Talcum Powder Cancer Alarm

Saying that talcum powder and other cosmetic talc products may pose a risk of ovarian cancer, two scientist scientists have again asked the Food and Drug Administration to require talc products have warning labels.

The controversy over talc, which many women use to mask genital odors, goes back to 1994, when the Cancer Prevention Coalition petitioned the FDA. That petition was rejected at the end of the Clinton Administration, in December 2000.

Ovarian cancer is the eighth most common cancer among women (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers), with one in 71 women affected, according to the American Cancer Society. There will be an estimated 21,650 new cases diagnosed in 2008, and 15,520 deaths. Overall, though, the incidence of ovarian cancer has declined slightly in the past 20 years.

"Nevertheless, the industry and, worse still the FDA, remain recklessly unresponsive to these dangers," write the two scientists, Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition, and Dr. Quentin Young, chairman of the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group. "The FDA has neither banned the genital use of talcum powder, nor required industry to label it with explicit warnings."

COMMENTS ()