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Ministry of Health officials have not yet briefed Associate Health Minister Steve Chadwick on research which shows that women who use talcum powder in their underpants may be tripling their chances of developing ovarian cancer.
"She would expect health officials to consider the findings of the study and for the ministry to make recommendations," a spokeswoman for the minister said today.
The minister had been asked for comment on whether she was going to warn NZ women, what she was going to advise parents using talc under their babies' nappies, and whether the talc content should undergo a risk analysis so that an appropriate warning could be placed on the label.
Similar questions forwarded by NZPA to ministry officials, and to the Environmental Risk Management Authority had also not been answered tonight.
New scientific evidence has confirmed suspicions originally raised over 30 years ago that particles of talc applied to women's genitals may travel to the ovaries and trigger a process of inflammation that allows cancer cells to flourish.
Researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston who last year studied more than 3000 women now say using talc merely once a week raised the risk of cancer by 36 per cent, rising to 41 per cent for those applying powder every day.
And women of a specific genotype, carrying a gene called glutathione S-transferase M1, or GSTM1, but lacking a gene called glutathione S-transferase T1 (GSTT1) - about one-in-10 Caucasian women - are nearly three times as likely to develop tumours.
Researchers have separately also identified tiny particles of powder in the pelvis of a 68-year-old woman with advanced ovarian cancer who had used talc every day for 30 years.
Dr Maggie Gates, who led the 3000-women study, said that until the outcome of further research women should avoid using talc in the genital area.
Other research has shown that women who have had a hysterectomy or had her fallopian tubes tied have a lowered risk of getting ovarian cancer. One reason is likely to be that a tubal ligation stops talc particles moving up the fallopian tubes to the ovaries.
A link between the talc rock in talcum powder and ovarian cancers was recognised in the 1970s, when researchers found asbestos in half their samples of cosmetic talcum collected before 1973.
And in 1982, researchers showed that in a group of 215 ovarian cancer patients, 43 per cent had dusted talc on their genitals or on sanitary napkins. A major manufacturer, Johnson and Johnson, said at the time that the study did not prove anything because it did not ask women about their longterm use of talcum powder.
- NZPA
