The Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating Johnson & Johnson over concerns about possible asbestos contamination of its popular baby powder and other talc-based products, the company said yesterday, the New York Times reported. In a securities filing, Johnson & Johnson said it was “cooperating with these government inquiries and will be producing documents in response” to subpoenas it had received. The New York Times and Reuters reported in December on internal documents that showed decades of communications within the company about the risk of asbestos in its talc products even as Johnson & Johnson fought to keep negative information out of the public eye. Johnson & Johnson, which faces around 13,000 lawsuits in which its body powders are blamed for causing ovarian cancer or mesothelioma, has stood by the safety of its products. It said on Wednesday that “decades of independent tests by regulators and the world’s leading labs prove Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder is safe and asbestos-free, and does not cause cancer.” Last week, Imerys Talc America, a major supplier of talc used by Johnson & Johnson and a defendant in some of the lawsuits, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company said that although the suits challenging talc’s safety were “entirely without merit,” it did not want to “litigate these claims in perpetuity and incur millions of dollars in projected legal costs to defend these cases.”
