Gold Bond Medicated Powder
Product Description
Gold Bond Medicated Powder is a talc-based skin product that has been marketed since the early 1900s by Chattem, Inc. (now a subsidiary of Sanofi). The product was one of the most widely distributed consumer talc powders in the United States, used in hospitals, nursing homes, industrial settings, and households.
Gold Bond’s large institutional distribution — hospitals, healthcare facilities, and industrial workplaces — meant that healthcare workers, nursing assistants, and industrial employees were exposed to the product in professional settings in addition to consumer exposure. The talc supply used in Gold Bond during the asbestos era was sourced from deposits that have been implicated in asbestos contamination litigation.
Asbestos Contamination
Gold Bond Medicated Powder has been named in asbestos talc litigation as a product whose talc supply was contaminated with asbestos fiber. The contamination mechanism is geological: talc and asbestos minerals form in adjacent deposits and are often co-mingled at the source. Tremolite and anthophyllite asbestos are the most common contaminants in cosmetic talc.
Large institutional purchasers of Gold Bond — hospitals, nursing homes, and industrial facilities — handled the product in bulk, with workers dispensing it repeatedly over the course of full working careers.
How Workers Were Exposed
Healthcare workers: Nurses, nursing assistants, and orderlies applied Gold Bond powder to patients as a routine skin-care measure — multiple times per shift, over working careers spanning decades. The product was used heavily in bedsore prevention and general patient skin care, generating talc dust in enclosed patient rooms.
Industrial workers: Gold Bond was standard-issue skin care in many manufacturing facilities, available in large bulk containers at first-aid stations and locker rooms. Workers applied it directly or used it in quantities that generated airborne dust.
Consumers: Personal-use consumers who applied the product daily to their own bodies or to infants experienced long-term repeated low-dose exposure.
See also
References reflect what has been alleged or documented in publicly filed asbestos litigation. This information does not constitute a finding of fact or liability.