OT talcum powder (2025 Update)

May 24, 2020 Last reply: 8 months ago 10 Replies

OT, pretty much



Talc is chemically but not physically the same as asbestos. There is a



3rd substance like the two of them but I forget which it is.


If baby powder has caused ovarian cancer in women (presumably because some asbestos is mixed in with the talc), does that mean the women had used the powder near their genitals? Do women do that? How near? In their genitals?



Does that mean that the powder is not dangerous if used on boys? Especially wrt diaper rash? Isn't that one of its major uses?



Or even girl babies if kept away from their genitals?



Do any of the plaintiffs say their harmful exposure to baby powder was when they were babies? I haven't read that any say that.



Sales have fallen off, but it's typical afaik when there is bad press about something for the public to lose interest even when most of an item's uses have nothing to do with the bad press. There are some famous examples but I can't think of any right now. But in this case, did sales fall off even though most of talcum powder's uses are safe?



Even if used near a woman's genitals, but outside her body, how it could get to her ovaries, I don't know. I don't know if that amazing feat means it's only slightly more difficult to get to the ovaries all the way from her tush, or it's the other way around: How much more difficult it is if only used on her tush when she was a baby and had diaper rash.



There is also diaper cream, and there are cornstarch based products.



I don't have a baby, the questions just seem interesing to me. Why should this matter for a boy baby, and how and for whom (when and how was it used) does it cause ovarian cancer.



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sheeesh Micky ... really ? John T.

Not certain but major difference is physical chemical make-up appears similar if not the same. Talc is a powder and asbestos is fibrous.

They are not carcinogenic but the problem with asbestos leading to lung cancer is that the fiber cannot be ejected by the cilia in the lungs leading to a source of irritation which increases the carcinogenicity of cigarette smoke.

Any link to uterine cancer is very tenuous but predatory law firms have convinced juries that it does.

In general when you hear about any issue on TV through a law firm seeking business it is not true or very tenuous.

Mg3(Si2O5)(OH)4 isn't Mg3(Si4O10)(OH)2. The devil is in the details. Vermiculite has a similar composition. We have a town that is a Superfund site because of the asbestos contamination in the vermiculite mine. W.R. Grace bought the mine in '63 so they were cast as the bad guys but they followed the established practices of the day. The mine paid good and everybody was happy until they started dying.

Vermiculite. I believe that has a Fe component but some of the rarer asbestos types do also.

Saw that and those differences would not make one carcinogenic and the other not.

Why not? I remember listening to a lecture on cancer by Nobel Prize recipient David Baltimore in the 70s. He was discussing how perplexing and difficult a disease it was and said that if you inject mice with pieces of glass, it doesn't cause cancer. If it's in shards, ground up, they do. Also we have many chemicals and drugs that behave very differently even though they have the exact same chemical composition, with the sole exception being they are isomers, ie just mirror image molecules. As I recall, that was the problem with thalidomide, one isomer caused the birth defects. Dr. Baltimore also was pessimistic at the time that we would find a cure for cancer in our lifetimes, which so far has proven correct.

It is not the chemistry but the physical state of the product. Talc particles will be ejected by the cilia in the lungs but asbestos will not causing fibrosis and lung cancer particularly in smokers.

I can see it with lungs where fibers get in easily by breathing dust but have a hard time seeing how they could get to the uterus. They are not going to migrate in.

Observations with women are based on epidemiological studies. Anyone familiar with them knows that there is a tremendous amount of static.

Law firms to make money will seize on that one positive study, magnify it and convince a jury to give large awards.

But the physical structure does.

Molecular chemistry has nothing to do with the physical characteristics?

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