FDA targets talc in food and medicine

The US Food and Drug Administration is seeking information about the health risks of talc, or hydrous magnesium silicate, in food and drugs. Manufacturers voluntarily removed the common mineral, known for its anticaking and moisture absorption properties, from most body powders and cosmetics sold in the US several years ago because of concerns over a possible link to ovarian cancer. But talc is still prevalent in food and drugs, FDA officials said during a panel discussion on May 20.“Talc is in candy that children eat. It’s in food,” FDA commissioner Marty Makary said. It is also in 4 of the 10 most-common medications in the US, he noted. Those drugs—Lipitor, Synthroid, Prilosec, and Neurontin—are taken by nearly 20 million people in the country, according to data reported in April by George Tidmarsh, adjunct professor of pediatrics and neonatology at Stanford University School of Medicine, and his colleague Arman Sharma (DOI: 10.70542/rcj-japh-art-16avrw).Tidmarsh was one of several expert scientists who spoke during the FDA’s panel discussion. “If you've ever unwrapped a piece of gum, that white powder that keeps it from sticking to the wrapper—that's talc that you're putting in your mouth that we now know is carcinogenic,” he said.Last year, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that talc is probably a human carcinogen on the basis of limited evidence for ovarian cancer in humans, sufficient evidence for lung and adrenal gland cancer in experimental animals, and strong mechanistic evidence of chronic inflammation and altered cell proliferation in human