In 1886, Robert Wood Johnson enlisted his younger brothers in an eponymous startup built around the “Safety First” motto. Many plaintiffs allege that the amounts they inhaled when they dusted themselves with tainted talcum powder were enough. 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 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. She knew it was as rare as it was deadly, a signature of exposure to asbestos. "This is a great lightweight setting powder that leaves the skin glowy and natural looking. 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. 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. As the case proceeded, J&J was able to avoid handing over talc test results and other internal company records Hobson had requested to make the case against Baby Powder. Any suggestion that Johnson & Johnson knew or hid information about the safety of talc is false.”. In the late 1950s, J&J discovered that talc from its chief source mine for the U.S. market in the Italian Alps contained tremolite. 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. Hobson’s “fishing expedition” would not turn up any relevant evidence, it asserted in a May 6, 1998, motion. 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. Imerys and J&J said the Chinese talc is safe. Experts for plaintiffs have testified that the Italian study was too small to draw any conclusions about the incidence of such a rare cancer. RJ Lee said it does not comment on the work it does for clients. Get your gloves off. 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 . 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. The Johnsons took note. Baby Powder was asbestos-free, it said. Coker had no choice but to drop her lawsuit, Hobson said. J&J got a lot of mileage out of the study. 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. 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. The FDA opened an inquiry. 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.”. She did beat the odds, though. Before law school, Herschel Hobson worked at a rubber plant. 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. J&J’s expert witnesses have concluded the opposite. 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. 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 … 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.”. By then, a team at Mount Sinai Medical Center led by pre-eminent asbestos researcher Irving Selikoff had started looking at talcum powders as a possible solution to a puzzle: Why were tests of lung tissue taken post mortem from New Yorkers who never worked with asbestos finding signs of the mineral? 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 attached letters demonstrate responsibility of industry in monitoring its talcs,” the cover letter said. 3 Ounce (Pack of 1) 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,761. That was in 1999. 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He said the agency’s policing of cosmetics in general – fewer than 30 people regulating a “vast” industry – was “a place where we think we can be doing more.”, Gottlieb said the FDA planned to host a public forum in early 2019 to “look at how we would develop standards for evaluating any potential risk.” An agency spokeswoman said that would include examining “scientific test methods for assessment of asbestos.”. 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.”. Children under 2 years: C hange wet and soiled diapers promptly, cleanse the diaper area, and allow to dry. He suggested J&J rethink its approach. Ashton had obtained a summary of miners’ medical records compiled by an Italian physician, who also happened to control the country’s talc exports. Bicks noted that the Italian study has been updated three times – in 1979, 2003 and 2017 – “confirming the lack of association between exposure to asbestos-free talc, lung cancer and mesothelioma.”. Bicks said that Zeitz was not reporting on actual test results. She knew that her cancer, mesothelioma, arose in the delicate membrane surrounding her lungs and other organs. At the same time, at least three juries have rejected claims that Baby Powder was tainted with asbestos or caused plaintiffs’ mesothelioma. On Dec. 8, the company offered to make an expert available. The centerpiece of this approach was a March 15, 1976, package of letters from J&J and other manufacturers that the CTFA gave to the agency to show that they had succeeded at eliminating asbestos from cosmetic talc. Alle grafischen Leistungen werden in unserem Hause erstellt. Talc cases make up fewer than 10 percent of all personal injury lawsuits pending against J&J, based on the company’s Aug. 2 quarterly report, in which the company said it believed it had “strong grounds on appeal.”, J&J Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Alex Gorsky has pledged to fight on, telling analysts in July: “We remain confident that our products do not contain asbestos.”. Talcum powder is also commonly added to makeup products like foundation and cosmetic powder in order to prevent caking and ensure a smooth appearance. J&J’s selective use of test results figured in a New Jersey judge’s decision this year to affirm the first verdict against the company in a case claiming asbestos in J&J products caused cancer. Product Description. “Some of them seem rather high,” the private lab wrote in its cover letter. Me? Instead, in 1976, a CTFA committee chaired by a J&J executive drafted voluntary guidelines, establishing a form of X-ray scanning with a 0.5 percent detection limit as the primary test, the method J&J preferred. 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).”. “This is all a calculated attempt to distract from the fact that thousands of independent tests prove our talc does not contain asbestos or cause cancer. J&J objected. 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. Johnson’s Baby Powder grew out of a line of medicated plasters, sticky rubber strips loaded with mustard and other home remedies. 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