In aFriday press releaseout of the company’s headquarters in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Johnson & Johnson stated that they were “acting out of an abundance of caution” in recalling product lot #22318RB.
The recall was issued “in response to aU.S. Food and Drug Administration(FDA) test indicating the presence of sub-trace levels of chrysotile asbestos contamination (no greater than 0.00002 percent) in samples from a single bottle purchased from an online retailer,” the release explained.
Furthermore, the company said it “has immediately initiated a rigorous, thoroughinvestigation into this matter, and is working with the FDA to determine the integrity of the tested sample, and the validity of the test results.”
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“At this early stage of the investigation,” the release continued, the company can’t confirm “if cross-contamination of the sample caused a false positive,” “whether the sample was taken from a bottle with an intact seal or whether the sample was prepared in a controlled environment” or “whether the tested product is authentic or counterfeit.”
In an in-depth Reuters investigation, which examined decades’ worth of internal company and court documents, the outlet found that from 1971 to the early 2000s, Johnson & Johnson had been made aware that the talc in their productssometimes tested positive for the carcinogen, and didn’t share the news outside of the company.
Johnson & Johnson vehemently denied the claims made in the report in a statement provided to PEOPLE, and branded the report “an absurd conspiracy theory.”
source: people.com
