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Comment by TheManInThePub | Hacker News Reader

> It seems that most talc doesn't cause cancer -- but some talc has "rather high" amounts of asbestos in it -- which we know causes cancer.

So no evidence, just suspicion?

I must be blunt and say this has left me more puzzled why the US courts have ruled the way they have.

EDIT: Down votes again for asking a question? Explain yourselves. Are people defending something without evidence?

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From the parent comment's link:

> A Reuters examination of many of those documents, as well as deposition and trial testimony, shows that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the company’s raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos, and that company executives, mine managers, scientists, doctors and lawyers fretted over the problem and how to address it while failing to disclose it to regulators or the public.

I think you're being downvoted for not RTFA, not for asking a question.

> sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos

And the question I have asked is where is the evidence that such small quantities are a risk? The UK links I have posted suggest otherwise. This is why I am asking.

I'm puzzled... are the US courts are saying "OMG Asbestos" rather than looking at safe levels? What if the same courts said "OMG 5G" ! This is why I am asking a genuine question.

If this gets another “shame on you” edit, I’d reflect on we people are downvoting you. Fwiw, I haven’t voted on your comments either way.

If people could explain why they are down voting honest questions I would appreciate it.

I've never heard of claimed talc-cancer links in the UK.

Slant related: I've never seen anyone asking where the upvotes came from, and that makes the opposite a bit odd across the board for me.

Well for one thing downvotes make text harder to read unless selected.

Because there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos.

From the above Reuters article "The World Health Organization and other authorities recognize no safe level of exposure to asbestos. While most people exposed never develop cancer, for some, even small amounts of asbestos are enough to trigger the disease years later."

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsona...

> Because there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos.

I think we are getting to the bottom of this :-)

The UK Health and Safety Executive state...

"The control limit for asbestos is 0.1 asbestos fibres per cubic centimetre of air (0.1 f/cm3). The control limit is not a 'safe' level and exposure from work activities involving asbestos must be reduced to as far below the control limit as possible."[1]

Maybe this is where the differences arise. The UK are comfortable with a minimum practical level where risks are very low, whereas the US state none at all.

Thank you for helping answer a question and not mindlessly clicking on down vote. HN is beginning to turn into Reddit rather than seeking inquisitive technical/scientific conversation.

[1] https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/regulations.htm

That link has to deal with regulation and risk mitigation for removing Asbestos, not selling a consumer product with Asbestos.

The UK took its time but they did fully ban Asbestos in 1999.

Asbestos has to be in a “friable” form for it to be bad. The particles are so small they can get into deep your lungs.

I actually was at a landfill expansion project where a backhoe digging down through the trash hit some bags labeled asbestos. I’m glad it was raining. Also worked in a building with asbestos in the floor tiles. Fine when not disturbed, but anytime they had to remove them it was a production.

https://ehs.oregonstate.edu/asb-when

https://www.fs.fed.us/eng/toolbox/haz/haz07b.htm

In high school I helped a friend rip up the floor tiles in his basement which were probably from the 50s. Years later I realized I could have been exposed to asbestos, is there any way to know whether asbestos would have been in the particular tiles I was ripping up?

You can get the tiles tested if you still have access to any of them.

I don't have much to add, but felt I should respond.

I feel like the risk is probably less than you think (the facilities people I worked with thought it was overkill for the tiles with a small % of asbestos). but its not zero. As someone who might have been exposed (was in a vacinity), its hard because you can never really know. Also there might have been other instances where exposure might have happened and you don't know (my high school was rebuilt recently because it wasn't 'up to code" when I was going there.

Thank you

As I understand it, there's also trace levels of naturally-occurring asbestos pretty much everywhere humans live, so there's also no way to completely avoid exposure.

The impact is cumulative so unavoidable environmental exposure increases the concern about additional exposure from consumer products.

Interestingly some uses of asbestos aren’t actually banned, which is very surprising to me: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/is-epa-allowing-asbestos-p...

As other comments have pointed out, talcum powder in its pure form is talc, which is a mineral and safe. The issue is that some cosmetics were contaminated with asbestos, which is not safe.

conspiracy to falsify info to regulators is a crime by itself

That’s not the question you asked and you know it.

That said, it is very much known that there are no safe levels of exposure. We know this from case data, but also pretty horrifically from workers who inadvertently gave their family members terminal illnesses later in life because they carried what would have at the time been considered fairly trivial amounts of loose dust home on their shoes/overalls/hair.

The information in the article posted by the person you're responding to answers your questions - J&J knew their product had high levels of asbestos and hid it from regulators while doing nothing about it. There absolutely was evidence of this, if you would read any of the information posted above. If I sold you a bottle of water with enough asbestos in it to give you cancer, knew about it, and didn't tell you: that would be illegal - it is pretty straightforward.

Can't even downvote myself, but my guess is that it's related to the extremity of your position. It sounds a lot like you're saying since we know cyanide is poisonous by itself, it's very strange to be able to win a lawsuit if you find significant amounts of cyanide in your bread. Most bread is fine, right? So merely finding cyanide in it should only count as suspicion of a problem and not count as evidence... seems to be what you're saying.

That's an interesting example to choose, because almonds have a small amount of cyanide naturally. I think that highlights that quantity matters

Cyanide occurs naturally in apple cores. It is the dose that makes the poison.

The UK links I have cited say the low levels are not an issue. I've genuinely asked what evidence the US courts are using and I appear to have come up against group think. I did not expect this on HN.

I'd genuinely appreciate it if somebody can provide evidence citing the risk is other than negligible.

Asbestos -> Cancer.

Safe amount = 0.

What an inane response. Perhaps I can counter with

Alcohol -> Cancer.

Safe amount = 0.

Alcohol content of fresh bread > 0

Radiation also -> cancer. Should we ban windows that allow sun light into our lives??

This is why I specified significant amounts, but the exact details of my highly contrived example are obviously not that important.

If you phrased it the way you phased this response, I think you would have gotten a better response.

You didn't phrase it as "I have reason to believe certain levels are not a problem, and I am unaware of the levels recorded in the lawsuit. Where they high enough to be a problem?"

You instead phrased it far more absolute terms that stated that 'merely' finding a dangerous substance in a product was not evidence of it being dangerous. It absolutely is evidence. It may not be sufficient evidence on it's own, but each piece of evidence does not need to be sufficient to prove the case entirely on it's own. Your statements have also carried the extremely strong implication - and that's being generous - that the US courts were definitely wrong. I don't think anybody read your posts and thought you were requesting information and not stating a strong position in defense of J&J.

People have limited time and effort. You made it as difficult as possible to get the information you wished. I wouldn't blame this one on HN groupthink.

The evidence is that there was enough asbestos in the talc to cause cancer, and multiple executives at Johnson and Johnson knew, and people who used it got cancer. I'm not sure how you could believe the people who unknowingly inhaled asbestos and rubbed it all over their babies do not have standing.

Thank you for being the first person to post an informative reply rather than down voting a question. HN is turning into reddit.

> I'm not sure how you could believe

Though this is unnecessarily insulting.

> the people who unknowingly inhaled asbestos and rubbed it all over their babies do not have standing.

If the concentration was so low as to be negligible (as the links I have posted state) then why the successful litigation? This is the question I am asking!

> The evidence is that there was enough asbestos in the talc to cause cancer,

This is the evidence I am asking for. The NHS and other respected UK bodies state differently. This seams to be a purely US issue and I am asking why.

Researchers at Johnson & Johnson detected unsafe levels of asbestos in the talc as part of their own internal testing. There are internal emails that show high level executives asking researchers to switch to a less sensitive test which would allow them to make the concentration of asbestos appear lower than it really was. I remember that when the story first dropped, the people writing J&J's press releases were very careful to use only the present tense when discussing the asbestos levels in their talcum products which implies to me that they did eventually rectify it. That's all I know. I didn't follow the story for very long.

It's not uncommon, science does not hold the ultimate truth of the world, it's a complex system based on intuition and beliefs and politics. Medical responsibility is highly complex and it does not follow the same rules (thankfully). In Europe, courts have been compensating people who got multiple sclerosis induced by the Hep B vaccine for decades even though there is no evidence of a causal link.

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