The U.S. Still Imports Talc. In 2025, Those Imports Grew.

Mesothelioma is a rare, aggressive cancer of the lining around the lungs or abdomen, and almost every case traces back to asbestos. That link is why the story of one white mineral, talc, matters to families it never seems to touch directly. Talc and asbestos are cousins in the ground: they form in the same kinds of rock, so talc pulled from a poorly chosen deposit can carry asbestos fibers unless the ore is selected and tested with care.

When Johnson & Johnson pulled its talc baby powder from shelves, first in North America in 2020 and then worldwide in 2023, it was easy to read that as the end of the talc question. It was not. The powder left the store, but talc the raw material stayed in the economy, and the trade data shows the country buying more of it, not less.

The Numbers So Far

The headline figure is the import total. In its Mineral Commodity Summaries for 2026, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the United States imported roughly 260,000 metric tons of talc in 2025, about 12% more than the 232,000 tons it brought in during 2024. Over the same period, the country’s reliance on imports climbed: imports covered an estimated 23% of U.S. talc supply in 2025, up from 10% a year earlier.

Talc is not a niche material. The Geological Survey put total U.S. talc consumption at about 600,000 metric tons in 2025, drawn from a mix of domestic mines and foreign suppliers. Three companies still mine talc from five sites in Montana, Texas, and Vermont, and they produced an estimated 490,000 tons of crude talc in 2025. The rest arrived by ship.

Where the Talc Comes From

The Geological Survey names Pakistan, Canada, and China as the principal sources of U.S. talc imports in recent years. Averaged across 2021 through 2024, Pakistan supplied 52% of imports, Canada 24%, and China 12%, with the remainder split among smaller suppliers.

One detail in that Pakistani share is worth pausing on. The Geological Survey reports that large quantities of the crude talc counted as Pakistani imports were actually mined in Afghanistan, then milled and exported through Pakistan. So the origin on the customs form and the origin in the ground are not always the same place.

The mix also shifted in 2025. Imports from China rose sharply, an estimated 125%, lifting China to about 27% of the total, while Pakistan slipped to roughly 49% and Canada to 20%. The suppliers move year to year, but the direction of the overall number held: the United States pulled in more talc, not less.

Why a Mesothelioma Site Tracks a Mineral

The reason a mesothelioma publication follows talc tonnage is the geology, not the powder aisle. Because talc and asbestos can occur together in the same ore body, the safeguard has always been sourcing and testing rather than the mineral’s name. When that safeguard fails, asbestos can end up in a finished talc product.

That is not hypothetical. The Food and Drug Administration reported that in 2019 it confirmed the presence of asbestos in nine talc-containing cosmetic products, findings the agency has cited in its own rulemaking on the issue. The FDA’s more recent annual surveys, in 2021, 2022, and 2023, did not detect asbestos in the specific products tested, a reminder that results depend on which samples get pulled and how they are analyzed.

Most talc never reaches a cosmetics counter. Of the talc that U.S. producers sold in 2025, the Geological Survey reports that plastics took 36%, paint 19%, ceramics 17%, paper 12%, and roofing 8%, with cosmetics folded into a small remainder. The exposure questions concentrate where talc is mined, milled, and handled in bulk, and among the workers closest to it, well before any consumer product exists.

The Safeguard That Just Got Weaker

The testing question is not settled, and it moved again in late 2025. Congress had directed the FDA, through the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022, to set standardized methods for detecting asbestos in talc cosmetics. The agency published a proposed rule on December 27, 2024, that would have required manufacturers to test talc or their finished products for asbestos and treated any detectable asbestos as adulteration.

On November 28, 2025, the FDA withdrew that proposal. In the Federal Register notice, the agency said the 49 comments it received raised technical and legal questions that needed further work, from how to define asbestos consistently across agencies to the science of the testing methods themselves. The FDA also said it still intends to meet its statutory obligation and will issue a new proposed rule. For now, the standardized federal testing requirement that the 2022 law envisioned is not in place.

What It Means for Families

For families touched by mesothelioma, the takeaway is not alarm, it is a clearer map of where the risk actually sits. The powder that drew years of headlines is off the shelf, but talc as an industrial raw material moves through the country in larger volumes than before, and the federal rule meant to standardize its asbestos testing is, for the moment, on hold.

That combination is worth watching rather than fearing. The import figures, the FDA’s testing data, and the agency’s rulemaking are all public, which means the supply chain that outlasted the product can be tracked openly, year by year, as the numbers and the rules change.