One of those labs found asbestos in Shower to Shower talc from the 1990s, according to an Aug. 11, 2017, court report. Imerys and J&J said the Chinese talc is safe. It’s also partly why regulations that protect people in mines, mills, factories and schools from asbestos-laden talc don’t apply to babies and others exposed to cosmetic talc – even though Baby Powder talc has at times come from the same mines as talc sold for industrial use. He homed in on a suspect: the Johnson’s Baby Powder that Coker had used on her infant children and sprinkled on herself all her life. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Product Description. 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 … “When people really understand what’s going on, I think it increases J&J’s exposure a thousand-fold,” said Mark Lanier, one of the lawyers for the women in the St. Louis case. 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. Bicks rejected the Cyprus report as hearsay, saying there is no original documentation to confirm it. A third verdict, in St. Louis, was a watershed, broadening J&J’s potential liability: The 22 plaintiffs were the first to succeed with a claim that asbestos-tainted Baby Powder and Shower to Shower talc, a longtime brand the company sold in 2012, caused ovarian cancer, which is much more common than mesothelioma. 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. That’s one of the six minerals that in their naturally occurring fibrous form are classified as asbestos. 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. While the agency’s cosmetics division was considering similar action on talcum powders, it asked companies to suggest testing methods. 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. J&J’s effort to protect its iconic Baby Powder franchise by shaping research was led by physician and scientist executives. “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. “Some of them seem rather high,” the private lab wrote in its cover letter. “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. The doctor urged Ashton to consult with company lawyers because “it is not inconceivable that we could become involved in litigation.”. “Providing the FDA favorable results showing no asbestos and withholding or failing to provide unfavorable results, which show asbestos, is a form of a misrepresentation by omission,” Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Ana Viscomi said in her June ruling. 95 ($2.16/Ounce) $29.97 $29.97 J&J declined to comment further for this article. A Reuters examination of many of those documents, as well as deposition and trial testimony, shows that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the company’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos, and that company executives, mine managers, scientists, doctors and lawyers fretted over the problem and how to address it while failing to disclose it to regulators or the public. 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. 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. 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. When customers complained of skin irritation, the brothers sent packets of talc. The lawsuit Coker and her husband, Roy, filed that year against J&J in Jefferson County District Court in Beaumont, Texas, is the earliest Reuters found alleging Baby Powder caused cancer. That was in 1999. Clinically Proven to Soothe The Skin, and Absorb Moisture. It had not done so as of Thursday evening. 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 Langer, Selikoff and Kretchmer ended up on a J&J list of “antagonistic personalities” in a Nov. 29, 1972, memo, which described Selikoff as the leader of an “attack on talc.”. Anti-inflammatory ingredients such as kaolin clay, arrowroot and plaintain leaf help soothe irritation and calms itchy skin. “When Mom was given this death sentence, she was the same age as I am right now,” Deckard said. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the agency continues to receive a lot of questions about talc cosmetics. 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. J&J objected. Homemade Baby Powder: A Natural Chamomile & Lavender Powder 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. “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. An internal August report on J&J’s “Defense of Talc Safety” campaign noted that independent authorities had deemed cosmetic talc products to be “free of hazard.” It attributed “this growing opinion” to the dissemination to scientific and medical communities in the United States and Britain of “favorable data from the various J&J sponsored studies.”, In 1984, FDA cosmetics chief and former J&J employee Heinz Eiermann reiterated that view. It needed work to meet the “form and style” requirements of the target journal, he told colleagues in a March 31, 1975, memo. A subsequent analysis of the underlying data published in 1988 determined that at least one of the workers died of mesothelioma, the cancer most closely associated with asbestos. 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. He wrote that talc in general, if subjected to the most sensitive testing method, using concentrated samples, “will be hard pressed in supporting purity claims.” He described this sort of testing as both “sophisticated” and “disturbing.”, Actress Blair Brown touts Baby Powder in this 1970s-era TV commercial, By 1977, J&J appeared to have tamped down concerns about the safety of talc. The FDA opened an inquiry. Coker had no choice but to drop her lawsuit, Hobson said. (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…. “It is quite possible that eventually tremolite will be prohibited in all talc,” Shelley wrote on Feb. 20, 1973, to a British colleague. Just how small hasn’t been established. Traumdüfte sind authentisch, rein und unverfälscht. Get your gloves off. 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? Most patients die within a year of diagnosis. My sister?”. 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The study found fewer lung cancer deaths than expected, a result that the authors said supported “the thesis of no cancerogenic effect attributable to pure talc.”. 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. Could it happen to us? Thx for watching. While most people exposed never develop cancer, for some, even small amounts of asbestos are enough to trigger the disease years later. “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. 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. It sent tons of its Italian talc to a private lab in Columbus, Ohio, to find ways to improve the appearance, feel and purity of the powder by removing as much “grit” as possible. Dermablend Loose Setting Powder, Face Powder Makeup & Finishing Powder for Light, Medium & Tan Skin Tones, Mattifying Finish and Shine Control, 1oz 4.5 out of 5 stars 3,781 $29.00 $ 29 . DON'T FORGET TO "LIKE", SHARE, AND SUBSCRIBE!! Before law school, Herschel Hobson worked at a rubber plant. It has blamed its losses on juror confusion, “junk” science, unfair court rules and overzealous lawyers looking for a fresh pool of asbestos plaintiffs. “This philosophy, so far, has allowed us to neutralize or hold in check data already generated by investigators who question the safety of talc.”, Also, the memo said, “we minimize the risk of possible self-generation of scientific data which may be politically or scientifically embarrassing.”. $1.92 $ 1. 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. !OPEN ME!! 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 … Abfüllung, Verkopfung, Konfektion werden zu 100% in Handarbeit durchgeführt. A 1979 article in the Journal of Environmental Pathology and Toxicology detailing the findings of the study was not good news for talc. Bicks said: “The samples that we know of during this time period that contained a fiber or two of asbestos were not cosmetic talc samples.”. As the FDA continued to investigate asbestos in talc, J&J sent powder samples to be tested at private and university labs. She just wanted to know why. In his email to Reuters, J&J’s lawyer said the lab supervisor’s concern was that the test would result in “false positives,” showing asbestos where there was none. In 1886, Robert Wood Johnson enlisted his younger brothers in an eponymous startup built around the “Safety First” motto. If so, you may have other symptoms that can reveal more information before you … For more than two months, it turned down repeated requests for an interview with J&J executives. Peter Bicks, outside counsel for J&J, told Reuters in an email that for the Vermont study, company “representatives acted in an ‘educational and advisory capacity’ to provide the researchers with a realistic study plan.”. The FDA’s own examinations found no asbestos in J&J powder samples in the 1970s. Even so, in a subsequent test of J&J powders in 1976, he didn’t find asbestos – a result that Mount Sinai announced. Hammondsville was the primary source of Baby Powder talc from 1966 until its shutdown in 1990. Dermatologist Tested to be Hypoallergenic. Hobson is still practicing law in Nederland, Texas. Some of the lawyers knew from those earlier cases that talc producers tested for asbestos, and they began demanding J&J’s testing documentation. Before it came in, J&J asked the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that Coker had “no evidence” Baby Powder caused mesothelioma. 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.”. 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. 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. Others have failed to reach verdicts, resulting in mistrials. The jury awarded them $4.69 billion in damages. This hypoallergenic powder is free of parabens, phthalates, dyes or sulfates that may harm your child’s skin and is clinically proven to be gentle and mild on sensitive skin. X-ray scanning is the primary method J&J has used for decades. The author was Hildick-Smith, the J&J physician executive who had overseen the Italian study and played a key role in the company’s talc safety research. J&J’s expert witnesses have concluded the opposite. “We are certain that the summary will give you assurance as to the freedom from contamination by asbestos for materials of cosmetic talc products.”, In its letter, J&J said samples of talc produced between December 1972 and October 1973 were tested for asbestos, and none was detected “in any sample.”. Shop now! “I said to myself, ‘How come it took so long?’ ” he said. The method is not designed to detect the most commonly used type of asbestos, chrysotile, at all. One official called it “foolish,” adding, according to a J&J account of a February 1975 meeting: “No mother was going to powder her baby with 1% of a known carcinogen irregardless of the large safety factor.”. 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. Choose from contactless Same Day Delivery, Drive Up and more. 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. 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. The CTFA, which now does business as the Personal Care Products Council, declined to comment. J&J also launched research to find out how much powder a baby was exposed to during a diapering and how much asbestos could be in that powder and remain within OSHA’s new workplace exposure limits. The doctor told Ashton that J&J was receiving safety questions from pediatricians. 4 Ounce (Pack of 1) 4.5 out of 5 stars 8,404. Hildick-Smith told the lead researcher in a June 26, 1974, letter exactly what J&J wanted: data that “would show that the incidence of cancer in these subjects is no different from that of the Italian population or the rural control group.”, That is exactly what J&J got, Hildick-Smith told colleagues a few months later. Bicks, the J&J lawyer, said the contract lab’s results were irrelevant because the talc was intended for industrial use. He said the company now believes that the actinolite the Dartmouth professor found “was not asbestiform,” based on its interpretation of a photo in the original lab report. 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. Those tests, however, did not use the most sensitive detection methods. Kretchmer said he recently read that a jury had concluded that Baby Powder was contaminated with asbestos. “How bad is Tremolite medically, and how much of it can safely be in a talc base we might develop?”. 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.”. Both forms often occur together and in talc deposits. 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. I recommend against it because of the risk of respiratory problems. It has maintained in public statements that its talc is safe, as shown for years by the best tests available, and that the information it has been required to divulge in recent litigation shows the care the company takes to ensure its products are asbestos-free. Buy top selling products like Baby Brezza® Formula Pro Advanced Formula Dispenser and Noodle & Boo® 8.8 oz.& Delicate Baby Powder. 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).”. Nutribiotic is safe for children, but more commonly used … Asbestos, like many environmental carcinogens, has a long latency period. Johnson’s Baby Powder grew out of a line of medicated plasters, sticky rubber strips loaded with mustard and other home remedies. “I recognize the concern,” he told Reuters. “This is true even if - and it does not - Johnson & Johnson's cosmetic talc had ever contained minute, undetectable amounts of asbestos.” He dismissed tests cited in this article as “outlier” results. Michigan's state statute of limitations sets forth the amount time that its residents, including those from Detroit, have to file a Baby Powder Ovarian Cancer Lawsuit. J&J has said it will appeal the recent verdicts against it. This is especially true of talc-based powders, with their small, easily inhaled particles. “We didn’t have it.”. Now, it says, quoting the industry’s standards, that all cosmetic talc products in the United States “should be free from detectable amounts of asbestos.”, The revised ACS web page also notes that the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies talc that contains asbestos as “carcinogenic to humans.”, Despite the success of J&J’s efforts to promote the safety of its talc, the company’s test lab found asbestos fibers in samples taken from the Vermont operation in 1984, 1985 and 1986. By 1966, it was blasting and bulldozing white rock out of the Green Mountain state. Since pulmonary disease, including cancer, appeared to be on the rise, “it would seem to be prudent to limit any possible content of Tremolite … to an absolute minimum,” came the reply from another physician executive days later. 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. Sanchez did not return calls seeking comment. Bicks, the J&J lawyer, said Coker dropped her case because “the discovery established that J&J talc had nothing to do with Plaintiff’s disease, and that asbestos exposure from a commercial or occupational setting was the likely cause.”. 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. That’s why he zeroed in on Johnson’s Baby Powder after he took on Darlene Coker as a client in 1997. “Historically, in our Company, Tremolite has been bad,” Ashton wrote. It does its job by absorbing moisture, which in turn keeps the delicate skin in the diaper area dry and smooth. She did beat the odds, though. An Imerys spokesman said the company’s tests “consistently show no asbestos. “She wanted answers,” her daughter Cady Evans said. What J&J produced in response to those demands has allowed plaintiffs’ lawyers to refine their argument: The culprit wasn’t necessarily talc itself, but also asbestos in the talc. Nutribiotic Natural Body & Foot Powder. The edited version was less definitive: “Our talc-based consumer products are have always been (we cannot say “always”) asbestos free, as confirmed by regular testing since the 1970s.”. !Hey guys! J&J’s lawyer said the company’s tests exceed the trade association standard, and they do. Johnson's Baby Powder for Delicate Skin, Hypoallergenic and Free of Parabens, Phthalates, and Dyes for Baby Skin Care, 4 oz. Bicks said the destroyed documents did not include talc testing records. For those and other reasons, J&J couldn’t guarantee its Baby Powder was asbestos-free when plaintiffs used it, according to experts, including some who  testified for plaintiffs. 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.”. 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. 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. As if that weren’t enough, there’s also actual diamond powder in the mix to impart the prettiest (and subtlest) shimmer. Shop for baby powder body mist online at Target. Our most popular products based on sales. Ten years after tremolite turned up in the Italian talc, it showed up in Vermont talc, too. 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. At the time, J&J’s Baby Powder franchise was consuming 20,000 tons of Vermont talc a year. 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. Any suggestion that Johnson & Johnson knew or hid information about the safety of talc is false.”. 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. Baby Powder was asbestos-free, it said. It didn’t tell the agency 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.”. 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.”. J&J’s worry at the time was that contaminants made the company’s powder abrasive. The FDA declined to comment on the ruling. Gorsky’s comment, echoed in countless J&J statements, misses a crucial point. They shared their preliminary findings with New York City’s environmental protection chief, Jerome Kretchmer. 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 . Talc’s safe use has been confirmed by multiple regulatory and scientific bodies.”. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), though it dropped the non-fibrous forms of the minerals from its definition of asbestos in 1992, nonetheless recommends that fiber-shaped fragments indistinguishable from asbestos be counted in its exposure tests. J&J talc products today may be safe, but the talc at issue in thousands of lawsuits was sold and used over the past 60 years. The evidence of what J&J knew has surfaced after people who suspected that talc caused their cancers hired lawyers experienced in the decades-long deluge of litigation involving workers exposed to asbestos. “I suppose I was antagonistic,” Langer told Reuters. “I have it in the back of my mind all the time. 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.