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BBC Radio 4

From smoking and cancer to climate change, this is the story of how to manufacture doubt. 

Investigating the industry response to claims there could be asbestos in make-up, and the tactics that could be used to cast doubt over the science and create controversy.

How They Made Us Doubt Everything

When we send off make-up for testing, the lab finds an asbestos fibre in two of the samples. Brunel University’s Experimental Technique’s Centre says they need to find at least 3 fibres to confirm the asbestos fibre came from the make-up sample, despite having strict protocols to ensure their lab is not the source of the contamination. 

This isn’t the first test of this kind. Back in 2021, the UK government’s Office for Product Safety and Standards ordered tests of 60 low-cost eye shadows and face powders and 24 child appealing make up products on sale in the UK. In 1 child appealing product, they found 1 asbestos fibre and in two of the low-cost samples, they found five and three asbestos fibres. 

So are there any health implication if we are exposed to trace amounts of asbestos? The World Health Organisation recognises no safe level of exposure to asbestos. The Institute of Cancer Research’s mesothelioma immunologist Dr. Astero Klampatsa weighs up the risk. She says she would personally choose talc free make- up products. 

In 2023, Johnson and Johnson stopped using talc as an ingredient in its baby powder worldwide. 

Meanwhile, British cancer patient Hannah Fletcher sues the companies that made her favourite talc based cosmetics. Lawyers fly in to leafy Surrey from America to question her. 

Presenter and Producer: Phoebe Keane
Sound mix: James Beard
Series Editor: Matt Willis

Talc Tales: 5. Talc on trial

When talc might be listed as a potential carcinogen, the industry assembles a ‘talc task force’. It’s the year 2000 and the talc industry has heard something big is coming its way. The US government agencies tasked with listing cancer causing substances are set to include talc. The initial recommendation was to list talc containing asbestiform fibres as ‘known to be a human carcinogen’. They’d list talc that did not contain asbestiform fibres as ‘reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen’. In response, the industry lobbying group holds an emergency conference call and sets out a plan. ‘To be listed on the Report on Carcinogens can be devastating’, one internal industry memo asserts, listing the financial losses they would incur. How would they respond? An industry memo sets out one of their tactics: ‘Time to come up with more confusion’. 
 
Presenter and Producer: Phoebe Keane
Sound mix: James Beard
Series Editor: Matt Willis

Talc Tales: 4. ‘Time for more confusion’

Could companies clean up their talc? In the 1970s, talc companies worked out a plan to check their product for asbestos fibres. The problem was, mineralogist Sean Fitzgerald says the testing method they chose wasn’t sensitive enough to truly weed all asbestos fibres out. But this testing method was taken up not just in America but around the world and still informs the standards today. Companies can legally say their talc is ‘asbestos free’ if they’ve used this method, but there could still be trace amounts of asbestos fibres in the product. 

Meanwhile, epidemiologist Dan Cramer starts some research into a possible association between talc and ovarian cancer – but what does the latest research say? 

Presenter and Producer: Phoebe Keane
Sound mix: James Beard
Series Editor: Matt Willis

Talc Tales: 3. ‘We may have problems’

In the 1970s, a scientist discovers asbestos fibres in talcum powder. After Mineralogist Arthur Langer discovered asbestos fibres in the lungs of normal people in New York, he set out to investigate the source. How could people just going about their daily lives, not working directly with asbestos products, have been exposed? He started testing talcum powders and was surprised to find many products contained asbestos fibres. His findings made a splash in the newspapers, but how would industry respond?

Arthur’s work put him on a list of ‘antagonistic personalities’, carrying out an ‘attack on talc’ at Johnson and Johnson headquarters – a major producer of talcum powder at the time. But internal company memos now reveal that Johnson and Johnson had been testing their talc supply for asbestos fibres in the early 1970s and they had been finding it as well. In the words of one internal memo: ‘It should be cautioned, however, that no final product will ever be made, which will be totally free from respirable particles. We’re talking about a significant reduction, but not a 100% clean-up.’

Presenter and Producer: Phoebe Keane
Sound mix: James Beard
Series Editor: Matt Willis

Talc Tales: 2. Never 100% clean

After Hannah Fletcher’s cancer diagnosis, she investigates whether her make up contained asbestos. She was just 41 when she was diagnosed with mesothelioma – a rare cancer that’s very hard to treat. The average life expectancy from diagnosis is just 18 months. She says ‘One of the worst things that I've had to do was write letters to my children in case I died’. Following a 14 hour operation to remove as much of the cancer as possible, Hannah’s doctors advised her to call a lawyer because mesothelioma is almost exclusively caused by exposure to asbestos. This surprised Hannah as she had always had an office job. She didn’t work in construction or industries disturbing asbestos. 

After investigating, Hannah’s lawyers realised her asbestos exposure could have been from a surprising source… her talcum powder and make up. Shockingly, it turns out, this issue of asbestos contamination in talc is not new. Talc and asbestos are both natural minerals formed in similar conditions in the ground. This fact is not contentious to any geologist, but the talc and cosmetics industries have sometimes taken a different approach. Thanks to recent court cases, once secret company memos now reveal how the talc industry sought to cast doubt over the science showing their product could be contaminated with the cancer causing substance. 

After chronicling the tactics used by big tobacco to delay regulation on smoking and then by big oil to delay regulation on climate change in series 1, Phoebe Keane investigates whether similar tactics have been used again to create the idea that there was a controversy.

Hearing the evidence, Phoebe Keane sends off her own make up to best tested for asbestos. What will the lab find?

Presenter and Producer: Phoebe Keane
Sound mix: James Beard
Series Editor: Matt Willis

Talc Tales: 1. Asbestos in my make-up?

Is there asbestos in make-up? If you look through your make-up bag, you might have a blusher, eye shadow or face powder that contains the ingredient talc. But there are questions about its safety. Women diagnosed with cancer have started launching court cases against cosmetics companies claiming some products are contaminated with asbestos.

It turns out, the issue of asbestos contamination in talc is not new. Thanks to recent court cases, once secret company memos now reveal how the talc industry first started to discuss this issue in the 1970s. Why is asbestos showing up in products decades later?

After chronicling the tactics used by big tobacco to delay regulation on smoking and then by big oil to delay regulation on climate change in series 1, Phoebe Keane investigates whether similar tactics have been used again to create the idea that there was a controversy and to cast doubt over the science.

Presenter and producer: Phoebe Keane
Sound mix: James Beard
Series Editor: Matt Willis

Introducing Talc Tales

Our story ends at the very top, with a fax to the White House. The campaign to spread doubt about climate change was so successful, it infiltrated the White House. In 2007, a House of Representatives Committee investigation ruled: ‘There was a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change by editing climate change reports’. 

But years later, after the oil money pipeline was cut, the key groups who initiated the strategy had folded, huge swathes of the population still doubt climate change. In 2001, about 50% of Republicans thought human activity was the main cause of global warming. Ten years later that was down to just 30% or so. What happens when a Republican politician proposes legislation to tackle climate change?

From climate change to smoking and cancer, this is the story of how doubt has been manufactured. This 10 part series explores how powerful interests and sharp PR managers engineered doubt about the connection between smoking and cancer and how similar tactics were later used by some to make us doubt climate change. 
With the help of once-secret internal memos, we take you behind boardroom doors where such strategies were drawn up and explore how the narrative changed on one of the most important stories of our time - and how the marketing of doubt has undermined our willingness to believe almost everything. 

Presenter: Peter Pomerantsev
Producer: Phoebe Keane

The Tobacco Playbook: 10. Leaving the Tribe

Following the oil money as it’s pumped to contrarian scientists and think tanks. 
As millions of dollars flow from oil companies to researchers looking into ‘solar variation’ or picking holes in the temperature record, we reveal that ten years previously, oil company researchers had dismissed these very arguments. An internal American Petroleum Institute document from 1995 said ‘hypothesis about the role of solar variability and Michaels’ questions about temperature record are not convincing arguments against any conclusion that we are currently experiencing warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions’. So why were they funding people who made these arguments years later?

From climate change to smoking and cancer, this is the story of how doubt has been manufactured. This 10 part series explores how powerful interests and sharp PR managers engineered doubt about the connection between smoking and cancer and how similar tactics were later used by some to make us doubt climate change. 
With the help of once-secret internal memos, we take you behind boardroom doors where such strategies were drawn up and explore how the narrative changed on one of the most important stories of our time - and how the marketing of doubt has undermined our willingness to believe almost everything. 

Clip used from 'The Hunt' series from 2015 by David Attenborough and Hunter Films Ltd.

Presenter: Peter Pomerantsev
Producer: Phoebe Keane

The Tobacco Playbook: 9. Deep Pockets, Useful Allies

As climate change goes prime time, a super star climate change sceptic wins his last TV debate. Jerry Taylor was working at CATO, a free market think tank and was regularly on TV putting forward contrarian arguments. One day, all that changed. 

From climate change to smoking and cancer, this is the story of how doubt has been manufactured. This 10 part series explores how powerful interests and sharp PR managers engineered doubt about the connection between smoking and cancer and how similar tactics were later used by some to make us doubt climate change. 
With the help of once-secret internal memos, we take you behind boardroom doors where such strategies were drawn up and explore how the narrative changed on one of the most important stories of our time - and how the marketing of doubt has undermined our willingness to believe almost everything. 

Presenter: Peter Pomerantsev
Producer: Phoebe Keane

The Tobacco Playbook: 8. Jerry gets ‘duped’

How do you win a battle, if you’re fighting in the wrong arena? A look at how the virtues of science were being used against the scientists. Uncertainty is an inherent part of climate change science, but the word means something different to scientists. This is the lowdown on how scientists are literally using a different language to us and why this has played into the hands of those who want to delay action on climate change. 

From climate change to smoking and cancer, this is the story of how doubt has been manufactured. This 10 part series explores how powerful interests and sharp PR managers engineered doubt about the connection between smoking and cancer and how similar tactics were later used by some to make us doubt climate change. 
With the help of once-secret internal memos, we take you behind boardroom doors where such strategies were drawn up and explore how the narrative changed on one of the most important stories of our time - and how the marketing of doubt has undermined our willingness to believe almost everything. 

Presenter: Peter Pomerantsev
Producer: Phoebe Keane

Talc Tales: 3. ‘We may have problems’

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