Quantitative Analysis of Trace Level Asbestos in Pharmaceutical Talc by Powder X-Ray Diffraction

As a traditional Chinese medicine and excipient, talc is widely used in medical and pharmaceutical fields. It may be contaminated with asbestos (including tremolite and chrysotile). Asbestos is known to be a carcinogen and it can cause lung cancer. Therefore, it is important to determine the concentration of asbestos in talc. This paper reports the use of powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) technology to establish a trace level concentration detection of asbestos in traditional medicinal talc at 0.3 to 0.8%. The results show that the method is reliable, sensitive and suitable for its intended use of detecting trace levels of asbestos in the talc. Among the fifty-four talc samples, nine of them were found to contain asbestos and were disqualified. The passing rate of the test is 83.3%, which means it is necessary to establish an effective method to determine trace level asbestos in talc.