Of talc powder, painkillers and hidden dangers

ON a daily basis, we are all exposed to unseen dangers in products that we casually and confidently use and consume.

That bag of tea leaves that we soak in boiled water in our mugs; that bowl of noodles with ingredients unknown to us; that sunblock lotion that we spread on our skin; and that smartphone that we use to listen to calls and scroll to view our social media – they all have hidden dangers lurking within.

It was only in recent years that we were told that the baby talcum powder we generously smeared our babies with in the past could cause cancer; and that many food preservatives and various toxic heavy metals were also highly cancerous.

The scary fact of the matter is that more recent generations have a higher risk of early-onset cancers.

This effect is termed the ‘birth cohort effect’ and is linked to the change in environmental or lifestyle factors.

Only about five to 10 per cent of all cancer cases can be attributed to genetic defects, whereas the remaining 90 to 95 per cent have their roots in the environment and lifestyle.

In simple words, you can alter your risk by making major lifestyle changes.

When it comes to what we consume on a daily basis, there are foods that can increase your risk of cancer and these fall broadly into these categories: nicotine, red meats, highly-processed foods, candy and sweets, packaged products, fried foods, refined grains like white bread, alcoholic drinks, and fast foods.

All these have shown evidence of their contribution to cancerous growth.

I would like to turn the spotlight on two major products that have been widely used since around the 1950s, and with which I can render my own personal opinion upon, as I was involved with both.

When I had first joined The Borneo Company Ltd (BCL) in 1970, one of our most profitable agencies was Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and their top selling product was their baby talcum powder.

They had a wide range of many other consumer products, healthcare, toiletries and pharmaceuticals under their brand name, but baby talc was – for more than six decades – their No 1 bestseller, and had contributed the lion’s share of the company’s profits.

The ubiquitous bottle – firstly in tin cans, later in plastic – could be found in every little nook and corner of the country: from Chinese medical halls, to pharmacies, to the little grocery in small villages upcountry.

It was that popular and certainly was considered as essential as say, Nestlé’s Milkmaid sweetened condensed milk, or Milo.

It was not until 2016 that the initial scandal of the J&J baby powder carcinogenic link had broken into international news.

While lawsuits were initiated around 2009, a 2016 jury award of US$70 million for ovarian cancer, followed by investigative reports in 2018 showing executives had known of potential asbestos contamination since the 1950s, had brought massive public scrutiny.

Major lawsuits and jury verdicts (including a US$4.69 billion verdict in 2018) highlighted claims that asbestos in talcum powder caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found trace amounts of asbestos, prompting a recall.

J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in North America in 2020, and globally by 2023.

It, however, continued selling the product, replacing it with a corn-starch version that is still in the market today.

While formerly centred in the US, the litigation over J&J’s talcum powder reached the UK only recently, in late 2025.

Over 3,000 individuals have filed a US$1.3 billion group claim in the English High Court – it is informed that the deliberations have only started.

In the meantime, J&J and its consumer health spin-off Kenvue, have maintained that their talcum powder products are safe, asbestos-free, and that the lawsuits are based on ‘junk science.’

Another popular everyday product during my boyhood was a rather common over-the-counter (OTC) painkiller branded as ‘Saridon’ from Roche.

While the brand is still available in parts of Asia, its ingredients – specifically propyphenazone – have led to it being banned or severely restricted in other countries including South Korea (for those under 15) and various European nations, due to concerns over rare, but serious, blood disorders like agranulocytosis (Source: American Diabetes Association).

Regulatory bodies have argued that ‘cocktail drugs’ like Saridon, which combines paracetamol, propyphenazone and caffeine, lack the therapeutic justification and can pose risks such as analgesic nephropathy (kidney damage) if overused (Source: Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare).

I did mention earlier that both these common products: the baby talcum powder and the painkiller, were closely linked to me personally.

Between 1970 and 1984, during my two periods under Inchcape Berhad, the parent holding company for both BCL and Sebor-Sarawak Sdn Bhd, I had at various times being directly in charge of the consumer products agencies, of which J&J was one of the major brands in my portfolio.

I had, during the early training period as a newbie marketing executive, been on cash sale rounds up in the rural countryside as well as the town provision shops, medical halls and pharmacies, and had directly sold at wholesale the full range of J&J products.

Indeed I can proudly say that it was I who had promoted and was responsible for the widespread distribution of two of J&J’s best-selling products today: its baby shampoo, and of all things, the KY Jelly.

Thus, I am aghast and ashamed of the fact that our principal, J&J, had knowingly hidden from us all these years the now-proven fact that their product had contained a carcinogenic ingredient – the asbestos!

Saridon was widely used by a group of senior female teachers at a premier primary school in Kuching. I have personal knowledge and have seen with my own eyes that this was the case from the years involving the mid-1950s till the early 1970s.

I also noticed that the staff room for all these teachers during this period of time were rather cramped.

Imagine a 24-foot-square room that offered small individual wooden tables for 10 to 12 teachers, without any air-conditioning; a couple of ceiling fans, with a few old-fashioned windows.

The afternoon heat was stifling still and quite intolerable.

If you looked up to the ceiling, you would have noticed the bare asbestos sheets simply partitioned off into four-foot-square bordered by plain whitewashed wooden strips.

Over time under the tropical heat, you could see the dust of asbestos flacks on the floor all the time.

Believe it or not, it was only in 1955 that a definitive report had linked asbestos exposure to lung cancer, and in 1964, it was established there was a connection with mesothelioma.

In 1987, the formal classification by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) had placed asbestos as a Group 1 human carcinogen.

By then, the majority of this group of senior teachers, which had numbered almost a dozen – had their numbers reduced by about halved having succumbed not to natural death or incapacity of old age, but by the dreaded Alzheimer’s with a combination of various cancers.

I have always personally believed that their untimely demise and the source or origin of their predicament and medical conditions were hastened by a trio of lifestyle and environmental factors: their common use of Saridon; their daily exposure to the asbestos from the ceilings; and their often stressful lifestyle in their strict disciplining of the students during their era.

Oh yes, they had definitely used J&J talcum powder as well.

I have nothing but praise to and fond memories of all the teachers, especially those who had taught us.

To those who might have unknowingly been using the J&J talcum powder between 1970 and 1984, I have no words but to seek your forgiveness and understanding, as we – the distributors then – were kept completely in the dark at the time.