Baby Powder and Ovarian Cancer
Johnson & Johnson have been selling harmful consumer products that contain toxic chemicals for decades. The podcast series “Verified: Dust Up” reveals how they’ve been fighting scientists and lawsuits all these years to keep profiting from their baby powder sales.
Here’s what you need to know about toxins in your products, and what you can do to keep yourself and your family safe.
Dust Up: baby powder and ovarian cancer
I don’t often listen to podcasts, but one program caught my attention recently.
“Verified: Dust Up” is a documentary-style podcast from Witness Docs.
Here’s how the makers of the podcast describe the program:
… investigating whether a group of women developed ovarian cancer from dusting their bodies with Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder—an iconic brand associated with innocence and comfort since the 1800s.
One woman's mysterious illness snowballs into thousands of court cases, claiming that baby powder is to blame for their cancer.
Verified: Dust Up is the story of a trusted brand’s fight to convince consumers and regulators that baby powder is safe while minimizing the work of the scientists who claim it is not.
Verified follows this decades-long journey to ask: Could a product so many of us have in our medicine cabinets be putting us at risk?
I’ve been studying the problem of toxic chemicals in personal care products for over 10 years. To see this kind of media coverage feels gratifying because I am convinced that the most effective way to stop companies from selling harmful products is to raise awareness and educate consumers.
Do companies have consumers’ best interests at heart?
Over 7 podcast episodes, “Verified: Dust Up” tells the story about how Johnson & Johnson has covered up something they’ve known since the 1980s: that the talc in their baby powder contains asbestos, a known carcinogen.
The science is clear on this. The United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) website states:
There is no “safe” level of asbestos exposure for any type of asbestos fiber.
Only in 2020 did Johnson & Johnson discontinue their talc-based baby powder in North America. And still, they maintain that the product is safe, and will continue selling it in other parts of the world.
Johnson & Johnson isn’t alone in showing that they are not concerned about the health of the people who buy and use their products.
Many other companies create products for the sole purpose of making money. They don’t bother to conduct thorough research to see what health effects their products might have. And when they do, and find problems with their products, they bury the information. They discredit scientists who identify issues and silence whistleblowers, so that they can make money.
“Verified: Dust Up” also includes coverage about how in 2019, the FDA found asbestos in eye shadows, compact powders and contour palettes sold by Claire’s. Claire’s sells jewelry and makeup to teenagers.
This 2018 article from The Atlantic reports on multiple harmful ingredients used in everyday consumer products, including crayons for kids.
How toxic products affect people of color
People of color in North America
There’s a specific part of the reporting by the “Verified: Dust Up” team that I appreciated. This is from Episode 5:
... J&J identified a way to boost sales. It wanted to investigate “ethnic opportunities”. In other words, to target Black and Latino women, who the company knew were already among baby powder’s most loyal customers.
Also from the same episode:
As our team worked through all those Johnson & Johnson internal documents, we found plans to target Black and Latino communities in the 1990s and as recently as 2008.
One brainstorming document from 2004 suggested the idea of using Black celebrities like Patti LaBelle and Aretha Franklin, as spokespeople for Shower to Shower to help move away from the idea of quote, grandma's powder.
The program points out that while targeted marketing itself may be harmless, it could be true that Johnson and Johnson makes the assumption that Black and Latino consumers are more easily influenced. Is this because they are overrepresented in less wealthy socioeconomic groups?
Johnson & Johnson is certainly not the first company to ever target Black and brown bodies. This despicable behavior is common amongst organizations who think that they can use tools of white supremacy to pad their pockets.
The idea of bringing down these assholes alone is reason enough for me to continue to pursue my passion of helping as many people as possible to find safer product options.
People of color outside of the U.S. and Canada
And what about the people of color in other parts of the world?
It’s all fine and dandy that this company — and likely others — decided to change their toxic product in the face of being exposed.
However, they aren’t fixing their formulations in other countries. What’s worse is that not only are they not changing their products so they’re safe for use, they are actually PUSHING their toxic formulations that have been booted out of their home countries. Apparently, they are betting on other people not knowing the truth about these ingredients. They are preying on people’s lack of knowledge about these ingredients and the harm they can do.
J&J baby powder sold in Southeast Asia in 2021
I’ve seen it personally. I have a friend whose family is from and lives in Thailand. She lives in the U.S. and visits her family regularly. She strives to keep her life as free from toxins as possible and educates herself on what that involves.
On one visit to her childhood home, she saw a bottle of shampoo that bore the name of a popular U.S. brand. She’d never seen it in her family’s home before, so she asked what was up, and why they had stopped using the homemade version with mango and coconut FROM THEIR OWN BACKYARD that she’d been used to.
They replied that this product was so much better, because it came from the U.S. and that the commercials said so! She was horrified, and really sad. This is just one example of how this insidious process works.
What can we do to stop companies from selling harmful consumer products?
At the end of the last episode of “Verified: Dust Up”, host Natasha Del Toro says:
So now, as I stare at all of the beauty products in my bathroom, I have this general unease, wondering if there’s something else in there that might not be safe to use, and that I would decide isn’t worth the risk, if I only knew enough to ask.
I see dozens of bottles and tubes, each with a dozen or so ingredients that I can barely pronounce. It feels overwhelming. One thing this story has taught me is that we have to ask more questions, a lot more questions, about the products we use every day. After all, if we can’t trust the baby company, who can we trust?
These are really great points. Because you can best believe that other companies are pulling this shit. And so it falls to us to educate ourselves in order to save our own lives. They aren’t going to do it for us.
We need to demand better
Based on my observations and research, the only thing that will change companies’ behavior is pressure from consumers.
We have to educate ourselves and then put our money behind safe products that we want to use, and stop giving money to companies who don’t care about our wellbeing. This has been shown to be successful time and again.
Here are a couple of examples where consumers have forced the discontinuation of harmful products.
Triclosan
Triclosan is a pesticide registered with the U.S. government. It’s a cousin to Agent Orange.
It was used in popular hand soaps and toothpaste, including products sold by Bath and Body Works. Eventually, the word got out and enough people stopped buying those products. Enough trouble was made for the manufacturers that they finally stopped making products with triclosan in it.
Organic foods
You also see this with the food movement. 10 years ago, how hard was it to find organic, plant-based food options in mainstream big-box grocery chains? VERY.
Nowadays, even the most mainstream of chain stores carries at least a few options.
Companies will go where the money is. As consumer demand for organic products grew, it passed a threshold and convinced companies — including those that used to stock ZERO organic, plant-based products — to jump on the bandwagon.
Start here
I really love this video from Healthy Child, Healthy World.
It points out how all we really have control over is how much we can learn and then how we can turn around and teach others in order to make a better, safer world.
I truly believe in this and this is why I’m so passionate about helping others make changes in their lifestyle that include de-toxifying the product selection that they have in their homes!
Johnson & Johnson is the company that was making baby shampoo with formaldehyde-releasing ingredients in it when my child was a baby. That’s the product that started me on this journey.
They’ve since taken those ingredients out. This is just one more example of how consumers can successfully bring about change by educating themselves, speaking up, and voting with their dollars.
Baby Shampoo Guide
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Private coaching
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