The Curly Girl Method – what’s the science? episode 170

Perry Romanowski (0:00)

Hi, I'm Perry, and you're listening to The Beauty Brains.

Hello and welcome to The Beauty Brains, a show where real scientists answer your beauty questions and give you an insider's look at the beauty product industry. This is episode 170 I'm your host, Perry Romanowski, and with me today is Valerie George. Hello, Valerie.

Valerie George (0:29)

Hey, everyone. Hi, Perry.

Perry Romanowski (0:31)

On today's episode, we're going to be answering your beauty questions about shampoo and what it does to hair color, whether collagen works in skincare products, and whether The Curly Girl Method of treating hair is the way to go. Plus, we're going to cover a couple of hot topics in the cosmetic industry. But before we get into that, let's say hello to our fellow co-hosts.

How's it going, Valerie?

Valerie George (0:56)

Things are going good. I'm in California. It's very cold here, not traveling for a while. Good to be back in the lab with all of my teammates.

Perry Romanowski (1:07)

Excellent. You know, I just got done with my list of goals for 2019 I'm always pleased by that, but I think I have too many.

Valerie George (1:15)

There's never too many. Everyone has the opportunity to keep aspiring and accomplish things. So I disagree with that.

Perry Romanowski (1:22)

Well, I have 139

Valerie George (1:25)

Well, that's, you know, if you want to look at it, that's like 1.8 per day that you have to complete. I don't think that's bad.

Perry Romanowski (1:33)

Yeah, you know what? When you put it that way, that does sound good. I thought maybe I should pare it down, but now with your encouragement, I'm not going to.

Valerie George (1:40)

Yeah, don't hold me to the math, but it's, you know, just think of it as one a day and you can take one day off a week. I think that'll be enough for you to do.

Perry Romanowski (1:50)

Excellent point. You know, one of my goals was to record at least 50 episodes of the show.

Valerie George (1:56)

I think we can do it. The fans have spoken and they're glad we're back.

Perry Romanowski (2:00)

They are. And speaking of back, why don't we get into some beauty science news?

So the first story I want to talk about, we'll just talk about it shortly, because it's a little bit complicated, but did you see the story a few weeks ago from Reuters about Johnson & Johnson and the notion that they found asbestos in some of their telk?

Valerie George (2:28)

I did. And Johnson & Johnson has been in the news for quite some time with their telk and does it cause cancer? They've lost court cases, one court case cases. And I think when you say it's a little complicated, we all know that's an understatement. This is a really complicated case.

Perry Romanowski (2:47)

Yeah, and I don't know, in reading up on this, I read through that whole Reuters article, which is quite long and quite detailed, and it had a lot of history and stuff, and it referred back to things from the 1970s and things.

And the thing about it is they say all these things, and they seem to be trying to say that baby powder causes cancer and J&J knows it. And I just can't help but remember that it doesn't. There is no evidence that baby powder causes cancer. And as much information as the Reuters article had, they never got away from that. They kept implying that there was some safety concern that consumers should have here, but there's just no evidence that there is safety concerns.

Valerie George (3:41)

Well, I think there's two separate things going on. So firstly, there's this allegation that Johnson & Johnson's baby powder as a product, which mostly contains talc, has caused cancer in individuals. And that's where Johnson & Johnson has had success and been found liable for damages in the various courts of law in different states.

The second issue that was brought up in the Reuters article is that Johnson & Johnson knew some of their batches of talc had asbestos in them and didn't disclose that, or I don't know if they did or did not do anything about it, but that's a separate issue. And I don't think that you can say, well, the talc had asbestos in it, talc causes cancer. I don't think you can say that.

Perry Romanowski (4:26)

Right, and that seems to be what the Reuters article was trying to do.

And I can't really speak to that about Johnson & Johnson's practices, both in the 1950s, the 60s, the 70s, and today. I know people who are working at J&J and they don't want to produce products that are causing cancer. So, I could see that at least the scientists there that I know anyway wouldn't be doing this. So, I don't really know where they...