The FDA is focused on driving adoption of more sensitive, standardized testing methods for assessing cosmetic talc purity, which it believes would yield more consistent results across labs. This would help to inform research into the health implications of trace levels of asbestos and other elongate mineral particles in talc; in the interim it could to be damaging to companies that supply or use that talc.
Asbestos’ reputation precedes it, but the health implications of exposure to miniscule amounts of the substance and other elongate mineral particles (EMPs) in cosmetic talc are not well understood.
The US Food and Drug Administration and partners in the Interagency Working Group on Asbestos in Consumer Products (IWGACP) believe...