The FDA Finds a Small Amount of Asbestos in a Bottle of Johnson's Baby Powder

The FDA's announcement of the voluntary recall reads like an infomercial for Johnson's Baby Powder

Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - According to the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) website, Johnson & Johnson has voluntarily recalled a batch of 33,000 bottles of Johnson's Baby Powder "out of an abundance of caution" when the agency found a single bottle in the batch was contaminated with asbestos. The amount of asbestos that was detected is thought by the company's experts to be insignificant and would have no ill effects on human health. The FDA described how small the amount of asbestos that was detected: "(the test) indicating(ed) the presence of sub-trace levels of chrysotile asbestos contamination (no greater than 0.00002%) in samples from a single bottle purchased from an online retailer."

The company and the FDA were quick to paint the test results as non-scientific and highlighted the following as potential reasons that the test could have produced a false positive reading. JNJ has initiated counter-testing and thinks the FDA's conclusions are questionable. JNJ's immediate reaction to the FDA's tests stated that they "cannot confirm if cross-contamination of the sample caused a false positive, cannot confirm whether the sample was taken from a bottle with an intact seal or whether the sample was prepared in a controlled environment, and cannot confirm whether the tested product is authentic or counterfeit." Talcum powder asbestos cancer lawsuits are represented by national attorneys with vast experience and expertise and offer a free consultation with no obligation to file a claim.

The remainder of the FDA's announcement of the voluntary recall reads more like an infomercial for Johnson's Baby Powder than it does to sound an alarm and warn consumers. The FDA's version of the recall sounds like it was written by authors from Johnson & Johnson themselves. "Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. (JJCI) has a rigorous testing standard in place to ensure its cosmetic talc is safe and years of testing, including the FDA's own testing on prior occasions--and as recently as last month--found no asbestos." This statement fails to mention that the cosmetics industry is essentially on their own and is not subject to regulations as to the sensitivity of the asbestos testing methods that may be used. Johnson & Johnson has been criticized in the courtroom where jurors have awarded plaintiffs hundreds of millions of dollars in punitive damages for cancer caused by using Johnson's Baby Powder during one's lifetime. The remainder of the FDA's news alert states that the company, as well as independent sources and government agencies, has conducted thousands of tests that were negative for asbestos and also that "Our talc comes from ore sources confirmed to meet our stringent specifications that exceed industry standards." Nowhere does it say what this lofty industry-standard is.

When Johnson & Johnson highlight the "insignificant amount" of asbestos detected, they fail to take into consideration that consumers who use Johnson's Baby Powder do so every day, sometimes several times per day, regularly and for decades. Even infinitesimal levels of asbestos in one particular bottle add up and accumulate to dangerous, cancer-causing levels over time. Experts agree that due to this bio-accumulation of asbestos no level of contamination is safe no matter how small an individual dose may seem.