December 8, 2021 A parent is meant to take care of their children to the best of their ability. And for any parent of a young child, something like using baby powder might seem routine. When a parent is baby proofing their home, they might remove certain hazardous products. But the last item they might expect to be harmful is the powder meant to prevent diaper rash—especially from the likes of the trusted brand Johnson & Johnson. In May of 2020, Johnson & Johnson announced that it would voluntarily end the sale of its talc-based baby powder in the U.S. and Canada due to possible asbestos contamination, but only after numerous lawsuits forced them to. It is worth noting that Johnson & Johnson maintains that their products have been tested and deemed safe for the last 40 years as they have defended themselves from cancer claims for over 50 years.
It is not just Johnson’s Baby Powder that has asbestos contamination, but other talc powder products as well, such as eye shadow palettes. Consumer tests even found asbestos in makeup kits for children sold at popular retailers like Claire’s, which led to the FDA following up with its own tests that detected the carcinogen in half of the twenty products it tested. Talc is used in powder-based cosmetics as a filler to make it cheaper, improve texture, or absorb moisture.
Talc is a naturally occurring mineral that commonly contains asbestos material, which is considered unsafe at any level of exposure. This asbestos occurrence happens because the two minerals can form from the same parent rock mined for both construction and cosmetic purposes, making cross-contamination a possibility. While including asbestos in products in personal care products in any capacity is a violation of federal law, the FDA does not require testing cosmetics before releasing them to market in the same way it regulates the construction industry, nor does it ask companies to submit their results. Growing research depicts the prevalence of asbestos in these personal care products due to this lack of regulation.
In 2019 alone, the FDA found nine cases of asbestos contamination from the 52 talc products they tested. Out of the 2,000 personal care products identified as containing talc, more than half of them are in powdered form, posing a risk of inhalation. Currently, 15,000 Americans die every year from asbestos-related exposure. To combat those numbers, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan introduced legislation that would require warning labels on cosmetics that could contain asbestos and are marketed to children. Ultimately, measures like these are long overdue, given that federal laws regulating the cosmetics industry have not been updated since 1938.
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