This is why independant testing is needed. Companies have every reason to not want test results like this be public.
Americans wouldn’t know about it, but Ribena is a popular (blackcurrant) fruit drink in much of the world, produced by GlaxoSmithKline. For decades they advertised how it was high in vitamin C, until in 2007 some school kids in New Zealand were doing a project to show how it was healthier than cheaper brands, when they found out that it contained no vitamin C.
Wait, what?!
Yeah. Blackcurrants are high in vitamin C, but it turns out that it wasn’t making it to the concentrate they made.
This 1975 internal memo really sums it up:
“Our current posture with respect to the sponsorship of talc safety studies has been to initiate studies only as dictated by confrontation. This philosophy, so far, has allowed us to neutralize or hold in check data already generated by investigators who question the safety of talc. The principal advantage for this operating philosophy lies in the fact that we minimize the risk of possible self-generation of scientific data which may be politically or scientifically embarrassing.”
- G. Lee, a J&J applied research director, “strictly confidential” memo from March 3 1975 to Dr. D.R.Petterson & Dr. B. Semple, managers of the baby products division regarding Management Authorization for Talc Safety StudiesMore gross memos in this 2018 J&J Reuters investigation: “Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder”
Ah, the good ol “if we never look for it, it isn’t really there!” plan.
Reading about Real Water poisoning people with hydrazine recently threw me for a loop… Source
After traditional filtration methods:
Then potassium chloride is added and the water goes through a proprietary “ionizer” apparatus to apply an electrical current to the water. This allegedly created positively charged and negatively charged solutions. Real Water employees would discard the positively charged solution and keep the negatively charged solution.
That initial batch of negatively charged solution would then go through the “ionizer” apparatus and be separated again. The resulting negatively charged solution would then be treated with potassium hydroxide (a form of lye), potassium bicarbonate (sometimes used in baking powders), and magnesium chloride (a salt used in nutritional supplements and for de-icing roads); this formed an “E2 concentrate” product, which, when diluted, formed their alkaline water product.
The FDA identified hydrazine in product samples it tested. In the trial, Issam Najm, an environmental engineer who specializes in water chemistry and testing, testified that the hydrazine likely formed in the “ionizer,” which was just titanium tubes electrified with what looked like jumper cables used to charge a car battery. Najm testified that, in the charged water, nitrogen gas naturally found in air could have reacted with water to form hydrazine (N2H4), or, during the electrolysis, ammonia (NH3) was formed first, before reacting with hydroxide to form hydrazine.
According to Kemp, Real Water never tested for hydrazine, and the meters (made by Hanna Instruments and Milwaukee Instruments) the company used to test alkalinity were allegedly inaccurate, leading Real Water to produce yet more concentrated forms of its product than it thought.
“These people were outrageous,” Kemp said. There was “no safety testing, no analysis of the product to see what was in it.” He said that the person who developed the water treatment process for Real Water bought the titanium tubes “from some Russian guy in the '80s” and spent four to five months making alkaline waters in his garage, working until he had a formula that didn’t make him vomit or have diarrhea.
It makes me think of the irradiated water that was marketed for “vigor!” and bogus cures in the 20s. Still too much snake oil and pseudoscience…
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Really need to bring back death penalties. These scum kill us and yet we do nothing.
Not sure how this would change anything compared to life in prison?
Do these people get put in jail?
It’s rare for criminal action of corporate leaders to be charged, period.
I think a better starting place would be to change this. Be much more willing to hold malicious corporate leaders accountable for their crimes. They far too often fall behind the security of a corporate veil, which if investigated, usually ends up with a fine, a slap on the wrist.
Prosecutors are allowed to pierce the corporate veil for criminal actions, but they rarely do so.
I agree, but being able to not be directly prosecuted is basically why corporations and the idea of incorporating exist at all.
It has always been about minimizing risk to the business owner.
It is bullshit and needs to change.
They will make this go away with money.
The death penalty still exists (well, in many US states it does), it just doesn’t get applied to those who are Too Rich To Die.
I don’t want death. Far too simple.
My solution would be drop them off on an uninhabited island.
Have cameras and make it a real survival program. People can do votes for stuff they want. Help fund it. If they live sweet of they don’t survive then also sweet.
They have no remorse for the damage they do to the planet and humans.
But corporate death is… yanking their charter and seizing their holdings You know, kind of what they did to the Trump org And that was a long time coming
it can be done
I think we need to figure out how to get them aboard a Russian airplane.
I think it’s adorable that you still think the justice system is actually made for…you know…justice.
Oh no I’m not an idiot. It’s just what I’d like. Of course nothing has happened. So it’s been and gone
Every J&J CEO between 1976 and when they stopped selling talc should be in prison.
That’s literally why LLC’s exist in the first place. The company exists as a separate legal entity from the people that operate it. The company can be fined. The people, unless proven that they acted out of gross negligence or malice, usually don’t get charged with crimes.
The company knew their baby powder was dangerous and didn’t pull the product. In fact, they took active measures to hide and lobby against the issue.
That’s malice.
I’m no law person, but that seems like an intentional tort and those pierce the corporate veil. Corporations have stronger protections than LLCs.
Oh Johnson and Johnson makes your hair fall out now too!
And nice they’re giving people cancer again with benzene
I’m certain that justice will come swiftly to those responsible.
/s
I’m sure they’ll be just…FINE.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the real American Dream.
“True, but someday I might be rich. And then people like me better watch their step.”
from at least 1971
This article is only dealing with the inhalation issue, but there have been previous cases about J&J with ovarian cancer and I just want to highlight a different Reuters article from a couple of years ago.
A report in the June 1966 edition of the American Journal of Diseases of Children, citing the deaths of three children who inhaled large amounts of talcum powder, concluded there was “no justification” for using the product on babies because it has “no medicinal value.”
"Beginning in the 1970s, J&J ran ads clearly intended to woo young women, in addition to its traditional marketing aimed at families with babies. “You start being sexy when you stop trying,” was the line from an ad that appeared in Seventeen magazine in 1972.
- “As worries about Baby Powder’s safety mounted, J&J focused its pitches on minority, overweight women”, Reuters 2021After they lost the baby market they preyed on teenage girls and women’s insecurities by marketing it to them as a part of “feminine hygiene”. The talc migrated into their ovaries.
1972 Johnson & Johnson talc advertisment in Seventeen magazine
Image description
A young woman with long blonde hair sits at the base of a tree. A young man’s head rests in her lap looking up at her, and she touches his hair. The photo is taken from ground level, and the golden grass leaves partially conceal the couple. Text advertizing Johnson and Johnson talc is overlayed on the photo
Image text
You start being sexy when you stop trying.
If a boy’s interested in you, it should be because you’re you. Not because you wear musky perfume, make-up, or anything else that makes you something you’re not.
Johnson’s Baby Powder lets you be you. Because Johnson’s is fresh and pure and natural. It won’t make you smell like a siren. It just has the smell of clean skin. And smoothing it on after you shower or bathe will keep your skin feeling clean and cool and silky. Johnson’s Baby Powder. Stop trying. Just try it.
Johnson & Johnson
Considering that talc is found/mined near asbestos, shouldn’t other manufacturers of talcum powder have the same problems? How is J&J different?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/business/talc-asbestos-powder-facts.html
The cover up is worse than the crime I guess
Found talc in a makeup palette I was gonna buy at Target. Definitely did not get it
I still use shower to shower. Is that a risky product?
Check the ingredients list. I believe they switched to corn starch a long time ago.
Will do, thanks.
In addition to other actions we need to boycott these pricks and others like them. Drag their name through the mud on social media. When they post to promote a product. Post a link to an article they dont want to circulate.
Fuck them
Dolla dolla bill
Yeah, she whined for the bill, grind for the bill.
That’s the representation of Johnson & Johnson I’ve ever seen.
That was a fuckin novel, I ain’t got time to read that
No time to read, has time to post a comment. What a time to be alive.
Uh yeah this comment took half a second, that article is about an 45 min read. Crazy, they must be the same time investment.
