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 J&J, which is facing thousands of lawsuits over a variety of
products, said last week it was recalling around 33,000 bottles of
baby powder in the United States after U.S. health regulators found
trace amounts of asbestos, a known carcinogen, in samples taken from
a bottle purchased online.
The move marked the first time J&J recalled its iconic baby powder
for possible asbestos contamination, and the first time U.S.
regulators announced a finding of asbestos in the product.
Last week's recall was the latest blow to the more than 130-year-old
U.S. healthcare conglomerate that is facing thousands of lawsuits
over a variety of products, including baby powder, opioids, medical
devices and the antipsychotic Risperdal.
Target has removed all bottles of the product from its stores and
Target.com following the recall, a spokeswoman said in an email on
Friday.
CVS Health Corp said on Thursday it would remove the bottles from
its online store as well, out of caution and to prevent customer
confusion. The pharmacy chain said all other sizes of the talc would
remain on its shelves.
"It's not important at all in terms of the dollar figure to either
CVS or J&J. What it tells you is that retailers are being extra
cautious with how they are dealing with J&J's voluntary recall,"
Jefferies healthcare analyst Jared Holz said.
All product returned to J&J through the recall process – whether the
product is from the impacted lot or not – is removed from the
marketplace permanently, the company said.
Rite Aid had informed its stores to pull all 22-ounce bottles of
Johnson's Baby Powder from shelves on Oct. 18 and store them in a
secure location, company spokesman Chris Savarese said.
"Additionally, we've applied a point of sale system block for this
product to prevent it from being sold."
Walmart, the world's largest retailer, has also removed and blocked
all potentially impacted baby powder, a company spokeswoman said in
an emailed statement.
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J&J's voluntary recall was limited to one lot of Johnson's Baby
Powder produced and shipped in the United States in 2018, J&J said
last week. The company added that testing by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration as recently as a month ago found no asbestos in their
talc.
Commenting on CVS's move, J&J spokesman Ernie Knewitz said, "It's
temporary ... They are doing it storewide because they don't have
the resources to go through at the store level and check all the
SKUs (stock keeping units), check all the lot numbers."
Other retailers are also expected to remove the product from their
shelves as they want to avoid liability, said Eric Schiffer, chief
executive officer of private equity firm Patriarch Organization.
"It wouldn't surprise me to see Amazon and other online retailers do
the same," he added.
J&J has known for decades that asbestos lurked in its talc, Reuters
reported last year. Internal company records, trial testimony and
other evidence show that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s, the
company's raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive
for small amounts of asbestos.
Company executives, mine managers, scientists, doctors and lawyers
fretted over the problem and how to address it, while failing to
disclose it to regulators or the public, Reuters found.
J&J has repeatedly said that its talc products are safe, and that
decades of studies have shown them to be asbestos-free and that they
do not cause cancer.
(Reporting by Nivedita Balu and Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru,
Richa Naidu in Chicago, Nandita Bose in Washington, Michael Erman
and Caroline Humer in New York; Editing by Maju Samuel and Saumyadeb
Chakrabarty)
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