When Can I Start Using Baby Powder on My Newborn
Johnson & Johnson to End Talc-Based Infant Pulverization 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 North American sales of its talc-based baby pulverisation, a product that once defined the visitor's wholesome epitome and that it has dedicated for decades fifty-fifty equally it faced thousands of lawsuits filed by patients who say it acquired cancer.
The decision to air current down sales of the production is a huge concession for Johnson & Johnson, which has for more than than a century promoted the powder every bit pure and gentle enough for babies.
The company said on Tuesday that it would allow existing bottles to exist sold past retailers until they ran out. Infant powder made with cornstarch volition remain bachelor, and the company will continue to sell talc-based baby powder in other parts of the earth.
Johnson & Johnson has frequently said that faulty testing, shoddy science and sick-equipped researchers are to arraign for findings that its powder was contaminated with asbestos. But in recent years, thousands of people — mostly women with ovarian cancer — accept said that the visitor did not warn them of potential risks that the visitor was discussing internally.
Fifty-fifty equally it appear the withdrawal of its babe pulverisation, the company said that it "will continue to vigorously defend the product" in court. But Johnson & Johnson acknowledged that demand for the talc-based version had slumped as consumer habits inverse and concerns nigh the product spread.
For decades, baby powder's main ingredient was talc, a mineral known for its softness. Sold in an iconic white canteen, its fragrance is said to be one of the most recognizable in the earth.
It was only in 1980, subsequently consumer advocates raised concerns that talc independent traces of asbestos, a known carcinogen, that the company developed a cornstarch alternative.
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 decision to remove the product was a victory. Ms. Kim was one 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 onetime. "This stops now. That monster is off the shelves."
Early lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson claimed the talc itself caused ovarian cancer, though the scientific evidence on that was never conclusive. Plaintiffs' lawyers later 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 least fifty years nigh the possibility of traces of asbestos in its talc. Asbestos was showtime linked to ovarian cancer in 1958.
The revelation of these company documents also prompted inquiries by the Justice Department and Securities and Commutation Committee, as well every bit congressional committees and government in Mississippi and New Mexico.
As of late March, Johnson & Johnson faced 19,400 lawsuits related to talc body powders, many of them involving complicated scientific discipline. A federal judge ruled in Apr 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 downwardly thousands of cases.
The legal record has been mixed and then far. Several juries take decided confronting Johnson & Johnson, once awarding $4.seven billion to 22 women including Ms. Kim in 2018. But the company has prevailed in other cases and is appealing nearly all of the cases information technology has lost.
Johnson & Johnson's talc supplier, Imerys Talc America, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year.
In October, Johnson & Johnson recalled 33,000 bottles of baby powder later on the Food and Drug Administration said it discovered evidence of chrysotile asbestos in a canteen purchased from an online retailer. Soon after, the company said that multiple tests of the same bottle came upwards make clean.
Nathan A. Schachtman, a lawyer who defends product liability cases and spent decades handling asbestos-related claims, said that companies often agreed to settle lawsuits or discontinue products that they believed were condom in an attempt to soothe shareholders and win back public conviction — to "buy peace," he said.
"At some point, the shareholders don't intendance whether the scientific discipline is on your side," said Mr. Schachtman, who said he was not involved in the Johnson & Johnson talc cases. "Companies accept to make very applied and hard decisions most withdrawing products that they don't think are bad products, or dropping cases because they know they tin't win them all and it'due south expensive to defend them."
On Tuesday, Johnson & Johnson said that baby powder made up half a per centum of its total consumer health concern in the United states and that demand for the talc-based version had slumped. The decision to discontinue the product stemmed from a re-evaluation of its product portfolio, the company said.
Mark Lanier, a lawyer who represents thousands of cancer survivors and their families who are suing Johnson & Johnson, said the company had made "the right move."
"They tin can give all the reasons they want — I'm only thankful the stuff is off the market. I do believe this will salve untold misery and lives," Mr. Lanier said.
Though Johnson's Baby Pulverisation has long been advertised for infants and is stocked on the infant aisle forth with diapers and baby shampoo, developed women have been the main purchasers in contempo decades, using it on their perineum and to prevent chafing between the legs.
Thousands of women who adult ovarian cancer after long-term utilize of the product blamed the pulverization and sued the company, while a smaller number sued after developing mesothelioma, a rare and peculiarly brutal cancer that develops in the linings of the lungs and abdomen and is considered a signature disease of asbestos.
And groups that accept advocated the removal of other talc-based cosmetics from the market place seized on Johnson & Johnson's decision to call for more companies to do the same.
In a statement, the Environmental Working Group advocacy organisation urged other corrective companies to stop using talc in loose powders. The group said that information technology deputed tests that last week found asbestos in ii eye shadow palettes fabricated with talc, marketed to children and sold on Amazon.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The F.D.A. issued several alerts concluding year alarm that asbestos had been discovered in several talc cosmetics products, including centre 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 Affliction Awareness System, called the company'south motility a public wellness victory only said several chemic companies connected to use asbestos in manufacturing and had blocked an outright ban on it. "We tin't wait for them to follow Johnson & Johnson," she said.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/business/johnson-baby-powder-sales-stopped.html