Johnson & Johnson has said it will stop producing baby powder in 2023 as it faces nearly 40,000 legal claims that the product made its users sick with cancer.
The US pharmaceutical company said on Thursday that it has decided to transition to a cornstarch-based baby powder, which it has already launched in US and Canadian markets.
J&J said its stance on the safety of the talc-based product – which has been sold for more than a century and is closely associated with the J&J brand – remains unchanged.
“We are firmly backed by decades of independent scientific analysis by medical experts around the world that confirm that Johnson’s Baby Powder based on talc is safe, does not contain asbestos and does not cause cancer,” the company said in a statement. Also according to J&J, this transition will help streamline product offerings, deliver sustainable innovation and meet customer needs.
The company stopped selling the talc-based product in the United States and Canada in 2020, citing declining sales.
However, the decision coincided with a flurry of lawsuits from people who claimed that J&J’s baby powder had been contaminated with asbestos and caused them to develop ovarian cancer or mesothelioma.
J&J lost several key cases, including a Missouri ruling that awarded $4.7 billion in damages to 22 women who blamed their ovarian cancer on asbestos in that talc. In June, the Supreme Court declined to review the case, in which damages had already been reduced to $2.1 billion.
Last year, J&J deployed a controversial bankruptcy strategy to help it manage the nearly 40,000 cases known as “Texas two step.”
The bankruptcy maneuver used Texas-friendly business laws that allowed J&J to split into two separate entities and to surround all debt with talc in a subsidiary, which it called LTL. LTL then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which suspended all claims regarding talc.
The claimants have initiated legal proceedings in an attempt to eliminate bankruptcy.
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