Johnson & Johnson said it would pay more than $100 million to settle more than 1,000 charges its baby powder caused cancer, Bloomberg News reported Monday quoting sources with information of the lawsuit.
Johnson & Johnson is dealing with more than 19,000 legal actions from consumers and their survivors who blamed the company for making talc products that caused cancer.
Based on the lawsuit, the products were contaminated with asbestos, which is known for its lethal carcinogen composition.
Johnson & Johnson didn't comment on the Bloomberg report and insisted that its talc products were free of any deadly chemicals. The settlement is the first in four years of judicial proceedings.
The New Jersey-based company recalled 33,000 bottles of its baby powder products in October last year - a move the maker said was made "out of an abundance of caution" after traces of asbestos were found in the products.
Johnson & Johnson stopped selling talc-based baby powder products in North America starting May 2019, as a result of "changes in consumer habits" and driven by misleading information around the products' safety as well as a series of "litigation advertising," which forced the company to instead sell cornstarch-based baby powder.
The company has faced an inquiry over the safety of its baby powder products after a 2018 Reuters report found Johnson & Johnson had been aware for many years its baby product contained asbestos.
According to the world's largest manufacturer of health care products, its settles lawsuits in certain situations and they do it without admitting accountability which does not change their stance concerning the safety of their products. "Scientific evidence supports that position," Bloomberg quoted company representative Kim Montagnino as saying in an emailed statement.
In 2018, a New York Times probe found that Johnson & Johnson had knowledge of possible contamination from asbestos in its powder products without disclosing it publicly for at least five decades.
Meanwhile, based on projections made by Bloomberg Intelligence in July this year, Johnson & Johnson could suffer at least $10 billion just to settle all its outstanding legal battles.
