Johnson & Johnson faces about 38,000 lawsuits from consumers who said the company’s talc products caused cancer.
New Delhi: The famous talc-based baby powder made by Johnson & Johson will not be sold globally from 2023, the company said on Thursday. This comes more than two years after it stopped selling the product in US following several consumer safety lawsuits.
In a statement Johnson & Johnson said, “As part of a worldwide portfolio assessment, we have made the commercial decision to transition to an all cornstarch-based baby powder portfolio…cornstarch-based baby powder is already sold in countries around the world.”
Terming a drop of sale in Canada and United States as a “misinformation” about the product’s safety, Johnson & Johnson in 2020 stopped selling the talc power in the countries.
Johnson & Johnson faces about 38,000 lawsuits from consumers who said the company’s talc products caused cancer due to contamination with asbestos, a known carcinogen.
However, the company denied the charges and said years of experiment has found the products to be asbestos-free.
In 2018, a Reuters investigation had found that Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos, a carcinogen, was present in its talc products. Company records, trial testimony and other evidences showed that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, Johnson & Johnson’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos.
The baby powder, sold since 1894, became a symbol of the company’s family-friendly image. An internal Johnson & Johnson’s marketing presentation from 1999 refers to the baby products division, with Baby Powder at the core, as J&J’s “#1 Asset”, Reuters had reported, although the baby powder accounted for only about 0.5% of its U.S. consumer health business when the company pulled it off the shelves.
