Legal front opens in Johnson powder battle
22 women with cancer have successfully sued company over asbestos claim
The memos were concise and direct. An executive at Johnson & Johnson said the main ingredient in its bestselling baby powder could potentially be contaminated by asbestos, the dangerous mineral that can cause cancer. He recommended to senior staff in 1971 that the company “upgrade” its quality control of talc.
Two years later, another executive raised a red flag, saying the company should no longer assume that its talc mines were asbestos-free. The powder, he said, sometimes contained materials that “might be classified as asbestos fibre.”
The carcinogen, which often appears underground near talc, has been a concern inside the company for decades. In hundreds of pages of memos, executives worried about a potential government ban of talc, the safety of the product and a public backlash over Johnson’s Baby Powder, a brand built on a reputation for trustworthiness and health.
Executives proposed new testing procedures or replacing talc outright, while trying to discredit research suggesting that the powder could be contaminated with asbestos, according to corporate documents unearthed by litigation, government records obtained by The New York Times through the Freedom of Information Act, and interviews with scientists and lawyers.
In one instance, Johnson & Johnson demanded the government block unfavourable findings from being made public. An executive ultimately won assurances from an official at the Food and Drug Administration that the findings would be issued only “over my dead body,” a memo summarising the meeting said.
Those efforts are now forming the crux of a new legal front in a long-running battle over Johnson’s Baby Powder, potentially leaving the company exposed in nearly 12,000 lawsuits across the country claiming that the product can cause cancer.
This summer, 22 women with ovarian cancer successfully sued the company, arguing that Johnson & Johnson knew about the connection between talc and asbestos. A jury in St Louis awarded them $4.69 billion (Dh17.2 billion), one of the largest personal injury verdicts ever.
Indisputable carcinogen
The company lost two other cases this year, in California and New Jersey, brought by people with mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of internal organs that is associated with asbestos.
Shares of Johnson & Johnson dropped 10 per cent Friday on an article by Reuters about the asbestos concerns related to Johnson’s Baby Powder.
Johnson & Johnson is appealing the three asbestos-related cases. The company has won three cases related to mesothelioma, while four others were declared mistrials. The company defends the safety of its baby powder, saying it has never contained asbestos and the claims are based on “junk science.” Johnson & Johnson says the lawyers in the cases have “cherrypicked” the memos, and that they instead show the company’s focus on safety.
But asbestos, unlike talc, is an indisputable carcinogen. Even trace amounts are considered dangerous. Its daggerlike fibres penetrate deep into tissue and can lead decades later to cancer of the lungs, voice box and ovaries, and to mesothelioma.
Several lab tests, some conducted in the past few years by plaintiffs’ lawyers, have found evidence of asbestos in talc. The link between asbestos and ovarian cancer was first reported in 1958, and in 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer said it was a cause.
With the increasing concern over asbestos, the FDA was under pressure to regulate talc, which is also used in makeup like mascara, lipstick and face powder. In the early 1970s, the agency commissioned Seymour Lewin, a well-regarded chemist at New York University, to test talc products. Lewin found asbestos in more than half the 11 Johnson’s Baby Powder samples he tested.
An industry trade group was given a confidential copy of the report by the FDA. The group, which shared it with Johnson & Johnson, threatened to sue to try to block it from being made public.