I'm not motivated to do
real research (reading entire source papers/testimony), but every time I look into this, the info is really frustrating and unclear. There seems to be a lot of noise (on one side, corporate self-preservation; and on the other, overly un-objective anti-corporate sentiment).
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.