{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,26]],"date-time":"2026-03-26T04:57:01Z","timestamp":1774501021776,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":3,"publisher":"American Public Health Association","issue":"7","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Am J Public Health"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2019,7]]},"abstract":"<jats:p> The recent lawsuits against Johnson &amp; Johnson have raised the issue of what and when talcum powder manufacturers knew about the presence of asbestos in their products and what they did or did not do to protect the public. Low-level exposure to asbestos in talc is said to result in either mesothelioma or ovarian cancer. Johnson &amp; Johnson has claimed that there was \u201cno detectable asbestos\u201d in their products and that any possible incidental presence was too small to act as a carcinogen. But what exactly does \u201cnondetected\u201d mean? Here, we examine the historical development of the argument that asbestos in talcum powder was \u201cnondetected.\u201d We use a unique set of historical documents from the early 1970s, when low-level pollution of talc with asbestos consumed the cosmetics industry. We trace the debate over the Food and Drug Administration\u2019s efforts to guarantee that talc was up to 99.99% free of chrysotile and 99.9% free of amphibole asbestos. Cosmetic talc powder manufacturers, through their trade association, pressed for a less stringent methodology and adopted the term \u201cnondetected\u201d rather than \u201casbestos-free\u201d as a term of art. <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.2105\/ajph.2019.305085","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,5,16]],"date-time":"2019-05-16T19:55:07Z","timestamp":1558036507000},"page":"969-974","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":13,"title":["\u201cNondetected\u201d: The Politics of Measurement of Asbestos in Talc, 1971\u20131976"],"prefix":"10.2105","volume":"109","author":[{"given":"David","family":"Rosner","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"David Rosner, Gerald Markowitz, and Merlin Chowkwanyun are with the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY. Gerald Markowitz is also with the John Jay College and Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY."}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Gerald","family":"Markowitz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"David Rosner, Gerald Markowitz, and Merlin Chowkwanyun are with the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY. Gerald Markowitz is also with the John Jay College and Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY."}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Merlin","family":"Chowkwanyun","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"David Rosner, Gerald Markowitz, and Merlin Chowkwanyun are with the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY. Gerald Markowitz is also with the John Jay College and Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY."}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"844","reference":[{"key":"bib3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sarah Vogel, Is It Safe? BPA and the Struggle to Define the Safety of Chemicals (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013), 47.","DOI":"10.1525\/9780520954205"},{"key":"bib7","author":"Porro F. W.","journal-title":"American Journal of Roentgenology and Radium Therapy"},{"key":"bib8","author":"Hunt A. C.","journal-title":"Thorax"}],"container-title":["American Journal of Public Health"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/ajph.aphapublications.org\/doi\/pdf\/10.2105\/AJPH.2019.305085","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2022,5,10]],"date-time":"2022-05-10T00:07:19Z","timestamp":1652141239000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/ajph.aphapublications.org\/doi\/full\/10.2105\/AJPH.2019.305085"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,7]]},"references-count":3,"journal-issue":{"issue":"7","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2019,7]]}},"alternative-id":["10.2105\/AJPH.2019.305085"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2105\/ajph.2019.305085","relation":{},"ISSN":["0090-0036","1541-0048"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0090-0036","type":"print"},{"value":"1541-0048","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,7]]}}}