\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>t was Sue Rizzello\u2019s husband who persuaded her to see a doctor, concerned about the bloating in her abdomen that was making her more and more uncomfortable. Rizzello, then in her late 40s, had assumed it was menopausal weight gain, but agreed to go to her GP. \u201cA smart locum said: \u2018There\u2019s something wrong here,\u2019 and sent me for a blood test \u2026 And that saved my life.\u201d<\/p>\n It was the worst news: Rizzello had stage 3 ovarian cancer that had begun to spread. She would need to begin chemotherapy immediately and prepare for the complete removal of her uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes and omentum, a procedure that would put her into immediate menopause.<\/p>\n It was the summer of 2012 and her husband, a chef, was working at one of the Olympic venues in Windsor, near to their then home in Slough. For Rizzello, however, \u201cthat whole summer was a blur\u201d of painful treatment, including a clinical trial that was so tough, she was told, that many others had been unable to see it through.<\/p>\n Six months later, the marketing consultant was told her cancer had gone. \u201cBut I was never the same. It was massive. It was an earth-shaking experience that really shook my confidence to the core.\u201d<\/p>\n Rizzello, now 60, was lucky, but she does not believe her cancer was just \u201cone of those things\u201d \u2013 she believes it was caused by talc.<\/p>\n <\/span>Johnson & Johnson continued to sell its talc products in the UK until 2023.<\/span> Photograph: Dan Peled\/AAP<\/p>\n She is one of about 3,000 British-based people \u2013 overwhelmingly women \u2013 who on Thursday brought a landmark legal action in the high court in London against the pharmaceuticals company Johnson & Johnson, claiming they or a family member contracted cancer after a lifetime using J&J\u2019s baby powder.<\/p>\n Backed by a specialist law firm, the claimants argue that the US-based multinational knew for decades that its talc products might contain dangerous asbestos but failed to warn consumers and carried on selling the products in the UK until 2023.<\/p>\n J&J denies the allegations. A spokesperson for Kenvue, J&J\u2019s former consumer health division that was spun off two years ago, said the talc used in baby powder complied with regulations, did not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer.<\/p>\n Rizzello says she was in the dark about the origin of her disease, after genetic tests showed she did not carry the BRCA genes that significantly increase the risk of ovarian cancer. \u201cAnd then I found out about the talc claims, and I thought, hang on.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve used talc all my life. I mean, when I was a child, everybody did,\u201d she says, whether after swimming or after a bath. \u201cIt was just always there. It was just always something you use. I\u2019m totally convinced this was the cause of my own illness, and all the nightmare of treatment and trials that followed.\u201d<\/p>\n J&J has been the subject of long-running lawsuits in the US over similar allegations of cancer links to talc, which it wholly disputes. Two years ago it spun off its consumer health division as Kenvue, which has responsibility for talc-related claims outside the US and Canada.<\/p>\n Kenvue said: \u201cWe sympathise deeply with people living with cancer. We understand that they and their families want answers \u2013 that\u2019s why the facts are so important. The high-quality cosmetic-grade talc that was used in Johnson\u2019s Baby Powder was compliant with any required regulatory standards, did not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n Two years ago, to mark the 10-year anniversary of being given the all clear, Rizzello asked friends to sponsor her to shave her hair again to raise money for cancer charities, in memory of others with the disease who did not survive. \u201cI felt I really had to do something,\u201d she says. \u201cMany of the women I\u2019ve met along the way had died, and so I always feel like it\u2019s for them as much as it is for me.<\/p>\n \u201cI value some things much more highly than I did before. I think I\u2019ve always dreaded the idea of getting older. I don\u2019t mind getting older now, and I\u2019m so grateful to have a chance to get older.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was Sue Rizzello\u2019s husband who persuaded her to see a doctor, concerned about the bloating in her abdomen that was making her more and more uncomfortable. Rizzello, then in her late 40s, had assumed it was menopausal weight gain, but agreed to go to her GP. \u201cA smart locum said: \u2018There\u2019s something wrong here,\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[2432,654,681,4302,16991,668],"class_list":{"0":"post-28619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-blames","9":"tag-cancer","10":"tag-child","11":"tag-johnson","12":"tag-talc","13":"tag-woman"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}