Editorial: Talcum powder - what next?

Linda Hall.

Babies and talc go together.

When my children were babies I smothered them in talcum powder at bath time.

I received talcum powder for presents years back - beautifully scented, soft powder.

I haven't used it for years.

Not for any particular reason, I just stopped using it.

There was some talk years ago about the powder causing some breathing problems for some babies when it was shaken all over their bodies.

I remember thinking that's easily fixed, just put some in the palm of your hand and pop it where it needs to go rather than flinging it all about the room.

So I was astounded when I read that Johnson & Johnson has been ordered by a jury to pay a whooping $108 million to the family of a woman who say her death was linked to use of the company's baby powder talc.

Jackie Fox from Birmingham, Alabama, died of ovarian cancer last year, aged 62, having used the talc for decades.

Really. What next?

These days everything you eat or touch apparently causes cancer.

Just months ago there were reports that processed meats such as ham, bacon and sausages were as bad for you as smoking cigarettes.

Remember when fat was the bad boy of food?

Now health experts have done a complete turn around and said no ... eat fat, don't eat sugar.

It seems you can't eat, drink or use anything these days without it having some sort of link to cancer.

And while it seems that cancer is much more rampant than it was 30 years ago, if we didn't eat, drink or use any of the thousands of products "linked to cancer", we wouldn't be able to set foot outside our door and eat only what we could get from our backyards, for fear of getting a whiff of something bad for us. Yes, we should be eating as much good food as we possibly can and avoiding nasty chemicals but sometimes it's unavoidable - who would have ever thought that talcum powder would be a threat ... if in fact it really is. I asked a couple of mothers of young children in our office what they thought of all this and if they used talc.

"Yes I use it occasionally. It's good for red raw nappy rash. It smells nice and feels nice. I use it on myself sometimes, too," said one mother. "I don't but only because my baby had quite bad eczema when she was little. I wish I could have used it. This story is really going off on Facebook. Some of the comments are just stupid."

Both said that this wouldn't prevent them using it on themselves or their children.

Good on them. In fact, on the Out and About Facebook page most comments were the same as above. One wrote: "I don't know about this, my mum used on me, I'm 35 and I'm still doing fine, my grandma lived till she was in her 100th year and she used J n J all time." Then there was this comment which I found really interesting. "I was told by my Plunket nurse NOT to use talc on skin ... never used it and that was 25 years ago."

There's no doubt that the ruling will cause irreversible damage to Johnson & Johnson.

A lot of people will err on the side of safety and decide not to use it, and I can't blame them for that.

The question is, where will all this stop? Of all the things in the world I would have chosen to avoid to better my chances of not getting cancer, talcum powder would have been at the bottom of the list.

The last word on this from the same Facebook site goes to Mandy Newport: "Here is the official response from J&J US: The talc used in all our global products is carefully selected and meets the highest quality, purity and compliance standards. The recent US verdict goes against decades of sound science proving the safety of talc as a cosmetic ingredient in multiple products, and while we sympathise with the family of the plaintiff, we strongly disagree with the outcome.

"Ovarian cancer is a complex disease with no known cause and the US Food and Drug Administration, National Cancer Institute and Cosmetic Ingredient Review Committee have all concluded that there is insufficient evidence linking talc to ovarian cancer. Please visit the following site for all the info: www.safetyandcarecommitment.com/ingredi ... /other/ta.

Make up your own mind.

- Linda Hall is assistant editor at Hawke's Bay Today.