December revised its website to remove the assurance that cosmetic talcs are free of asbestos. J&J used the milled powder in its cosmetic powders and sold a less-refined grade to roofing, flooring and tire companies for use in manufacturing. Some of the lawyers knew from those earlier cases that talc producers tested for asbestos, and they began demanding J&J’s testing documentation. I personally like to use a powder brush for an even and ‘light-handed’ application. 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. “The asbestos fibers found raise a new issue of fact,” Hobson told the judge in a request for more time to file an opposition to J&J’s dismissal motion. 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. 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. 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. Zeitz’s May 1974 report on efforts to minimize asbestos in Vermont talc “strongly urged” the adoption of ways to protect “against what are currently considered to be materials presenting a severe health hazard and are potentially present in all talc ores in use at this time.”. The effort entailed other attempts to influence research, including a U.S. government study of the health of talc workers in Vermont. J&J’s Windsor Minerals Inc subsidiary, one of several mine operators involved in the study, developed a relationship with the U.S. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health researchers to “even influence the conclusions” through suggestions of “subjective interpretations,” according to a 1973 Windsor Minerals memo. Hildick-Smith sent money to the Italian talc exporter-physician to hire a team of researchers. One of those labs found asbestos in Shower to Shower talc from the 1990s, according to an Aug. 11, 2017, court report. J&J’s expert witnesses have concluded the opposite. 95 ($2.16/Ounce) $29.97 $29.97 Since talc deposits are often laced with asbestos, the scientists reasoned, perhaps talcum powders played a role. 3 Ounce (Pack of 1) 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,761. At a meeting on Sept. 27, 1974, for a “Talc/powder Safety Studies Review,” he reported the Italian study would dispel the “cancer concern associated with exposure to talc.”, The following spring, Hildick-Smith got a draft of the Italian study from the lead researcher.