Baby Got a Little Baby Powder in Her Face
Johnson & Johnson to Stop Talc-Based Baby Powder Sales in North America
The company has faced thousands of lawsuits from cancer patients who claim that its talc was contaminated with asbestos, a known carcinogen, and that the company knew of the risks.
Johnson & Johnson is discontinuing N American sales of its talc-based baby pulverisation, a product that one time defined the company's wholesome image and that it has defended for decades fifty-fifty every bit it faced thousands of lawsuits filed past patients who say information technology caused cancer.
The decision to wind downwardly sales of the product is a huge concession for Johnson & Johnson, which has for more a century promoted the powder every bit pure and gentle enough for babies.
The company said on Tuesday that it would permit existing bottles to exist sold by retailers until they ran out. Baby powder made with cornstarch volition remain available, and the company volition keep to sell talc-based baby powder in other parts of the world.
Johnson & Johnson has often said that faulty testing, shoddy science and ill-equipped researchers are to blame for findings that its pulverization was contaminated with asbestos. Simply in recent years, thousands of people — mostly women with ovarian cancer — have said that the company did non warn them of potential risks that the visitor was discussing internally.
Even as information technology appear the withdrawal of its baby powder, the company said that it "will continue to vigorously defend the product" in courtroom. But Johnson & Johnson acknowledged that demand for the talc-based version had slumped as consumer habits changed and concerns about the product spread.
For decades, infant powder's main ingredient was talc, a mineral known for its softness. Sold in an iconic white bottle, its fragrance is said to exist 1 of the about recognizable in the world.
Information technology was just in 1980, subsequently consumer advocates raised concerns that talc independent traces of asbestos, a known carcinogen, that the company developed a cornstarch culling.
Krystal Kim, a Philadelphia woman who has survived two bouts of ovarian cancer that she blames on her lifelong use of the powder, said the conclusion to remove the product was a victory. Ms. Kim was 1 of a group of women who won a lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson in 2018.
"It means no more little girls are going to go through what we went through," said Ms. Kim, who started using baby powder when she was 10 years old. "This stops now. That monster is off the shelves."
Early on lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson claimed the talc itself caused ovarian cancer, though the scientific evidence on that was never conclusive. Plaintiffs' lawyers later on shifted their focus, arguing that traces of asbestos — an indisputable and much-feared carcinogen — were present in talc and capable of causing cancer even in microscopic amounts.
Asbestos contagion can occur when talc is mined, because both minerals can be intermingled underground, and internal memos and reports unearthed during litigation revealed that the visitor had been concerned for at to the lowest degree 50 years nearly the possibility of traces of asbestos in its talc. Asbestos was beginning linked to ovarian cancer in 1958.
The revelation of these visitor documents also prompted inquiries by the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Committee, too equally congressional committees and government in Mississippi and New Mexico.
As of late March, Johnson & Johnson faced 19,400 lawsuits related to talc torso powders, many of them involving complicated science. A federal judge ruled in April that plaintiffs' scientific experts could testify with some exceptions, a blow to Johnson & Johnson, which had been pushing to exclude the testimony in hopes of shutting down thousands of cases.
The legal tape has been mixed so far. Several juries have decided against Johnson & Johnson, in one example awarding $4.seven billion to 22 women including Ms. Kim in 2018. Only the company has prevailed in other cases and is appealing nearly all of the cases it has lost.
Johnson & Johnson'due south talc supplier, Imerys Talc America, filed for Affiliate 11 bankruptcy protection concluding year.
In October, Johnson & Johnson recalled 33,000 bottles of baby powder after the Nutrient and Drug Administration said it discovered bear witness of chrysotile asbestos in a bottle purchased from an online retailer. Soon afterwards, the visitor said that multiple tests of the same bottle came up clean.
Nathan A. Schachtman, a lawyer who defends production liability cases and spent decades handling asbestos-related claims, said that companies often agreed to settle lawsuits or discontinue products that they believed were safe in an endeavor to soothe shareholders and win back public confidence — to "purchase peace," he said.
"At some betoken, the shareholders don't intendance whether the scientific discipline is on your side," said Mr. Schachtman, who said he was non involved in the Johnson & Johnson talc cases. "Companies have to make very applied and hard decisions well-nigh withdrawing products that they don't retrieve are bad products, or dropping cases because they know they can't win them all and information technology'southward expensive to defend them."
On Tuesday, Johnson & Johnson said that baby powder made upward one-half a percent of its total consumer health business in the United States and that need for the talc-based version had slumped. The decision to discontinue the production stemmed from a re-evaluation of its production portfolio, the company said.
Mark Lanier, a lawyer who represents thousands of cancer survivors and their families who are suing Johnson & Johnson, said the visitor had fabricated "the right move."
"They tin give all the reasons they want — I'm merely thankful the stuff is off the market place. I do believe this will save untold misery and lives," Mr. Lanier said.
Though Johnson'due south Baby Powder has long been advertised for infants and is stocked on the baby aisle along with diapers and babe shampoo, developed women take been the master purchasers in recent decades, using it on their perineum and to prevent chafing betwixt the legs.
Thousands of women who developed ovarian cancer after long-term use of the product blamed the pulverisation and sued the company, while a smaller number sued later on developing mesothelioma, a rare and particularly vicious cancer that develops in the linings of the lungs and abdomen and is considered a signature illness of asbestos.
And groups that have advocated the removal of other talc-based cosmetics from the market seized on Johnson & Johnson's decision to call for more companies to do the same.
In a statement, the Environmental Working Group advocacy organization urged other cosmetic companies to stop using talc in loose powders. The grouping said that it deputed tests that final calendar week plant asbestos in two eye shadow palettes made with talc, marketed to children and sold on Amazon.
Amazon did not immediately answer to a request for comment.
The F.D.A. issued several alerts last year warning that asbestos had been discovered in several talc cosmetics products, including heart shadow sold at Claire's, a retailer focused on teenagers.
Linda Reinstein, whose husband died of asbestos-induced mesothelioma and who now heads the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, called the company's move a public health victory but said several chemical companies continued to use asbestos in manufacturing and had blocked an outright ban on it. "We can't wait for them to follow Johnson & Johnson," she said.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/business/johnson-baby-powder-sales-stopped.html
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