Talc deposits are often found around asbestos ore. From what I can tell the issue is cross contamination rather than talcum powder itself being carcinogenic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talc#Association_with_asbestos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talc#Association_with_asbestos
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/talc...
Someone above linked to this: Asbestos Exposure and Ovarian Cancer: A Meta-analysis (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209379112...) which concludes: "This meta-analysis provides evidence of a significant association between asbestos exposure and ovarian cancer mortality."
You might not be aware of any hypotheses that asbestos is a factor in ovarian cancer, but it seems others have for a very long time. In 2017 Germany considered ovarian cancer caused by asbestos to be an occupational disease. A link between talc and ovarian cancer was suggested back in the 1960s.
Talc, as something that causes cancer, has been being researched for a very very long time.
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.
This article doesn't go into the details too deeply but however bad it was, sounds like it went on for a while...
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/johnson-johnson-k...
They tested, found asbestos, then lied to the FDA saying that there wasn't any when there had been, tried to get the FDA to allow certain amounts of asbestos in their products, and when faced with lawsuits repeatedly obstructed efforts to get their internal documentation/communication on the subject.
> meanwhile, the cases against them seem statistically meaningless as described in all the articles.
That's a bizarre metric. How many people who got cancer would have detected it, realized that it was from baby powder, had the time, strength, and money (while fighting cancer) to get lawyers and go to court over it?