Internal JNJ Memos May Be The Smoking Gun Establishing That The Company Knew About Asbestos Decades Ago
A Reuters investigation has found out that the company has known all along that there was asbestos in its baby powder and failed to alert public health officials or consumers
Sunday, May 16, 2021 - Many people I talk to are dismayed or in a state of disbelief when they hear that sales of Johnson‘s Baby Powder has been discontinued in the wake of the Food and Drug Administration testing and finding the iconic baby care product to be contaminated with asbestos, a known carcinogen. Equally shocking is when a mother realizes that they have applied the carcinogen to their babies several times per day during the first couple of years of their lives after a diaper change. Imagine the look on the face of a barber when he realizes that he has dusted his haircut customers with talc ten times a day and himself breathed in lung full of talc and asbestos. Almost everyone has heard by now that about two dozen different women have been awarded billions of dollars in punitive damages from having developed ovarian cancer from using Johnson‘s Baby Powder on their privates after and in between showering. Expert witnesses told and will continue to tell juries about how particles of talc have been found in the biopsied ovaries of women with cancer and that those particles can cause sufficient irritation and oxidative stress to develop into ovarian cancer. Unfortunately, most women with ovarian cancer ignore the pain and discomfort of the disease because the symptoms mask themselves as their normal monthly menstrual discomfort. Thus, ovarian cancer is not usually not diagnosed before it has spread to other organs or entered the bloodstream in its later stages. Visit talcum powder cancer lawsuit to learn more.
About 30,000 lawsuits are pending from women with ovarian cancer that claim that executives at Johnson & Johnson knew since at least as early as the 1970s that talc was contaminated with asbestos. A Reuters investigative report told readers that the company went to great lengths to downplay the risks that asbestos posed to their talc supply. Legal proceedings have forced Johnson & Johnson to disclose thousands of internal company memos and that these documents hold the smoking gun. Reuters reported: "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." One of the distortions that the company allegedly took part in was to accept a definition of refined talc to be called cosmetics grade where only a small fraction of talc contained asbestos, and thus it was safe. The FDA and asbestos experts have always held, however, that there is no safe level of ingesting asbestos and all that is needed is one microscopic particle to cause cancer or mesothelioma.
