Johnson and Johnson to pay $6.5B to resolve talc ovarian cancer lawsuits in U.S.

Your body has no way to expel fine asbestos fibers, and so they collect in your lungs and shred up the insides. When your body tries to respond by healing, it instead forms growths that constantly re-cut and heal themselves. So it's a type of cancer, but it's unique in that it's not based on malformed DNA.

So the idea that just being in the presence of asbestos is enough to form self-propagating cancers like it's some sort of radioactive isotope... doesn't make any sense. Asbestos on it's own is completely inert.

It's an improbably claim that requires extraordinary evidence.

Secondly, this only establishes a correlation (and a relatively weak one at that). But there are lots of other plausible links between choosing to work in a low income asbestos industry and ovarian cancer.

It's basically a complex carbohydrate. It's not inert, bacteria can feed on it. It tends to clump when wet. Seems like the exact opposite of what you'd want to put on potentially sweaty parts.

Talc is fantastic - it's basically an inert mineral. It can get wet, and it's still talc. Bacteria can't feed on it.

I wouldn't just lump all "rock powders" together in terms of risk. Asbestos is risky because of it's physical form and iron content. Other minerals don't have the same risk.

I would avoid inhaling any powders in general - whether rock powder or not.

> Tile/countertop cutters get sick after working about 5-10 years, and that's with PPE.

I am not sure that is really true. There may be PPE involved but its either not being used properly or they are not capturing the dust properly.

2. They're a publicly traded company. Shareholders are we.

3. This sounds like the "if you're not religious, what's stopping you from killing people all the time?" logic

These old companies were founded in a society that had clear values, and many of those companies reflect those values. Even modern companies frequently have moral values, for instance, Zappos. As a society, though, we have jettisoned those old, constraining Christian/Protestant values, and the prevailing value, to the extent I can identify it, is a Marxist, everything is just the use power to oppress. If we take that as our value system, then that is what we'll become. So if you don't like companies living out that value, then it behooves you to promote the kind of values that benefit society and bring people together.

[1] https://www.jnj.com/our-credo

However, it doesn't sound like anyone has actually done any testing like this.

Even assuming that there was indeed a microscopic amount of asbestos in talc, you should be aware that you're breathing in probably ~5,000 asbestos fibers every day - that's about the ambient level from naturally occurring asbestos in air. If you do yard work, or you drive off-road, then you're probably getting more than that.

As far as I can tell, talc can be contaminated with asbestos, but you can test for this and use processes that avoid/remedy the contamination, which J&J ostensibly did - meanwhile, the cases against them seem statistically meaningless as described in all the articles. And then every time a scientific link to cancer is mentioned, it's never made clear if the link is significant, and whether the link is from mined talc that might be contaminated, pure talc, or the J&J product on the shelves which might be contaminated, only the latter two being meaningful. And regardless, J&J claims this link is junk science, and are confident enough to be suing to prove that, so I guess I look forward to seeing the result of that.

The only case that seemed significant was that J&J was found to have covered up contamination, but they seem to continue to contest this and I can't find any details on what the evidence was. E.g. is J&J claiming it wasn't contaminated, or are they claiming it was, but not to dangerous levels even over decades of use?

Very annoying.

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/talc...

> One of these, published in 1993, was a US National Toxicology Program report, which found that cosmetic grade talc containing no asbestos-like fibres was correlated with tumor formation in rats

Not so uncommon where I live. BTW, baby girls ALSO have ovaries, and they use talc for prolonged periods of time.

I also use talc in my groin. Not often, but still. Prostate cancer is not a concern for older males (we all develop it some time), but testicular cancer is a thing (mostly in children)

It was allegedly contaminated beyond a couple of confirmed samples that contained very low levels. It was never demonstrated that the issue was widespread or that any plaintiff had ever purchased a contaminated product.

That isn't to say that there isn't/wasn't a problem, but "sourcing was riddled with asbestos" is a gross overstatement.

And the correlation here is really weak - all women who developed ovarian cancer and also happened to use talc at some point in their lives.

>"So you might want to file for bankruptcy to pay off all your victims fairly and, perhaps, cheaply, even if their claims will not really “bankrupt” you in the traditional sense. But in fact that is kind of a drastic step, expensive and disruptive and risky and probably bad for shareholders. No chief executive officer of a big company wants to file for bankruptcy if it is not strictly necessary.

> There is a neater approach:

> -You put the liabilities in a box. You create a new subsidiary, you put the product-that-kills-people business in that subsidiary, and you transfer the liabilities related to that product to the subsidiary. This is, in general, hard to do, but in fact Texas has a weird merger law that allows it: You can “merge” your company into two companies, one with the liabilities and one with the rest of the business.

> -You have the box — the new subsidiary with all the product liabilities — file for bankruptcy. You get fair and consistent adjudication of the product claims, inside the box, and the rest of the company just goes along relatively normally.

> This is called the “Texas two-step.” In its extreme form it sounds like very bad cheating: You can’t really put all the liabilities and none of the money in the box; that is just a way to defraud victims, and surely they’d find a way to do something about it. But a milder form of the Texas Two-Step is that you put the liabilities in the box, put the box in bankruptcy, but have the parent company guarantee its product liabilities. (Perhaps up to some reasonable number, perhaps not.) Then you can say “no, we are not doing this to get out of paying our liabilities; we are doing it to pay them in a fairer and more consistent way.”

They should probably be warning people of the danger and if they are in violation of the laws concerning asbestos the school district should be taken to court.

One thing is clear, don't grind up your children's school district and then rub it all over a baby's genitals.