Talc “baby powder” documents at UCSF Library

UC San Francisco (UCSF) today announced that thousands of previously internal industry documents relating to talc and asbestos are now freely available for public review and research in UCSF’s Industry Documents Library (IDL).

The documents were made public through litigation against Johnson & Johnson for failing to warn consumers that its talc products, particularly its widely used baby powder, were tainted with asbestos, a known carcinogen linked to ovarian and lung cancers.

The Talc Litigation Collection includes approximately 3,500 documents UCSF gathered from multiple sources, including legal experts and publicly available documents highlighted in a Reuters investigative series into what Johnson & Johnson knew about the talc contamination and when they knew it.

What did J&J know and when did they know it?

“One of the best ways to hold industry accountable is transparency and I urge policymakers to review these papers to inform systemic changes so that we stop poisoning people first and asking questions later,” said Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, MPH, professor and director of the UCSF Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment (PRHE), co-director of the UCSF EaRTH Center, and co-author of the recent investigation that reviewed documents in the Industry Documents Library to analyze strategies 3M and Chemours used to hide the health harms of PFAS for decades.

PRHE helped to secure the Talc collection for inclusion in the Industry Documents Library and raised funds to support analysis of some of the documents. The availability of documents in the Library ensures free access to anyone interested in investigating chemical industry behavior or corporate cover ups.

Growing the IDL

The Talc documents add to the Industry Documents Library, established in 2002 with the groundbreaking Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library which has fostered scientific and public health discoveries shaping tobacco policy in the U.S. and around the world. The Tobacco collection was followed by archives of documents from other industries including chemical, drug, fossil fuels, and food. Since 2021, UCSF has also collaborated with Johns Hopkins University to build the Opioid Industry Documents Archive which contains more than 3 million documents related to opioid manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies.

Overall, the IDL holds more than 18 million documents and all collections have document-level indexing and are cross-searchable, enabling researchers to identify common patterns and links between industries and to study their effects on public health.

“Public archives promote transparency and accountability,” said Director of the Industry Documents Library Kate Tasker, MLIS. “Adding the ‘Talc’ documents to our Library preserves these materials in a centralized and fully searchable database to make this information freely and openly available for the public good.”

The talc documents are available here: https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/chemical/collections/talc-litigation-collection/