The law firm representing the plaintiffs reported Thursday that the American pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson facing a class action lawsuit United Kingdom for powders suspected of containing asbestos and causing cancer.
You may also be interested in: Johnson & Johnson awards $8 billion in compensation
According to the office KP Law, who filed the complaint before the London High Court and claims to represent more than 3,000 plaintiffs, The amount of compensation claimed could amount to more than $1 billion.
The claim, “covering the period from 1965 to 2023, details how Johnson & Johnson knew that its talc-based products contained carcinogenic fibers, including asbestos, for more than fifty years and chose to keep them on the market,” the firm said in a statement.
Users of this product, withdrawn from the British market in 2023 (three years after its ban in the United States and Canada), they would have developed different types of cancer, especially of the pleura, peritoneum and ovaries.
In 2023, the company, which remains focused on its pharmaceutical and medical devices areas, separated its consumer products and personal care division, which gave rise to a new independent company called Kenvue.
Contacted by AFP, the pharmaceutical company considers that Kenvue has inherited “all presumed obligations related to talc litigation outside the United States and Canada.”
A spokesperson for Kenvue said, for its part, that “years of testing carried out by independent and renowned laboratories, universities and health authorities in the United Kingdom and around the world” demonstrate that the product is safe, “does not contain asbestos and does not cause cancer.”
In April, the American justice system rejected an offer from the company, which proposed, without acknowledging its responsibility, to pay some $8 billion over twenty-five years to resolve 90,000 civil lawsuits in that country related to ovarian problems (99.75% of current complaints).
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization (WHO) classified talc as of July 2024 as probably carcinogenic.
You may also be interested in: Why will Johnson & Johnson stop selling baby powder? This is what we know
However, a summary of studies published in January 2020, which included 250,000 women in the United States, found no statistical link between using talcum powder on the genitals and the risk of ovarian cancer.
The post Lawsuit in the United Kingdom against Johnson & Johnson for talc suspected of causing cancer appeared first on Veritas News.
