Last Monday, St. Louis jurors ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $72 million in damages to the family of a woman who died last fall at age 62, who had previously recalled using the company’s talcum powder for decades.
The jury's verdict linked the use of Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower to the woman’s death from ovarian cancer.
Talcum powders are made of talc, a mineral composed in part by magnesium, silicon and oxygen for moisture absorption. The natural form of some talc has asbestos, a known carcinogen whose use has been banned in all commercial products in the United States since the 1970s.
“We sympathize with the plaintiff’s family but firmly believe the safety the cosmetic talc is supported by decades of scientific evidence,” Johnson & Johnson maintains in its statement.
The woman was diagnosed with a fatal ovarian cancer more than three years ago, and she then joined more than 1,200 women across the United States in suing the company for failure to provide warnings to consumers about talc dangers.
Her case is now the first in which the court awarded monetary compensation.
Experts have studied the various ways that talc might cause cancer in varying parts of the body. Most have focused on the long-term exposure to talc fibers, which might lead to lung cancer, and whether female users routinely used the powder on their genitals.
The American Cancer Society’s website states, however, that there are mixed findings on studies in talc miners exposed to asbestos-containing talc.
As for ovarian cancer, a pathologist found that the woman’s ovaries became inflamed from talc, which then proceeded to become cancer.
A direct link between talc and cancer through causing inflammation in the ovaries is yet to be established, but Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Daniel Cramer first probed the link between the substance and ovarian cancer in 1982. According to his work, talc exposure raised the risk by 30 percent.
Two cohort studies, however, did not show the same association. "We know cohort studies provide much more definitive answers,” says Dr. Adetunji Toriola of Washington University.
Cambridge professor Paul Pharoah calls it “biologically plausible” for grains of talcum, if applied on the genital area, to enter the fallopian tubes and result in ovarian inflammation, which could induce disease.
Despite the increased risk, Pharoah believes that it is unlikely for a British court to arrive at the same conclusion as jurors in the United States. “Even if the association were true, the strength of the association is too small,” he argues.
In Britain, most powder manufacturers still use talcum even though many in the United States have switched to cornstarch following a related scare in the 1990s.
Conclusive evidence of talc causing ovarian cancer would necessitate a randomized clinical trial, which would be barred by ethical concerns. Such trial would deliberately expose subjects to a product believed to cause cancer, Cramer explains.
Photo: Austin Kirk | Flickr
