Johnson & Johnson risks UK lawsuit over talc cancer claim


By AFP
November 20, 2024

Johnson & Johnson removed its talcum-based powder products from North American markets in 2020

 - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP JUSTIN SULLIVAN

UK claimants announced Wednesday legal action against US pharmaceutical and cosmetics giant Johnson & Johnson, alleging that women diagnosed with cancers were exposed to asbestos in the company’s talcum powder.

J&J risks UK court action for the first time over the allegations, having faced a series of similar lawsuits in North America.

KP Law, the firm representing about 2,000 claimants, said “women who have been diagnosed with life-changing and life-limiting cancers were exposed to asbestos contained within the company’s talcum powder”.

In response Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, said “Johnson & Johnson takes the issue of talc safety incredibly seriously and always has”.

Haas added that J&J’s own analysis found an absence of asbestos contamination in its products and said “independent science makes clear that talc is not associated with the risk of ovarian cancer nor mesothelioma”.

J&J has until the end of the year to respond to a letter sent on behalf of KP Law’s clients, following which documents will be filed in the UK’s High Court.

The law firm is representing predominantly women regarding the case, and says it has been contacted by thousands more, adding that some have died of their cancers.

Lawyers claim that the US-based corporation knew “as early as the 1970s that asbestos in its talc products was dangerous but failed to warn consumers and carried on producing and selling the products in the UK until as recently as 2022”.

J&J said that Kenvue, its former consumer-health division that it separated out in 2023, is responsible for “any alleged talc liability that arises outside the US or Canada”.

“Decades of testing by experts… demonstrates that the product is safe, does not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer,” Kenvue said in a statement.



– Settled claims –



However, in September, J&J increased its offer to settle talc claims relating to ovarian cancer in the United States to around $8 billion to be paid over 25 years.

Earlier this year, the company agreed to pay $700 million to settle allegations it misled customers about the safety of its talcum-based powder products in North America.

The company did not admit wrongdoing in its settlement but withdrew the product from the North American market in 2020.

The World Health Organization’s cancer agency in July classified talc as “probably carcinogenic” for humans.

A summary of studies published in 2020 covering 250,000 women in the United States did not find a statistical link between the use of talc on the genitals and the risk of ovarian cancer.

The 'Texas two-step' is back as J&J tries to shed talc lawsuits for a third time


Alexis Keenan · Senior Legal Reporter
Sun, October 20, 2024 at 9:00 AM MDT 6 min read

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) is taking a controversial legal argument to court for a third time in hopes of containing a barrage of lawsuits alleging its baby powder caused cancer.

Judges have denied J&J’s previous attempts to resolve such claims using a maneuver known as the "Texas two-step," where a company tries to use the bankruptcy of an affiliate or subsidiary to settle mass liabilities.

J&J's third attempt at bankruptcy protection involves a subsidiary called Red River Talc that would cap settlement damages at $8 billion. The company maintains that none of the talc-related claims against it have merit.

J&J’s CFO Joseph Wolk told Yahoo Finance this time the bankruptcy court result should be different, in part because a large majority of talc claimants signed on to the company's settlement offer.

“The difference this time … I'd say, is 83% of the claimants actually support the current offer that's on the table,” Wolk said. “So we think that's something that was not present in the prior filings.”

The current proposal seeks to resolve all current and future claims related to ovarian cancer alleged to be caused by the company's cosmetic talc.

But a plaintiffs' lawyer who represents 11,434 of approximately J&J's roughly 100,000 talc claimants said the company's figure is inflated, and its latest bankruptcy petition is "fraught with problems."

The lawyer, Andy Birchfield of Beasley Allen, said J&J "stuffed the ballot box" in a tally held to determine the percentage of plaintiffs on board with J&J's latest settlement proposal.

A container of Johnson & Johnson baby powder is displayed in 2023 in San Anselmo, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) · Justin Sullivan via Getty Images

Birchfield said in addition to counting no votes as votes in support of the deal, J&J counted votes from claimants who should not have been included because they have not been diagnosed with disease and therefore have only non-compensable claims.

The lawyer said 69 of his clients voted in favor, and his firm has asked the court for a re-tabulation.

"We're confident that J&J’s 83% number that it floated … that that's wrong," Birchfield said. "Once those [inaccurate votes] are sifted out, I don't know where it will be, but it'll be significantly less than 70%."


The claims being made by both sides set up a new legal battle that will now unfold inside a Houston bankruptcy court.

J&J's worldwide vice president of litigation Erik Haas told Yahoo Finance that Beasley Allen "misstates the record in a failed attempt to explain away the blatantly false certification submitted by its partner Andy Birchfield."


Haas said Birchfield falsely certified under oath that he contacted and secured informed consent to oppose the plan from claimants who affirmatively voted in favor of the deal that was certified by an independent claims administrator.

"We look forward to the full discovery of this malfeasance before the Bankruptcy Court in Houston,” Hass said.

Earning the support of at least 75% of claimants may be an important threshold for J&J.

Bankruptcy courts have permitted companies to move forward with resolving large numbers of injury claims through bankruptcy when at least 75% of the outstanding creditors, including claimants, agree to the deal.
How it works

The "Texas two-step" strategy takes advantage of state laws that allow for the transfer of liabilities through a so-called divisive merger, which is a way to separate a company's operations into discreet business entities.

Texas was the first state to allow this, in 2006, which helps explain why the strategy came to be known as the "Texas two-step."

The first step is the division. The second is that the liability-retaining entity gets limited funding from its solvent parent, files for bankruptcy, and then manages mass tort litigation with the limited funds.


The benefits are that further litigation is paused, capping costs, and the assets of the solvent company are walled off from the reach of plaintiffs. The hope is that the solvent parent can also absolve itself of secondary liability for the claims.

But critics of the strategy see it as a subversion of the US Bankruptcy Code. Courts have become increasingly skeptical of attempts by companies to use bankruptcy court law to protect assets from plaintiffs.

Aden McCracken Tyrone of Pennsylvania holds a sign in honor of his parents outside of the Supreme Court in December as the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding a nationwide settlement with Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin. (Michael A. McCoy/For The Washington Post via Getty Images) · The Washington Post via Getty Images

In June, the US Supreme Court took a step that will make it more difficult for companies to do so in the future.

In a 5-4 decision, the court held that billionaire members of the Sackler family, longtime owners of the now-bankrupt opioid maker Purdue Pharma, could not shield their personal assets from opioid claims using the corporation's bankruptcy proceedings.

The Sacklers, the court said, engaged in a "milking program" by withdrawing from Purdue approximately $11 billion — roughly 75% of the firm’s total assets.


The court said that no provision within the US Bankruptcy Code permits the type of agreement that the Sacklers and the company tried to reach by limiting plaintiff recoveries to a $6 billion settlement fund.

Other attempts by companies like 3M, Avon, and Georgia Pacific to use the two-step strategy have had varying outcomes. Those inconsistent court decisions are leading some legal experts to predict that the US Supreme Court may review the tactic's legality.
'No financial distress'

In J&J's latest attempt at the two-step, it is asking for the latest vote from claimants to support a “channeling injunction.”

That would cap its liability for all existing and future talc claims at the $8 billion it agreed to place in a settlement trust. J&J agreed to fund the proposed settlement trust over 25 years.

Birchfield expects J&J's latest bankruptcy attempt could run into roadblocks no matter how many claimants vote in favor of a broad settlement because the two-step would strip especially future claimants from their constitutional rights to demand that J&J face jury trials.

"Our view is J&J isn’t entitled to bankruptcy relief because there is no financial distress,” he said. “They’re a $400 billion company."


“If they would pay reasonable compensation and do it on reasonable terms, they could put this behind them,” Birchfield added.

J&J's Wolk said its proposed bankruptcy would provide more recourse to claimants and more quickly resolve cases that would take years to be adjudicated.

Juries have handed down multimillion-dollar awards related to talc litigation risks.

On Tuesday, a Connecticut jury returned a $15 million verdict in favor of a man who said the company's talc-based powder caused him to develop mesothelioma, a cancer that impacts lung and other tissue.

The jury also held that J&J should pay punitive damages to punish it for including talc in its products.

Yahoo Finance Senior healthcare reporter Anjalee Khemlani contributed to this report.

Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed.

J&J hit with new class action over talc seeking medical monitoring for cancer

Bottles of Johnson & Johnson baby powder line a drugstore shelf in New York

PUBLISHED ONJUNE 18, 2024 

Johnson & Johnson is facing a new proposed class action seeking damages and medical monitoring on behalf of women who have been diagnosed with cancer, or might develop it in the future, allegedly as a result of using the company's baby powder and other talc products.

The lawsuit, filed on Monday (June 17) in New Jersey federal court, is the first to seek medical monitoring, or regular testing meant to catch cancer early, on behalf of talc users. The proposed class could include thousands of women, but would not include the more than 61,000 people who have already filed personal injury lawsuits over J&J's talc, claiming it contains cancer-causing asbestos.

J&J maintains its talc is safe, asbestos-free and does not cause cancer.

The law firms behind the new case are opposed to J&J's proposal to settle nearly all talc claims against it for US$6.48 billion (S$8.74 billion) through a prepackaged bankruptcy. The same firms are also pursuing a separate class action seeking a court order blocking the bankruptcy.

The bankruptcy proposal needs support from 75 per cent of talc claimants, with a three-month voting period ending on July 26.

Erik Haas, J&J's worldwide vice president of litigation, said in a statement that plaintiffs' lawyers brought Monday's "meritless" lawsuit to thwart the bankruptcy plan because they can collect more fees outside of bankruptcy, putting their own interests ahead of their clients.

"The plaintiff firms should cease the obstructionist behaviour, and let their clients decide for themselves whether to accept the pending offer," he said.

Lawyers opposed to the deal have denied that they are motivated by higher fees and said the bankruptcy proposal would not adequately compensate their clients.


Chris Tisi, one of the lawyers bringing the new lawsuit, said in a statement that medical monitoring was necessary because the "inadequate funding" of the bankruptcy plan "doesn't realistically address the needs of women who could develop ovarian cancer in the future because of past baby powder use."

Both the proposed settlement and the new class action concern claims that talc caused ovarian and other gynaecological cancers, which make up the vast majority of cases. A smaller number of claims have been brought by people who developed mesothelioma, most of which have settled.

J&J has already tried and failed twice to resolve current and future talc claims through bankruptcy.

The legal strategy, known as a Texas two-step, involves creating a subsidiary to absorb the company's talc liability, which then declares bankruptcy to settle the cases. The previous efforts failed because courts found that the new subsidiary lacked the "financial distress" to justify bankruptcy.

ALSO READ: Cancer victims ask court to block J&J talc bankruptcy

Johnson & Johnson reaches $700 million talc settlement with US states

A Johnson & Johnson banner is displayed on the front of the NYSE in New York

Updated Tue, Jun 11, 2024
By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay $700 million to settle an investigation by 42 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. into its marketing of baby powder and other talc-based products blamed for allegedly causing cancer.

The settlement resolves charges that Johnson & Johnson misled consumers into believing its talc products, which it sold for more than a century before stopping, were safe.

J&J did not admit wrongdoing in settling with the states, which were led by Florida, North Carolina and Texas, and has said its talc products are safe and do not cause cancer. The company announced a settlement in principle in January.

"This is a major advancement for consumer product safety," Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said in a statement.

J&J still faces tens of thousands of talc lawsuits, and a class action accusing the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company of fraudulently hiding their dangers from shareholders.

As of March 31, about 61,490 people were still suing J&J over talc. Most were women with ovarian cancer, while a smaller number had mesothelioma, a type of cancer linked to asbestos.

J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder globally last year, switching to corn starch as the main ingredient. It has maintained that its products do not contain asbestos.

The company has twice tried to resolve the litigation by placing into bankruptcy a subsidiary it created to contain its talc liabilities, but courts rebuffed both attempts.

On May 1, J&J proposed a $6.48 billion settlement to resolve most of the litigation through a third bankruptcy filing. It has set aside an $11 billion reserve to cover all talc liabilities.

"The company continues to pursue several paths to achieve a comprehensive and final resolution of the talc litigation," Erik Haas, J&J worldwide vice president of litigation, said in a statement on Tuesday.

"We will continue to address the claims of those who do not want to participate in our contemplated consensual bankruptcy resolution through litigation or settlement," he added.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot)

Judge certifies Johnson & Johnson shareholder class action over talc disclosures


Fri, December 29, 2023 

Bottles of Johnson & Johnson baby powder line a drugstore shelf in New York

 REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/


By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -A federal judge said Johnson & Johnson shareholders may pursue as a class action their lawsuit accusing the company of fraudulently concealing how its talc products were contaminated by cancer-causing asbestos.

U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi in Trenton, New Jersey, on Friday allowed shareholders from Feb. 22, 2013, to Dec. 13, 2018, to pursue their securities fraud claims as a group.

He rejected J&J's argument that any class period be at least a year shorter because some events that allegedly caused its stock price to fall contained no "new" information.

J&J's talc products have included its signature baby powder. The company stopped selling talc-based baby powder globally this year, switching to corn starch as the main ingredient. It has said its talc products are safe and do not contain asbestos.

"Johnson & Johnson always strives to provide truthful and fulsome disclosures," Erik Haas, J&J's worldwide vice president of litigation, said in a statement. "We will continue to vigorously litigate cases that challenge the safety of our product or the accuracy of our public statements."

Lawyers for shareholders including the lead plaintiff San Diego County Employees Retirement Association did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Class actions make it easier for shareholders to recover more money, at lower cost, than if they sued individually. A longer class period could increase the amount recovered.

Shareholders said J&J's stock price fell six times in late 2017 and 2018 following events that confirmed how the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company and various executives hid the truth about asbestos in its talc products.

These events included a jury awarding $4.69 billion in July 2018 to 22 women who said asbestos caused them to develop ovarian cancer, and a Reuters report five months later that said J&J knew about the asbestos risks for decades.

J&J said the six events could not have hurt its stock price because none contained new information that "corrected" its earlier disclosures.

It said the only new information from the verdict was that jurors accepted the women's arguments, and that all 56 internal documents mentioned in the Reuters report were already public.

Quraishi was unpersuaded. Addressing the Reuters report, he said its "careful analysis" and providing of "necessary context" made it more than a rehash of "stale information."

The share price fell 10% the day the report was released.

J&J also faces mass tort litigation encompassing more than 50,000 lawsuits over its talc products.

Courts have rejected two efforts by the company to use the bankruptcy process to limit its exposure to talc litigation.

The case is Hall v Johnson & Johnson et al, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, No. 18-01833.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Daniel Wallis)

Johnson & Johnson is pushing to settle baby powder cases linked to asbestos

Jef Feeley, Bloomberg News on Dec 4, 2023


Johnson & Johnson is making a push to resolve lawsuits claiming its talc-based Baby Powder causes cancer linked to asbestos exposure to avoid facing some jury trials next year, according to people familiar with the effort.

A trio of law firms have reached agreements for settlements covering about 100 cases, said the people, who declined to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The financial size of the accords are being kept private, the people added.

The deals may be mentioned Tuesday as part of J&J’s investor presentation at the New York Stock Exchange if company officials update shareholders about the plan for corralling the decadelong talc litigation, the people said. The session’s main focus is the company’s long-term growth outlook and product pipeline.

The company is striving to find a way to resolve all current and future baby powder cases after a judge nixed its attempt to settle them for $9 billion as part of a unit’s bankruptcy filing. The deals are part of the manufacturer’s multipronged strategy to deal with the lawsuits, which have created a drag on its shares.

J&J declined to comment.

‘Hammered by Juries’

“It looks like they are finally stepping up to the plate and acknowledging they are going to have to settle cases to be done with this,” said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond professor who teaches mass-tort law. “Ridding themselves of trial settings can only work in their favor since they’ve been getting hammered by juries.”

The New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company pulled its talc-based powders off the market in the United States and Canada in 2020, citing slipping sales. The world’s largest maker of health care products replaced talcum with a cornstarch-based version. J&J vowed to remove all its baby powders containing talcum powder worldwide by the end of this year.

J&J faces a spate of jury trials early next year over allegations that its executives knew since the early 1970s that talc contained trace amounts of asbestos, which can cause a cancer called mesothelioma, but failed to alert consumers or regulators. J&J contends that its talc-based products don’t cause cancer and it has marketed Baby Powder appropriately for more than 100 years.

The company faces more than 50,000 suits accusing it of concealing baby powder’s cancer risk to protect its iconic product. Most of those claims are from women with ovarian cancer. The majority of the cases are consolidated before a federal judge in New Jersey.

Inventory Settlements

J&J has reached agreements to do so-called inventory settlements with law firms such as Kazan, McClain Satterley & Greenwood, and Levy Konigsberg to resolve all their mesothelioma cases, the people said. The company has come to similar terms with the Motley Rice firm, the people added.

Joe Satterley, a Kazan lawyer who has won and settled multiple talc cases against J&J, declined to comment on whether he’s settled his inventory of mesothelioma cases. Joe Rice, Motley Rice’s co-founder, also declined to comment. Moshe Maimon, a Levy Konigsberg lawyer who has won talc cases at trial, didn’t immediately respond late Monday to phone and email messages seeking comment.

The settlements resolved a case that was already on trial in state court in Oakland, California, in November and will head off trials that were supposed to start in January and March in state court in New Jersey, the people said. J&J still faces a mesothelioma case in state court in Minnesota later this month, the people added.

Besides getting trials off the calendar, J&J is trying to clear the way for a third bankruptcy filing to resolve the talc litigation in its entirety. Erik Haas, J&J’s lawyer overseeing the talc litigation, said in an October earnings call that the company was “pursuing a consensual resolution of the talc claims through another bankruptcy.”

The consolidated case is In Re Johnson & Johnson Talcum Powder Products Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, 16-md-2738, U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (Trenton).


©2023 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for J&J 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for TALC 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for ASBESTOS 

J&J settles first talc cases to go to trial after failed bankruptcies

BRENDAN PIERSON
November 16, 2023 




(Reuters) - Johnson & Johnson on Thursday said it has settled two lawsuits claiming its talc products caused cancer, the first such cases to go to trial since a federal court rejected the company's plan to move its talc liabilities into bankruptcy court.

The settlements resolved lawsuits brought by two men, Rosalino Reyes and Marlin Eagles, who said they developed mesothelioma related to asbestos in J&J talc powder, and was part of a broader deal to settle all talc cases brought by the law firm representing them, Kazan, McClain, Satterley & Greenwood, the company said. Reyes' family continued his lawsuit after he died in 2020.

The company faces more than 50,000 lawsuits over talc, most by women with ovarian cancer. It has said that its talc products are safe and do not contain asbestos.

J&J and the plaintiffs' lawyers did not disclose any terms of the settlement, or how many cases it covered. Reyes' trial had begun last week, while Eagles' was about to begin, with a jury chosen.

"The Eagles and the Reyes families express thanks to the jurors and courtroom personnel who participated in the trial," Joseph Satterley and Denyse Clancy, attorneys for the plaintiffs, said in a joint statement.

"Our negotiations continue with the remaining firms who have a shared interest in achieving a fair and expedient resolution of their clients talc claims," J&J said in a statement.

"For those firms who elect not to pursue reasoned resolutions, we will continue to aggressively litigate their claims in the tort system, where we have prevailed in the overwhelming majority of the cases tried because the claims are meritless and are based upon junk science."

Trials in the cases have a mixed record, with major plaintiff wins including a $2.1 billion judgment awarded to 22 women with ovarian cancer. A New Jersey appeals court last month threw out a $223.7 million verdict against the company, finding the testimony of the plaintiffs' expert witnesses unsound.

The company stopped selling talc-based baby powder in favor of cornstarch-based products, citing an increase in lawsuits and "misinformation" about the talc product's safety.

The settlement comes after J&J failed for a second time in July to move tens of thousands of claims over talc into bankruptcy court, where it hoped to resolve them through a proposed $8.9 billion settlement. It is appealing that ruling.

Trials had mostly been on hold while J&J petitioned the bankruptcy court, but have now been able to resume.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)

J&J Must Pay $18.8 Million to California Cancer Patient in Baby Powder Suit

By Reuters
July 18, 2023

A bottle of Johnson and Johnson Baby Powder is seen in a photo illustration taken in New York

Mike Segar/Illustration

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) -Johnson & Johnson's must pay $18.8 million to a California man who said he developed cancer from exposure to its baby powder, a jury decided on Tuesday, a setback for the company as it seeks to settle thousands of similar cases over its talc-based products in U.S. bankruptcy court.

The jury ruled in favor of Emory Hernandez Valadez, who filed suit last year in California state court in Oakland against J&J, seeking monetary damages. Hernandez, 24, has said he developed mesothelioma, a deadly cancer, in the tissue around his heart as a result of heavy exposure to the company's talc since childhood. The six-week trial was the first over talc that New Brunswick, New Jersey-based J&J has faced in almost two years.

The jury found that Hernandez was entitled to damages to compensate him for his medical bills and pain and suffering, but declined to award punitive damages against the company. Hernandez will not be able to collect the judgment in the foreseeable future, thanks to a bankruptcy court order freezing most litigation over J&J's talc.

J&J vice president of litigation Erik Haas said in a statement that the company would appeal the verdict, calling it "irreconcilable with the decades of independent scientific evaluations confirming Johnson's Baby Powder is safe, does not contain asbestos and does not cause cancer."

A lawyer for Hernandez could not immediately be reached for comment.

Reuters watched the trial through Courtroom View Network.

In closing arguments to the jury on July 10, J&J's lawyers said there was no evidence either linking Hernandez's kind of mesolthelioma to asbestos or proving that Hernandez was ever exposed to tainted talc. Hernandez's lawyers during closing arguments accused J&J of a "despicable" decades-long coverup of asbestos contamination.

Hernandez testified in June, telling jurors that he would have avoided J&J's talc if he had been warned that it contained asbestos, as his lawsuit alleges. Jurors heard from Hernandez's mother, Anna Camacho, who said she used large amounts of J&J's baby powder on her son when he was a baby and through childhood. She cried as she described Hernandez's illness.

Tens of thousands of plaintiffs have sued, alleging that J&J's baby powder and other talc products sometimes contained asbestos and caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. J&J has said its talc products are safe and do not contain asbestos, which has been linked to mesothelioma.

J&J subsidiary LTL Management in April filed for bankruptcy in Trenton, New Jersey, proposing to pay $8.9 billion to settle more than 38,000 lawsuits and prevent new cases from coming forward. It was the company's second attempt to resolve talc claims in bankruptcy, after a federal appeals court rejected an earlier bid.

Most litigation has been halted during bankruptcy proceedings, but U.S. Chief Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan, who is overseeing LTL's Chapter 11, let Hernandez's trial proceed because he is expected to live only a short time.

Hernandez's form of mesothelioma is extremely rare, making his case different from the vast majority pending against J&J.

Asbestos plaintiffs are seeking to have LTL's latest bankruptcy filing dismissed. They have argued the filing was brought in bad faith to insulate the company from litigation.

J&J and LTL have argued that bankruptcy delivers settlement payouts to plaintiffs more fairly, efficiently and equitably than trial courts, which they have likened to a "lottery" in which some litigants get large awards and others nothing.

J&J said in bankruptcy court filings that the costs of its talc-related verdicts, settlements and legal fees have reached about $4.5 billion.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Will Dunham and Sandra Maler)

INJURY OF CLASS; PINK COLLAR BLUES
Women in certain professions ‘may be at higher risk of ovarian cancer’ – study

Those working in sales, retail, clothing and construction industries could also carry a higher risk according to a new study

Those who had worked as a hairdresser, barber or beautician appeared to have a three-fold higher risk, the study suggested 

THEY WORK WITH TOXIC VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS (VOC) WITHOUT PROPER PPE

TUE, 11 JUL, 2023 - 07:19
ELLA PICKOVER, PA HEALTH CORRESPONDENT

Hairdressers, beauticians and accountants could be at a higher risk of developing ovarian cancer, a new study suggests.

Those working in sales, retail, clothing and construction industries could also carry a higher risk according to a new study published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.


But the authors of the study stressed that “inferences from the results are limited” as they called for more work to examine the links between ovarian cancer risk and different occupations.

The team, led by academics at the University of Montreal in Canada, examined data on 491 Canadian women with ovarian cancer and compared it with 897 women without disease.

We observed associations suggesting that accountancy, hairdressing, sales, sewing and related occupations may be linked to excess risks

The researchers linked occupations to ovarian cancer risk.

They also compared this data to the Canadian job-exposure matrix to examine any potential workplace exposures – for example, if they are more likely to come in contact with a certain chemical while at work.

After accounting for potentially influential factors, they found that some jobs may be linked to a heightened risk of disease.

Those who had worked as a hairdresser, barber or beautician appeared to have a three-fold higher risk.

Meanwhile, women who worked in accountancy for a decade were twice as likely to develop the disease while construction workers were almost three times as likely.

Shop assistants and sales people had a 45% increased risk while those who make or alter clothes appeared to have an 85% increased risk.

The researchers said that those found to have a higher risk were also more likely to be exposed to a number of “agents” including: cosmetic talc, ammonia, hydrogen peroxide, hair dust, synthetic fibres, polyester fibres, organic dyes, and pigments and bleaches.

“We observed associations suggesting that accountancy, hairdressing, sales, sewing and related occupations may be linked to excess risks,” the authors wrote.
“Further population-based research is needed to evaluate possible hazards for female workers and occupations commonly held by women.”

In a linked editorial, academics from the National Cancer Institute in Maryland in the US, point out that women are under-represented in “occupational cancer research studies”.


They said the study “reminds us that while the lack of representation of women in occupational cancer studies — and indeed, even potential strategies to address this issue — have been long recognised, there is still a need for improvement in studying women’s occupational risks.

“By excluding women, we miss the opportunity to identify risk factors for female-specific cancers, to evaluate whether sex-specific differences in risk occur, and to study exposures occurring in occupations held primarily by women.”

Commenting on the study, Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at the Open University, said: “The researchers clearly state that their study was ‘exploratory’ and that it is ‘aimed at generating new hypotheses’.

“So, it is certainly not claiming that they have definitely found occupational groups, or exposures to chemicals and other agents, that are associated with ovarian cancer.

“Even less are they claiming that being in certain occupations, or being exposed to certain chemicals at work, causes an increased risk of ovarian cancer.

“Instead, they aimed at suggesting occupational groups, and agents to which women might be exposed at work, that possibly might be associated with ovarian cancer risk, and they say clearly that further research is needed to ‘give a more solid grounding’ to any conclusions that might be drawn about associations between what women do at work and their risk of getting ovarian cancer.”

U.S. bankruptcy judge halts 40,000 Johnson & Johnson talc and cancer lawsuits

Story by Annika Kim Constantino • Yesterday 

A federal bankruptcy judge halted roughly 40,000 of lawsuits alleging Johnson & Johnson's baby powder and other talc products caused cancer.

Judge Michael Kaplan put a temporary hold on the suits that will last through mid-June, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The decision is part of J&J subsidiary LTL Management's second attempt to settle talc cases in bankruptcy proceedings.


In this photo illustration, a container of Johnson and Johnson baby powder is displayed on April 05, 2023 in San Anselmo, California.© Provided by CNBC

A federal bankruptcy judge on Thursday halted roughly 40,000 lawsuits that allege Johnson & Johnson's baby powder and other talc products caused cancer.

The decision is part of J&J's second attempt to settle thousands of talc cases in bankruptcy proceedings.

J&J in 2021 spun off its subsidiary, LTL Management, to carry its talc-related liabilities and file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections.

Judge Michael Kaplan during a hearing Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Trenton, New Jersey, put a temporary hold on the suits that will last through mid-June, The Wall Street Journal reported.

J&J won't have to go to trial over any other talc claims during the pause, but new lawsuits can still be filed against the company, The Journal reported.

Kaplan said during the hearing that J&J has an "uphill battle" ahead, according to the newspaper.

The pause will give J&J time to reach a permanent settlement with plaintiffs in the talc cases. The company recently proposed an $8.9 million settlement for current and future talc-related claims and said it expects to bring that plan to bankruptcy court in mid-May.

J&J in a statement called Kaplan' decision "a win for claimants" because it brings them "one step closer" to being able to vote on the proposed settlement.

The New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company also said it believes claimants will overwhelmingly support the proposal.

J&J previously said more than 60,000 claimants have already committed to voting in favor of the plan.

"When presented with a clear and complete explanation and the opportunity to make an informed choice, we firmly believe the claimants will approve the plan," said Erik Haas, J&J's worldwide vice president of litigation.

Kaplan's decision is narrower than the one he made after LTL Management first filed for Chapter 11 in 2021.

The judge ruled in February 2022 that J&J can use the bankruptcy system to resolve talc allegations, enabling the company to avoid fighting thousands of individual lawsuits.

Kaplan essentially affirmed J&J's use of a strategy known as the "Texas two-step," which allows companies to split valuable assets from liabilities through a so-called divisive merger.

But in January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit overturned that ruling. The appeals court said that neither LTL nor J&J had a legitimate need for bankruptcy protection because they were not in "financial distress."

Amid the ongoing legal fights, J&J has continued to deny the allegations that its talc products caused cancer.

Chief Financial Officer Joseph Wolk said on an earnings call Tuesday that it was "unfortunate" that J&J has to "put dollars towards quite frankly baseless scientific claims."

The suits allege J&J's talc products were contaminated with the carcinogen asbestos, which caused ovarian cancer in thousands of individuals.

Some lawsuits link several deaths to J&J's talc products.

US judge halts most talc lawsuits against J&J, stops trials

Story by By Mike Spector • Yesterday 


FILE PHOTO: Bottles of Johnson & Johnson baby powder line a drugstore shelf in New York© Thomson Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday halted most of the tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder and other talc products caused cancer and stopped any trials as part of a company subsidiary’s second attempt to settle cases in bankruptcy proceedings.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan put most of the litigation temporarily on hold during a hearing in Trenton, New Jersey. The decision, for the most part, granted a request from J&J to freeze cases while it attempts to reach a permanent settlement with current plaintiffs that would also set aside money for future lawsuits.

J&J says it has broad support for a proposed $8.9 billion settlement, a contention disputed by lawyers representing talc claimants who oppose it.

The J&J subsidiary, LTL Management, filed for bankruptcy a second time earlier this month to help finalize the latest deal, despite a federal appeals court’s decision in January that invalidated its first Chapter 11 filing, on the grounds the J&J unit was not in financial distress.

“I have more questions than answers,” Kaplan said during Thursday's court hearing, referring to arguments made to him about the second bankruptcy case earlier this week.

The judge halted roughly 38,000 talc lawsuits consolidated in a federal district court in New Jersey. He allowed other cases to proceed as long as no trials commence.

He said he would revisit the ruling in late May.

Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, in a statement called the ruling “a win for claimants” and expressed confidence they would ultimately approve the proposed settlement.

LTL Management argued that allowing litigation against J&J to continue would imperil current settlement efforts. J&J previously used a complex legal maneuver, known as a Texas two-step, to shift responsibility for the lawsuits to LTL.

Leigh O’Dell, one of the lead lawyers for plaintiffs in cases consolidated in the New Jersey federal court, said prohibiting trials limits pressure on J&J.


Related video: J&J talc unit asks judge to halt cancer lawsuits as it pursues $8.9 bln settlement (WION)  Duration 1:12  View on Watch

“We continue to believe that this bankruptcy effort is illegitimate … and that stance will be affirmed through the appellate process,” she said in a statement.

The judge’s ruling kept in legal limbo consumers alleging J&J talc caused their ovarian cancer or mesothelioma. Some plaintiffs allege asbestos in the talc sickened them. For now, none can test their claims before juries.

J&J has said its talc is safe, asbestos-free and does not cause cancer.

The healthcare conglomerate has not filed for bankruptcy itself. In October 2021, J&J divided its consumer business in two and offloaded the talc lawsuits onto a newly created subsidiary, LTL, which then declared bankruptcy.

In January, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia invalidated LTL's bankruptcy filing. Kaplan dismissed the bankruptcy earlier this month, only for LTL to file for Chapter 11 again in his court about two hours later.

'UPHILL BATTLE'

Talc plaintiffs opposing J&J's proposed settlement plan to file a motion to dismiss the second bankruptcy filing, one of their lawyers said in court on Tuesday.

They portray J&J’s actions as an abuse of the bankruptcy system by a multinational conglomerate valued at more than $400 billion and in little danger of running out of money to pay cancer victims.

A U.S. Department of Justice official charged with monitoring the case has also pushed back against the second bankruptcy.

“Undoubtedly, the debtor has an uphill battle,” Kaplan said, referring to LTL’s settlement and reorganization prospects.

J&J and its subsidiary have argued bankruptcy delivers settlement payouts more fairly, efficiently and equitably than a “lottery” offered by trial courts, where some litigants get large awards and others nothing.

Jim Murdica, a lawyer tasked with resolving talc cases for J&J, testified in a deposition last weekend that as many as 80,000 claimants support the company’s settlement offer - enough to meet a bankruptcy threshold requiring agreement from 75% of all claimants, he said.

Lawyers representing opposing talc plaintiffs contend those figures reflect mostly unfiled claims and that people behind them have not yet agreed to the settlement. J&J and LTL argue their settlement process is typical.

LTL terminated a funding agreement with its parent company that the appeals court found insulated it from the financial distress necessary to legitimately declare bankruptcy.

Its lawyers now argue that new financing agreements leave LTL Management in financial distress. At the same time, they contend the agreements provide enough funds to pay plaintiffs and avoid rendering LTL insolvent, countering arguments from plaintiffs' lawyers that the transactions were fraudulent.

(Reporting by Mike Spector; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

U.S. court rejects J&J bankruptcy strategy for tens of thousands of talc lawsuits

Mon, January 30, 2023 

By Tom Hals, Mike Spector and Dan Levine

(Reuters) -A U.S. appeals court upended Johnson & Johnson's attempt to offload into bankruptcy tens of thousands of lawsuits over its talc products, ruling the healthcare conglomerate improperly placed a subsidiary into Chapter 11 proceedings even though it did not face financial distress.

The decision by the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia on Monday dismissed a Chapter 11 petition filed by a recently created J&J subsidiary in October to address more than 38,000 lawsuits from plaintiffs alleging the company’s baby powder and other talc products caused cancer.

Before the bankruptcy, J&J faced costs from $3.5 billion in verdicts and settlements, including one in which 22 women were eventually awarded a judgment of more than $2 billion, according to bankruptcy-court records.

Several major companies, including J&J and 3M Co, have turned to bankruptcy court to manage their mass tort liabilities. Plaintiff attorneys have called the cases an improper manipulation of the bankruptcy system, while the companies say the Chapter 11 filings are aimed at compensating claimants fairly and equitably.

J&J’s maneuver is known as a Texas two-step for a state law used to create a subsidiary that shoulders litigation and then declares bankruptcy. The Third Circuit’s opinion allows talc litigation to resume against the company.

J&J said it would challenge the ruling and that its talc products are safe.

Its shares fell more than 3% - the biggest one-day percentage decline in two years.

The New Jersey-based company, valued at more than $400 billion, said its subsidiary’s bankruptcy was initiated in good faith and designed to equitably resolve talc claims for the benefit of all plaintiffs. J&J initially pledged $2 billion to the subsidiary to resolve talc claims and entered into an agreement to fund an eventual settlement approved by a bankruptcy judge.

A three-judge panel on the appeals court rejected J&J’s argument, finding the company’s subsidiary, LTL Management, was created solely to access the bankruptcy system and not because it faced financial distress.

"Good intentions - such as to protect the J&J brand or comprehensively resolve litigation - do not suffice alone," the judges said in a 56-page opinion.

The decision throws into doubt J&J’s long-planned strategy for disposing of talc litigation after it lost a bid to reverse a watershed verdict that eventually awarded more than $2 billion to 22 women who blamed their ovarian cancer on baby powder and other talc products.

More than 1,500 talc lawsuits have been dismissed without J&J having to pay anything, and the majority of cases that have gone to trial have resulted in defense verdicts, mistrials or judgments for the company on appeal, according to the J&J subsidiary's court filings.

'PROJECT PLATO'

A December 2018 Reuters investigation revealed that the company knew for decades of tests showing its talc sometimes contained traces of carcinogenic asbestos but kept that information from regulators and the public.

“As we have said from the beginning of this process, resolving this matter as quickly and efficiently as possible is in the best interests of claimants and all stakeholders,” J&J said in a statement. “We continue to stand behind the safety of Johnson’s Baby Powder, which is safe, does not contain asbestos and does not cause cancer.”

Facing unrelenting litigation, J&J enlisted law firm Jones Day, which had helped other companies execute Texas two-step bankruptcies to address asbestos lawsuits.

J&J’s effort, which Reuters detailed last year, was internally dubbed “Project Plato”, and employees working on it signed confidentiality agreements warning them to tell no one, including their spouses, about the plan.

The Texas two-step strategy has garnered criticism from Democratic lawmakers, and inspired legislation that would severely restrict the practice.

Jones Day did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Critics contend the strategy is an improper use of the bankruptcy system by solvent corporations wishing to escape jury trials in state courts. Bankruptcy filings typically pause litigation, forcing plaintiffs into often time consuming settlement negotiations while leaving them unable to pursue their cases in the courts where they originally sued.

“Bankruptcy courts are for honest companies in financial distress, not billionaire mega-corporations like J&J,” said Jon Ruckdeschel, a lawyer representing talc plaintiffs.

Plaintiffs and other legal experts urged U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan last year to dismiss the J&J subsidiary’s bankruptcy, arguing it was filed in bad faith and risked becoming a blueprint for large corporations seeking to avoid undesirable litigation.

Kaplan, though, denied the request, finding the J&J unit did face financial distress and that a bankruptcy court was a better forum for resolving the litigation then America’s tort system.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Mike Spector in New York; and Dan Levine and San Francisco; Additional reporting by Dietrich Knauth and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

So why haven't astronauts been back to the moon in 50 years?
Dave Mosher,Hilary Brueck
Wed, December 14, 2022 


Apollo 11 astronauts planted a flag on the moon on July 20, 1969.NASA

The last time a person visited the moon was in December 1972, during NASA's Apollo 17 mission.

Astronauts say the reasons humans haven't returned are budgetary and political, not scientific or technical.

It's possible NASA will be back on the moon by 2025, at the very earliest.

Landing 12 people on the moon remains one of NASA's greatest achievements, if not the greatest.

Astronauts collected rocks, took photos, performed experiments, planted flags, and then came home. But those stays during the Apollo program didn't establish a lasting human presence on the moon.

Fifty years after the most recent crewed moon landing — Apollo 17 in December 1972 — there are plenty of reasons to return people to Earth's giant, dusty satellite and stay there.

NASA has promised that we will see US astronauts on the moon again soonish — maybe by 2025 at the earliest, in a program called Artemis, which will include the first women to ever touch the lunar surface.

Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who ran the agency during the Trump administration, said it's not science or technology hurdles that have held the US back from doing this sooner.

"If it wasn't for the political risk, we would be on the moon right now," Bridenstine said on a phone call with reporters in 2018. "In fact, we would probably be on Mars."

So why haven't astronauts been back to the moon in 50 years?

"It was the political risks that prevented it from happening," Bridenstine said. "The program took too long and it costs too much money."

Researchers and entrepreneurs have long pushed for the creation of a crewed base on the moon — a lunar space station.

"A permanent human research station on the moon is the next logical step. It's only three days away. We can afford to get it wrong and not kill everybody," Chris Hadfield, a former astronaut, previously told Business Insider. "And we have a whole bunch of stuff we have to invent and then test in order to learn before we can go deeper out."

A lunar base could evolve into a fuel depot for deep-space missions, lead to the creation of unprecedented space telescopes, make it easier to live on Mars, and solve longstanding scientific mysteries about Earth and the moon's creation. It could even spur a thriving off-world economy, perhaps one built around lunar space tourism.

But many astronauts and other experts suggest the biggest impediments to making new crewed moon missions a reality are banal and somewhat depressing.
It's really expensive to get to the moon — but not that expensive

Bloomsbury Auctions

A tried-and-true hurdle for any spaceflight program, especially missions that involve people, is the steep cost.

NASA's 2022 budget is $24 billion, and the Biden administration is asking Congress to boost that to nearly $26 billion in the 2023 budget.

Those amounts may sound like a windfall, until you consider that the total gets split among all the agency's divisions and ambitious projects: the James Webb Space Telescope, the giant rocket project called Space Launch System (SLS), and far-flung missions to the sun, Jupiter, Mars, the asteroid belt, the Kuiper belt, and the edge of the solar system. (By contrast, the US military is on track for a budget of about $858 billion in 2023.)

Plus, NASA's budget is somewhat small relative to its past.

"NASA's portion of the federal budget peaked at 4% in 1965," Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham said during congressional testimony in 2015. "For the past 40 years it has remained below 1%, and for the last 15 years it has been driving toward 0.4% of the federal budget."

A 2005 report by NASA estimated that returning to the moon would cost about $104 billion ($162 billion today, with inflation) over about 13 years. The Apollo program cost about $142 billion in today's dollars.

"Manned exploration is the most expensive space venture and, consequently, the most difficult for which to obtain political support," Cunningham said during his testimony.

He added, according to Scientific American: "Unless the country, which is Congress here, decided to put more money in it, this is just talk that we're doing here."

Referring to Mars missions and a return to the moon, Cunningham said, "NASA's budget is way too low to do all the things that we've talked about."
The problem with presidents

Former US President Donald Trump wanted to get astronauts back on the moon in 2024.Reuters/Carlos Barria

President Biden may — or may not — be in office the next time NASA lands astronauts back on to the moon in 2025, or later.

And therein lies another major problem: partisan political whiplash.

"Why would you believe what any president said about a prediction of something that was going to happen two administrations in the future?" Hadfield said. "That's just talk."

The process of designing, engineering, and testing a spacecraft that could get people to another world easily outlasts a two-term president. But incoming presidents and lawmakers often scrap the previous leader's space-exploration priorities.

"I would like the next president to support a budget that allows us to accomplish the mission that we are asked to perform, whatever that mission may be," Scott Kelly, an astronaut who spent a year in space, wrote in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" thread in January 2016, before President Trump took office.

But presidents and Congress don't often seem to care about staying the course.

In 2004, for example, the Bush administration tasked NASA with coming up with a way to replace the space shuttle, which was set to retire, and also return to the moon. The agency came up with the Constellation program to land astronauts on the moon using a rocket called Ares and a spaceship called Orion. NASA spent $9 billion over five years designing, building, and testing hardware for that human-spaceflight program.

Yet after President Barack Obama took office — and the Government Accountability Office released a report about NASA's inability to estimate Constellation's cost — Obama pushed to scrap the program and signed off on the SLS rocket instead.

Trump didn't scrap SLS. But he did change Obama's goal of launching astronauts to an asteroid, shifting priorities to moon and Mars missions. Trump wanted to see Artemis land astronauts back on the moon in 2024.

Such frequent changes to NASA's expensive priorities have led to cancellation after cancellation, a loss of about $20 billion, and years of wasted time and momentum.

Biden seems to be a rare exception to the shifty presidential trend: he hasn't toyed with Trump's Artemis priority for NASA, and he's also kept Space Force intact.

Buzz Aldrin said in testimony to Congress in 2015 that he believes the will to return to the moon must come from Capitol Hill.

"American leadership is inspiring the world by consistently doing what no other nation is capable of doing. We demonstrated that for a brief time 45 years ago. I do not believe we have done it since," Aldrin wrote in a statement. "I believe it begins with a bipartisan congressional and administration commitment to sustained leadership."

The real driving force behind that government commitment to return to the moon is the will of the American people, who vote for politicians and help shape their policy priorities. But public interest in lunar exploration has always been lukewarm.

Even at the height of the Apollo program, after Aldrin and Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, only 53% of Americans said they thought the program was worth the cost. Most of the rest of the time, US approval of Apollo hovered below 50%.

Most Americans think NASA should make returning to the moon a priority at this point. More than 57% of nationwide respondents to an INSIDER poll in December 2018 said returning to the moon is an important goal for NASA, but only about 38% said that living, breathing humans need to go back. (Others who want the US to land on the moon say robots could do the lunar exploring.)

Samantha Lee/Business Insider

Support for crewed Mars exploration is stronger, with 63% of respondents to a 2018 Pew Research Center poll saying it should be a NASA priority. Meanwhile, 91% think that scanning the skies for killer asteroids is important.
The challenges beyond politics

Many space enthusiasts have long hoped to build a base on the moon, but the lunar surface's harsh environment wouldn't be an ideal place for humans to thrive.NASA

The political tug-of-war over NASA's mission and budget isn't the only reason people haven't returned to the moon. The moon is also a 4.5-billion-year-old death trap for humans and must not be trifled with or underestimated.

Its surface is littered with craters and boulders that threaten safe landings. Leading up to the first moon landing in 1969, the US government spent what would be billions in today's dollars to develop, launch, and deliver satellites to the moon to map its surface and help mission planners scout for possible Apollo landing sites.

But a bigger worry is what eons of meteorite impacts have created: regolith, also called moon dust.

Madhu Thangavelu, an aeronautical engineer at the University of Southern California, wrote in 2014 that the moon is covered in "a fine, talc-like top layer of lunar dust, several inches deep in some regions, which is electrostatically charged through interaction with the solar wind and is very abrasive and clingy, fouling up spacesuits, vehicles and systems very quickly."

Peggy Whitson, an astronaut who lived in space for a total of 665 days, previously told Business Insider that the Apollo missions "had a lot of problems with dust."

"If we're going to spend long durations and build permanent habitats, we have to figure out how to handle that," Whitson said.

There's also a problem with sunlight. For about 14 days at a time, the lunar surface is a boiling hellscape that is exposed directly to the sun's harsh rays; the moon has no protective atmosphere. The next 14 days are in total darkness, making the moon's surface one of the colder places in the universe.

NASA is developing a fission power system that could supply astronauts with electricity during weeks-long lunar nights — and would be useful on other worlds, including Mars.

"There is not a more environmentally unforgiving or harsher place to live than the moon," Thangavelu wrote. "And yet, since it is so close to the Earth, there is not a better place to learn how to live, away from planet Earth."

NASA has designed dust- and sun-resistant spacesuits and rovers, though it's uncertain whether that equipment is anywhere near ready to launch.
A generation of billionaire 'space nuts' may get there

An illustration of SpaceX's Starship vehicle on the surface of the moon, with Earth in the distance.Elon Musk/SpaceX via Twitter

Another issue, astronauts say, is NASA's graying workforce. These days, more American kids polled say they dream about becoming YouTube stars, rather than astronauts.

"You've got to realize young people are essential to this kind of an effort," Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt recently told Business Insider. "The average age of the people in Mission Control for Apollo 13 was 26 years old, and they'd already been on a bunch of missions."

Schweickart echoed that concern, noting that the average age of someone at NASA's Johnson Space Center is closer to 60 years old.

"That's not where innovation and excitement comes from. Excitement comes from when you've got teenagers and 20-year-olds running programs," Schweickart said. "When Elon Musk lands a [rocket booster], his whole company is yelling and screaming and jumping up and down."

Musk is part of what astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman has called a "generation of billionaires who are space nuts," developing a new, private suite of moon-capable rockets.

"The innovation that's been going on over the last 10 years in spaceflight never would've happened if it was just NASA and Boeing and Lockheed," Hoffman told journalists during a roundtable in 2018. "Because there was no motivation to reduce the cost or change the way we do it."

The innovation Hoffman was referring to is work of Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, as well as by Jeff Bezos, who runs aerospace company Blue Origin.

"There's no question: If we're going to go farther, especially if we're going to go farther than the moon, we need new transportation," Hoffman added. "Right now we're still in the horse-and-buggy days of spaceflight."

Many astronauts' desire to return to the moon aligns with Bezos' long-term vision. Bezos has floated a plan to start building the first moon base using Blue Origin's upcoming New Glenn rocket system.

"We will move all heavy industry off of Earth, and Earth will be zoned residential and light industry," he said in April 2018.

Musk has also spoken at length about how SpaceX's forthcoming Starship launch system could pave the way for affordable, regular lunar visits. SpaceX might even visit the moon before NASA or Blue Origin.

"My dream would be that someday the moon would become part of the economic sphere of the Earth — just like geostationary orbit and low-Earth orbit," Hoffman said. "Space out as far as geostationary orbit is part of our everyday economy. Someday I think the moon will be, and that's something to work for."

Astronauts don't doubt whether or not we'll get back to the moon and onto Mars. It's just a matter of when.

"I guess eventually things will come to pass where they will go back to the moon and eventually go to Mars — probably not in my lifetime," Lovell said. "Hopefully they'll be successful."

Assessing the effect of hydraulic fracturing on microearthquakes

New research examines mining sites with hydraulic fracturing comparing it to those without to determine the practice’s effect on seismic hazards

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SPRINGER

The analysis of low-intensity human-caused microearthquakes, including their magnitude and frequency, has become an important factor in mining. This is a consideration not only for the safety of mining staff, but also for extraction rates and mine stability that can have major impacts on business performance.

Increasingly, the practice of hydraulic fracturing is used to precondition mines and diminish the magnitude of induced tremors as well as reduce the number of rock fragments extracted.

A new paper published in EPJ B assesses the impact of hydraulic fracturing on seismic hazards like microearthquakes, an important issue for the safety of workers and the continuation of mining operations. The paper is authored by Erick de la Barra, Pedro Vega-Jorquera and Héctor Torres from the University of La Serena, Chile, alongside Sérgio Luiz E. F. da Silva from Politecnico di Torino, Department of Applied Science and Technology, Turin, Italy.

Hydraulic fracturing involves pumping large quantities of fluids into a wellbore at high pressures. This has the effect of enlarging fractures in the target rock formation. This results in an increase in the yield of oil or gas from rocks — especially from low-permeability rocks like tight sandstone, shale and occasionally coal beds.

The authors attempt to quantify the benefits of preconditioning with hydraulic fracturing by integrating previous investigative models to create a more realistic approximation of the seismic ruptures.

This model was applied to a mine in the O’Higgins Region of Chile to assess induced seismic activity due to the effect of hydraulic fracturing. The team also considered both the magnitude of microearthquakes and the intervening time between events.

This was done by considering 15,436 microearthquakes recorded between 2003 and 2008 in three sections of the mine. These were then compared on the basis of whether the section had been preconditioned with hydraulic fracturing or not.

The results seemed to imply that hydraulic fracturing decreases the magnitude and the microearthquakes.

The model worked on by the team could also be utilised to predict seismic activity, and to understand so-called marsquakes occurring on the Red Planet. 

“In reference to the next step in this investigation, our interest is to work with the problem when self-similarity is broken,” Vega-Jorquera says. “Thus, considering the problem of multisources and relating them to multimodal distributions, this would imply evaluating possible modifications of the seismic hazard via hydraulic fracturing.”

###

References

de la Barra, E., Vega-Jorquera, P., da Silva, S.L.E.F. et al. Hydraulic fracturing assessment on seismic hazard by Tsallis statistics. Eur. Phys. J. B 95:92 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/s10051-022-00361-6

---

JOURNAL

The European Physical Journal B

DOI

10.1140/epjb/s10051-022-00361-6 

ARTICLE TITLE

Hydraulic fracturing assessment on seismic hazard by Tsallis statistics

Geological carbon sequestration in mantle rocks prevents large earthquakes in parts of the San Andreas Fault

Smaller, more frequent quakes help to reduce tectonic

strain

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION

 

IMAGE: OUTCROP OF CARBONATE-ALTERED MANTLE ROCK IN THE SAN ANDREAS FAULT AREA. A RECENT STUDY SHOWS THAT CARBON SEQUESTRATION IN MANTLE ROCKS MAY PREVENT LARGE EARTHQUAKES IN PARTS OF THE SAN ANDREAS FAULT. view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE CREDIT: FRIEDER KLEIN/©WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION

Woods Hole, MA - The San Andreas Fault in California is renowned for its large and infrequent earthquakes. However, some segments of the San Andreas Fault (SAF) instead are characterized by frequent quakes of small to moderate magnitude and high rates of continuous or episodic aseismic creep. With tectonic strain released in a quasi-steady motion, that reduces the potential for large earthquakes along those segments.

Now, researchers say ubiquitous evidence for ongoing geological carbon sequestration in mantle rocks in the creeping sections of the SAF is one underlying cause of aseismic creep along a roughly 150 kilometer-long SAF segment between San Juan Bautista and Parkfield, California, and along several other fault segments.

“Although there is no consensus regarding the underlying cause of aseismic creep, aqueous fluids and mechanically weak minerals appear to play a central role,” researchers say in a new paper, “Carbonation of serpentinite in creeping faults of California,” published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The new study integrates field observations and thermodynamic modeling “to examine possible relationships between the occurrence of serpentinite, silica-carbonate rock, and CO2-rich aqueous fluids in creeping faults of California,” the paper states. “Our models predict that carbonation of serpentinite leads to the formation of talc and magnesite, followed by silica-carbonate rock. While abundant exposures of silica-carbonate rock indicate complete carbonation, serpentinite hosted CO2-rich spring fluids are strongly supersaturated with talc at elevated temperatures. Hence, carbonation of serpentinite is likely ongoing in parts of the San Andres Fault system and operates in conjunction with other modes of talc formation that may further enhance the potential for aseismic creep, thereby limiting the potential for large earthquakes.”

The paper indicates that because wet talc is a mechanically weak mineral, “its formation through carbonation promotes tectonic movements without large earthquakes.”

The researchers recognized several possible underlying mechanisms causing aseismic creep in the SAF, and they also noted that because the rates of aseismic creep are significantly higher in some parts of the SAF system, an additional or different mechanism – the carbonation of serpentinite – is needed to account for the full extent of the creep.

With fluids basically everywhere along the SAF, but with only certain portions of the fault being lubricated, researchers considered that a rock could be responsible for the lubrication. Some earlier studies had suggested that the lubricant could be talc, a soft and slippery component that is commonly used in baby powder. A well-established mechanism for forming talc is by adding silica to mantle rocks. However, the researchers here focused on another talc-forming mechanism: adding CO2 to mantle rocks to form soapstone.

“The addition of CO2 to mantle rocks  – which is the mineral carbonation or carbon sequestration process – had not previously been investigated in the context of earthquake formation or the natural prevention of earthquakes. Using basic geological constraints, our study showed where these carbonate-altered mantle rocks are and where there are springs along the fault line in California that are enriched in CO2. It turned out that when you plot the occurrence and distribution of these rock types and the occurrence of CO2-rich springs in California, they all line up along the San Andreas Fault in creeping sections of the fault where you don’t have major earthquakes,” said Frieder Klein, lead author of the journal article.

Klein, an associate scientist in the Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, explained that carbonation is basically the uptake of CO2 by a rock. Klein noted that he had used existing U.S. Geological Survey databases and Google Earth to plot the locations of carbonate-altered rocks and CO2-rich springs.

“The geological evidence suggests that this mineral carbonation process is taking place and that talc is an intermediary reaction product of that process,” Klein said. Although researchers did not find soapstone on mantle rock outcrops, results from theoretical models “strongly suggest that carbonation is an ongoing process and that soapstone indeed could form in the SAF at depth,” the paper notes.  

These theoretical models “suggest that carbon sequestration with the SAF is taking place today and that the process is actively helping to lubricate the fault and minimize strong earthquakes in the creeping portions of the SAF,” Klein said.

The paper also notes that this mechanism may also be present in other fault systems. “Because CO2-rich aqueous fluids and ultramafic rocks are particularly common in young orogenic belts and subduction zones, the formation of talc via mineral carbonation may play a critical role in controlling the seismic behavior of major tectonic faults around the world.”

“Our study allows us to better understand the fundamental processes that are taking place within fault zones where these ingredients are present, and allows us to better understand the seismic behavior of these faults, some of which are in densely populated areas and some of which are in lightly populated or oceanic settings,” Klein said.

This work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation.

 

Authors: Frieder Klein1*, David L. Goldsby2, Jian Lin1, Muriel Andreani3

Affiliations:

1Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA

2University of Pennsylvania, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, USA

3Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon, UMR 5276, ENS et Université Lyon 1, 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France

*corresponding author

 

About Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate an understanding of the ocean’s role in the changing global environment. WHOI’s pioneering discoveries stem from an ideal combination of science and engineering—one that has made it one of the most trusted and technically advanced leaders in basic and applied ocean research and exploration anywhere. WHOI is known for its multidisciplinary approach, superior ship operations, and unparalleled deep-sea robotics capabilities. We play a leading role in ocean observation and operate the most extensive suite of data-gathering platforms in the world. Top scientists, engineers, and students collaborate on more than 800 concurrent projects worldwide—both above and below the waves—pushing the boundaries of knowledge and possibility. For more information, please visit www.whoi.edu