North Carolina Personal Injury Blog

Companies that put out a brand name product will often do just about anything to defend their investment in said product. Even if there is evidence that a product has harmed people or could potentially endanger consumers, companies may attempt to protect their bottom line instead of the general public.

Especially in situations where a product has long-term health implications instead of immediate ones, companies may simply take the approach of denying everything until they cannot possibly continue to do so. That certainly seems to be the case with Roundup, a popular herbicide also known as glyphosphate.

Most of the time, when asbestos makes the news, it is in relation to a civil court case. Asbestos is a naturally-occurring mineral that humans have long used to create a broad range of products. Unfortunately, the people who handle, produce or transport those products can wind up sickened from environmental exposure to the deadly carcinogen.

People have sought compensation for asbestos-related illnesses from employers and product producers. Employees can find themselves exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos at work, resulting in a variety of illnesses in later years. Some consumer products, such as talcum powder, have in recent years also been linked to asbestos and certain cancers.

When a company becomes a household name, like Johnson & Johnson's has with their baby powder, also known as talcum powder, they tend to receive the respect and trust of both consumers and officials. Unfortunately, the respect of officials in positions of legal authority for a brand or company could lead to insufficient or lackluster legal oversight.

Johnson & Johnson is a prime example. Because of how large and well-known the company is, regulators around the world likely trust their product as safe. However, in the face of evidence that the company knew about potential asbestos contamination for decades and did nothing to reduce the risk to consumers or warn them has increased scrutiny of the company and its products.

Asbestos is a known carcinogen that the government has placed restrictions on for decades. Companies that work with asbestos have to have certain protections in place to limit the amount of exposure their workers experience. Many companies can no longer use asbestos for certain kinds of products as a means of limiting how much asbestos exposure the average person has in their lifetime.

Any exposure is dangerous, as people often inhale particulate asbestos without even realizing it is in the environment. Those fibers build up in the lungs and cause damage, which can lead to lung conditions and cancers many years or even decades after the exposure. Obviously, people want to carefully limit or eliminate their exposure to asbestos for their own future health.