Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has decided to stop selling its talcum products in the U.S. and Canada due to declined consumer demand and misinformation about the safety of the products.
According to a report published on the official website of J&J, the company terminated the shipments of hundreds of items in the U.S. and Canada in March to evaluate its inventory amidst the coronavirus pandemic. Since March, J&J has maintained social distancing in its facilities and focused on shipping products with high demand. The company faces thousands of lawsuits that claim to cause mesothelioma and ovarian cancer because of its talc-based products.
The spokesperson for J&J told the company will defend its products as scientific studies conducted by the medical experts over the decades ensure its product safety.
According to J&J, the sale of the products will continue through the retailers until the inventory is drained off meanwhile, cornstarch-based baby powder will be available alongside.
Ted Meadows of Beasley Allen law firm is the lawyer for the plaintiffs suing J&J. He said that J&J should have removed Johnson's Baby Powder from the market decades ago and should now accept the responsibility for the cause of cancer among the thousands of women who are suffering or who have died as a result of ovarian cancer due to the talcum powder products. J&J recalled a shipment in October as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found asbestos during an inspection.
All the talcum powder lawsuits are centralized before the U.S District Judge of New Jersey Freda L. Wolfson, who considered plaintiffs' expert testimony under the federal Daubert standard and opened a path to trials in the multidistrict litigation.
Johnson's Baby Powder, one of the most popular products containing talcum powder, is linked to increasing a woman's risk of ovarian cancer if she uses it regularly in the genital area. In a few cases, the cancer tissue was studied using an electron microscope and was found to have talc in it, which supported the claim that the cancer was caused by the body powder and increases the talc-related cancer risk.
Currently, there are more than 17,000 pending cases against J&J, and all the trials have been postponed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
