Cancer-Causing Chewing Gum? Experts Tell FDA to Ban Talc From Food and Drugs

Written by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. on June 1, 2025. Posted in Current News

The white powder on gum that keeps it from sticking to the wrapper is carcinogenic and inflammatory, according to George Tidmarsh, M.D., Ph.D., adjunct professor of pediatrics and neonatology at Stanford University School of Medicine.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on May 20 held an expert panel on talc, including Tidmarsh and other top scientists and doctors knowledgeable about the mineral, to hear their recommendations on whether the agency should ban it.

All panel members urged the FDA to ban or phase out talc from foods and pharmaceuticals.

Although many manufacturers voluntarily removed talc from health and beauty products following allegations that the mineral was linked to ovarian cancer, talc remains in many foods and medications.

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, who convened the panel, said, “Talc is in candy that children eat. It’s in food.”

Makary said he was “amazed” that talc has been recognized as a carcinogen for 40 years, “and yet we’re feeding it to our nation’s children.”

Talc may not be the “driver” of the chronic disease epidemic affecting 40% of U.S. kids or what’s causing the increase of gastrointestinal cancers in young people, he added. “But it may be contributing.”

Some talc contains abestos, used in 4 common U.S. drugs

Talc is a mineral made up mostly of magnesium, silicon and oxygen, according to the American Cancer Society. Some talc contains asbestos, which has been linked to cancer.

The mineral is in four of the 10 most common U.S. medications, including Lipitor, Synthroid, Prilosec and Neurontin, according to data published in a peer-reviewed paper last month in the Journal of the Academy of Public Health.

Tidmarsh, who co-authored the paper, said that while some branded versions of the drugs contain talc, many generic versions now contain magnesium stearate, a safer alternative.

Drugmakers use talc mostly to help ingredients flow easily into tablet and capsule machinery without sticking to the machinery, according to Steven Pfeiffer, an organic chemist who works on drug development at Mirador Therapeutics.

In addition to magnesium stearate, safer alternatives to talc include calcium stearate and colloidal silicon dioxide, Pfeiffer said. “They’re cheap and readily available.”

Food labels don’t list talc, so we don’t know how widely it’s used

It’s easy for consumers to see which drugs still contain talc because the ingredient is listed on the label — but it’s not easy to know which foods contain talc, Tidmarsh said.

Currently, the FDA considers talc to be “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) for use in food, which means manufacturers aren’t required to notify the FDA when they add it to food.

In March, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. directed the FDA to take steps to eliminate the GRAS loophole that allows the use of food ingredients based on food companies’ own assurances that the ingredients are safe, with no safety assessment by the FDA.

When Makary asked what types of U.S. foods commonly contain talc, the panelists were initially quiet. Tidmarsh then responded by noting that, according to the Codex Alimentarius, a food index co-published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (U.N.) and the World Health Organization (WHO), there are “literally hundreds” of foods to which talc could be added.

The U.N. and WHO document states that talc can be added to food as an anticaking agent, glazing agent and thickener. “This includes cheese — sometimes the powder coating on cheese is talc.” Tidmarsh said.

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