Baby powder cancer lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson and other companies are becoming more widespread.

Though baby powder seems nothing short of harmless, recent studies have linked the product to an extremely serious disease: ovarian cancer.

What’s Wrong with Baby Powder?

Baby powder
is a product that can absorb moisture and prevent chafing. Consumers most often use baby powder to prevent diaper rashes in their young children, but the product is also often used by adults.

Baby powder can be based on two different formulations. One is based on cornstarch, and the other talc, sometimes called talcum powder. Talc-based products, however, have been associated with certain health risks, because talc contains silica. Silica is an inorganic mineral that can cause health problems such as lung cancer.

In fact, one well-known silica-based mineral is heavily associated with lung cancer risk: asbestos. Asbestos has been connected time and time again with mesothelioma lung cancer. Like asbestos-related cancers, baby powder lawsuits have alleged that talc-based powders can similarly cause cancers and/or other dangerous disorders.

Allegations of a link between talc-based powders such as Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder and ovarian cancer have been cause for extreme concern among the women who have used this product or others like it.

According to baby powder lawsuits, studies have shown a strong connection between talc based baby powders and ovarian cancer, including evidence of talc within some ovarian tumors. Plaintiffs claim that this evidence should be cause for action, but Johnson & Johnson and other companies that produce talc-based baby powders have failed to give adequate warning about these dangers from their products.

Baby Powder Cancer

Ovarian cancer and similar or related cancers are the fifth leading cause of cancer fatalities in women in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute. This frightening statistic makes any product remotely linked with such severe side effects extremely dangerous and worthy of concern and caution.

Because there are few early symptoms of ovarian cancer, this disease is usually not discovered until much later, in the last stages of the cancer. Once a patient has progressed into the later stages of cancer, there is not much that can be done to stop the disease, and it becomes much more dangerous. This delay in discovery causes the fatality rate of ovarian cancer to soar, given that treatment is so much less effective in later stages.

The most common type of ovarian cancer is epithelial ovarian cancer, and its early symptoms are largely unnoticeable. A recent study referenced in baby powder cancer lawsuits showed that for women who used talc-based baby powders in the genital area the risk of epithelial ovarian cancer increases between 20 and 30 percent.

Baby Powder Cancer Lawsuits

Women involved in baby powder cancer lawsuits believe that companies that manufacture and market these baby powder products are responsible to provide adequate warnings of the risks involved in using their product.

Plaintiffs claim that adequate knowledge of these potentially serious risks would have prevented them from using the product, and therefore would have allowed them to avoid ovarian cancer diagnosis altogether.

If you or someone you know has used Johnson’s Baby Powder or a similar powder product containing talc and have since been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, you may be able to file a baby powder cancer lawsuit.