#this whole article is actually extremely good & if you are getting paywalled lmk & i'll get it to you

[girderednerve]

"Not everyone suing Johnson & Johnson is part of that [mass lawsuit regarding cosmetic talc], and not all of the plaintiffs have ovarian cancer. Some are suffering from mesothelioma, a rare and lethal form of cancer, associated with asbestos exposure, that eats away at the thin layer of tissue surrounding the body’s internal organs and often results in death within a year of diagnosis.

Historically, mesothelioma has been associated with men who worked in mining or construction, although it sometimes affected their wives and daughters as well. Now, though, according to Michael Becich, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who runs the National Mesothelioma Virtual Tissue Bank, “we’re seeing a much younger population and also more women.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that in the past twenty years there has been a twenty-five-per-cent increase in the number of women who died of the disease: four hundred and eighty-nine in 1999 to six hundred and fourteen in 2020, with the highest number of deaths occurring among homemakers. As early as 1997, lawyers working on behalf of Johnson & Johnson to fight a Texas woman’s mesothelioma lawsuit against the company noted in an internal memo that 'rare cases of mesothelioma among women with no other identifiable exposure might be related to exposure to cosmetic talc.'"

#asbestos #consumer safety #cancer #this whole article is actually extremely good & if you are getting paywalled lmk & i'll get it to you #it also goes into how the cosmetic industry managed the talc problem; naturally there's a lot in common with tobacco companies #it's useful to know the playbook imo #i THREATENED to talk about mesothelioma statistics!!! and here!! i have DELIVERED on mesothelioma statistics!!!!