Instead, she referred the Herald to a generic statement – which derides the Reuters report – provided by its parent company and referred questions to its US head office.

Theodora Ahilas, the national head of Maurice Blackburn’s asbestos practice, said the development opened the door for the firm to further investigate the possible source of asbestos exposure in Australia.

“These reports regarding asbestos in baby powder are deeply concerning,” Ms Ahilas said.

“There is no safe amount of exposure to asbestos, and when we’re talking about a product that’s used on babies, we need to be extra vigilant.”

Some other Australia law firms are also considering whether to pursue the matter.

More than 11,000 plaintiffs have been identified by US lawyers to be potentially impacted by the presence of asbestos in their baby powder – including thousands of women with ovarian cancer.

Documents that surfaced during the lawsuit also said the company had commissioned and paid for studies of its baby powder productsand hired a ghostwriter to redraft the article that presented the findings in a journal.

News of the cover-up slammed US shares of Johnson & Johnson, causing a fall of 10 per cent on Friday, putting it on track to post their biggest percentage drop in more than 16 years.

The decline in shares erased about $55.7 billion ($US40 billion) from the company's market capitalisation, with investors worrying about the impact of the report as it faces thousands of talc-related lawsuits.

In response to the report, the company said "any suggestion that Johnson & Johnson knew or hid information about the safety of talc is false".

"This is all a calculated attempt to distract from the fact that thousands of independent tests prove our talc does not contain asbestos or cause cancer," Ernie Knewitz, Johnson & Johnson's vice president of global media relations, wrote in an emailed response.

"The Reuters article is one-sided, false and inflammatory. Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder is safe and asbestos-free."