For talc/asbestos litigation, a notable development in 2020 was the publication of two case series articles involving a total of 108 persons who developed mesothelioma.  The authors concluded that all 108 persons could be characterized as having exposure to asbestos only through cosmetic talcum powder. The authors include Dr.  Jacqueline Moline and Dr. Richard Kradin, both of whom are frequent expert witnesses in talc/asbestos litigation, often retained by lawyers for plaintiffs.  Moline et al reported selected data for 33 cases and Kradin et al reported selected data for 75 cases. Dr. Moline is the first listed author on Moline 2020, and Dr. Kradin is the senior listed author on Emory 2020.

Among other things, the two papers are notable for the reported data regarding age at cancer onset and sex. We compiled and analyzed the reported data for all 108 persons (Download your copy at the bottom of this post). The data on age of mesothelioma onset shows notable numbers of cases with early onset cancers. Specifically, age at mesothelioma diagnosis was 14-19 for 1 case (1%), 20-29 for 4 cases (4%), 30-39 for 9 cases (8%), 40-49 for 12 cases (11%), and 50-59 for 19 cases (17.5%), resulting in a total of 45 (41.6%) of the mesotheliomas manifesting in persons age 59 or under. Overall average age at diagnosis was 61.1.

  The female to male ratios are similar for the groups at or under 59 (38/7 =5.4) and over 59 (53/10=5.3). Overall female to male count was 91/17, a ratio notably different than ratios reported in studies of persons who developed mesothelioma after occupational exposures to asbestos. We prepared two tables — below — to present the sex and age of onset data for all 108 persons.  Table A presents the reported histology data stratified by the age at onset.  Table B more broadly compiles the data for all 108 persons. Preparing the tables was facilitated by the fact that both Moline 2020 and Emory 2020 included a summary table (Table 1 in each article) with similar formats and information. However, there were some differences in their tables. Specifically, Table 1 of Moline (but not Emory) reported some information about “occupation” and “talcum powder brand,” while Emory (but not Moline) reported “estimated years of latency.”  To group like data together, we moved Moline’s unique data on “occupation” and “talcum powder brand” to the far right-hand side of the table (columns 10 and 11). We omitted some footnote like symbols. We added column 1 to assign an overall series number to each case. The adjacent column 2 shows the case number assigned to each case in the original articles. To distinguish the case numbers between the two articles, “M” is included in column 2 for the 33 cases reported in Moline 2020, and no initial is used for the 75 cases reported in Emory 2020.