An investigation by the international news agency Reuters has revealed that Johnson & Johnson hid internal documents showing that its iconic baby powder sometimes contained cancer-causing asbestos.
While the company is still claiming that their products have always been safe, the price of their stock has plunged drastically after the news that they now face thousands of lawsuits from cancer patients.
It’s important to note that we’re not talking about the baby powder they produce today, but rather that sold prior to 2003.
According to Reuters, Johnson & Johnson has documents showing that between the years of 1972 and 1975, three different labs tested their baby powder and found asbestos. But because the company hid the results from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), consumers were never alerted to the danger.
Asbestos has been linked to a rare and aggressive cancer called mesothelioma, in which tumors form on the protective tissues covering the lungs, abdomen, and heart as a result of breathing in the toxic substance. It most commonly afflicts men who work in mines and other industries that used asbestos before its effects were known.
Talc, the clay mineral that is used in baby powder, occurs in the earth naturally along with asbestos, so cross-contamination is easy if people aren’t careful.
The lawsuits against the company aren’t new. Darlene and Roy Corker attempted to sue the company in 1997 but dropped their suit in 1999 because they couldn’t get their hands on internal documents showing a potential cover-up.
Now, Johnson & Johnson has been compelled to share thousands of pages of company memos, internal reports and other documents they once deemed confidential with the lawyers of new plaintiffs.
At the moment, there are roughly 11,700 plaintiffs suing the company. It appears that in addition to mesothelioma, the asbestos in the baby powder might have also caused thousands of cases of ovarian cancer.
The newly uncovered documents show that not only did baby powder from Johnson & Johnson test positive for asbestos many times from 1971 to the early 2000s (and they may have known about it since 1957), but that company executives, mine managers, scientists, doctors, and lawyers all knew and didn’t disclose the information to regulators.
Instead, the company sent lobbyists to try and influence the way the government interpreted the scientific evidence linking asbestos to cancer.
While there were many documents that showed negative tests of the baby powder as well, Reuters noted that some of the testing methods Johnson & Johnson employed would not have picked up trace amounts. Currently, the World Health Organization warns that no level of exposure is safe.
While the American Cancer Society (ACS) had stated on its website until recently that “All talcum products used in homes have been asbestos-free since the 1970s,” the Reuters inquiry led them to remove that statement just a few weeks ago. The website now merely says that all U.S. cosmetic talc products “should be free from detectable amounts of asbestos.” While they aren’t pointing a finger at Johnson & Johnson, it is an interesting revision.
Of course, not everyone exposed to a substance like asbestos will get cancer. But we don’t know the long-term effects of inhalation or much about its links to other diseases.
Some plaintiffs have already won their cases against Johnson & Johnson, allowing for a deluge of new lawsuits to go forward as well as force the company to share more and more documentation.
22 people in St. Louis won $4.69 BILLION from the company recently after a jury agreed that that asbestos-tainted Baby Powder and Shower to Shower talc caused their ovarian cancer.
But other cases have failed or ended in no verdict. And the company plans to appeal all of the cases it has lost.
Johnson & Johnson still maintains its innocence, claiming that talc is safe and blaming bad science, confused jurors, and overzealous lawyers for the controversy.
They also deny that there is scientific evidence that asbestos exposure causes cancer and that any tainted samples were from “background” asbestos that contaminated their product with stray materials floating around the labs during testing.
Johnson & Johnson has dominated the talc powder market for over 100 years, selling more than all of its competitors combined. Baby powder contributed $420 million to the company’s earnings last year, and is often seen as the key product that most people associate with Johnson & Johnson.
There’s much more to the story, including destroyed documents, changing views of the role of asbestos in cancer, and various statements of innocence from the company itself.
It will take years for the case to move through the courts, but there are three main things to pay attention to: 1) what the company and independent scientists say about the connection between asbestos and cancer; 2) whether or not talc was proven to be present in baby powder sold to parents by the company; and 3) when anyone affiliated with Johnson & Johnson new about potentially contaminated baby powder.
While the products the company sells today are not in question, the company stands to lose an enormous amount of money and many customers if juries continue to find them guilty of a cover-up. The alternative, according to Johnson & Johnson is that this new report is a massive conspiracy theory.
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