The new research was published just a week after a St Louis court ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $72m in damages to the family of a women who allegedly died of ovarian cancer after using the company’s baby powder.
Dr Daniel Cramer of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who was the lead researcher in the latest study, said it is time to put warning labels on talc products. “Talc is a good drying agent, but women should know that if it’s used repeatedly, it can get into the vagina and into their upper genital tract. And I think if they knew that, they wouldn’t use it,” he told Reuters news agency.
In the latest study, Cramer and his team assessed the talcum powder use of 2,041 women with ovarian cancer and compared it to that of 2,100 women who didn’t have the disease.
The researchers noted that the risk increased with years of usage. Women who had used talc regularly for more than 24 years had up to a 57 per cent increased risk.
Women who use talk tended to be older, heavier and asthmatic, and regularly took analgesics, but none of these factors were cancer risks.
Dr Cramer first highlighted the risks of talc in 1982.
His research was included in the case of the family of Jacqueline Salter Fox of Alabama, who died from ovarian cancer in 2015 at the age of 62. She apparently used Johnson & Johnson’s talc products for more than 35 years. The St Louis court awarded Ms Fox’s family $10m in damages and a further $62m in punitive damages.
(Source: Epidemiology, 2016; doi: 10.1097/EDE.0000000000000434)
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