ST. LOUIS – A witness for plaintiffs claiming their use of talcum powder caused ovarian cancer told jurors that a preponderance of studies showed that baby powder sold by medical and cosmetics giant Johnson and Johnson contained cancer-causing asbestos.
“What are you relying on?” asked plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier at trial on Thursday in St. Louis City Circuit Court.
Trial coverage is being streamed, courtesy of Courtroom View Network.
“There were 960 studies of J&J powder that showed asbestos in talc out of 1,400 studies,” responded Dr. David Egilman, medical doctor and an expert in asbestos exposure measurements. “Some of the studies were performed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), by Johnson & Johnson, competitors of J&J and companies like Johns Manville.”
Egilman, who works at Brown University in Rhode Island as a clinical professor of family medicine, has appeared as an expert witness in numerous court cases. He is involved in occupational medicine and is a custodian of records providing information on talc mining and asbestos issues.
“This information is important because it tells what companies knew about asbestos and what they didn’t, and how they used the standards they created,” Egilman explained.
Egilman added that in some cases companies created standards not to protect workers from asbestos, but to defend against lawsuits.
The trial being held at the St. Louis City Circuit Court is the result of a lawsuit filed by 22 women across the country who accuse Johnson & Johnson of causing their ovarian cancer.
Egilman told the jury he had determined the powder dosage and cancer risk of the 22 women by conducting personal interviews with 18 of them, or looking at the testimony of the others who had died since the suit was filed.
The information gathered from each woman included the number of years the J&J baby powder was used, the number of times used each day (including child diapering), and an estimate of the total number of asbestos fibers breathed in by each woman. The number of estimated fibers for each plaintiff was measured in the billions.
The end-result conclusion Egilman agreed was that the women had a “baseline” risk-factor greater than twice that for a normal person.
“Greater than twice the risk?” Lanier asked.
“It was,” Egilman said. “They all have exposure levels higher than that permitted by OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) for a worker working with asbestos.”
Egilman said the difference is a worker is told not to create and breathe toxic dust while the use of baby powder naturally creates dust that is breathed.
As on previous days with other plaintiff witnesses, attorneys for the defense challenged Egilman’s qualifications as an expert.
“You’re not an oncologist?” Peter Bicks the defense attorney for J&J asked.
Egilman agreed he was not.
“Do you have a PhD in epidemiology?” Bicks asked.
“No I do not,” Egilman responded.
“You’ve testified in 600 to 700 trials (as a witness) and you’ve made more than $5 million, right?”
“Yes,” Egilman said.
“You have 80 to 90 percent of your income from litigation?” Bicks asked.
“No,” Egilman said.
“Give me a ballpark,” Bicks requested.
“It’s 50 percent,” Egilman said.
Egilman told Lanier that he appeared at trials to save lives. Lanier also called attention to the nonprofit founded by Egilman designed to help impoverished countries around the world to set up health care systems.
During the afternoon session, taped film depositions of the plaintiffs were played for the jury. Each recounted how their lives had been shattered when they were diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Annette Koman of Pennsylvania who had used the J&J powder from 1969 until 2009 cried when she recalled having to tell her husband she had the disease, diagnosed in 2009. At that time doctors gave her six months to live.
“I couldn’t tell my children,” she said. “He (husband) had to do that.”
Koman is now in her fourth round of chemotherapy treatments.
Donna Lynn Purvis Packard, born in 1947, also described her life with her husband and children and living with the illness. Propped up in bed in her home during her deposition taped on Nov. 13, 2017, she broke down and cried saying “it’s hard” and “it’s rotten” in describing her condition. She said she was in hospice end-of-life-care and had been given five weeks to live.
Packard died four days after the interview was filmed.