Green Party MP Sue Kedgley has called on Health Minister David Cunliffe to seek an urgent assessment of the risks of using talcum powder in the female genital area, including for female babies.
But a spokesman for the regulatory agency which would be responsible for such a risk assessment has suggested the response will depend on what European regulators do rather than local concerns.
Ms Kedgley, chairwoman of the health select committee in the last Parliament, asked for New Zealanders to be alerted to advice from Harvard Medical School researchers who said women should stop using talcum powder around their genital area, because it could greatly increase their risk of ovarian cancer.
Ms Kedgley also asked for New Zealand hospitals, medical practitioners, and midwives to be advised talc should not be used in the genital areas of babies until further research has been done.
Safer alternatives such as corn starch should be used instead of talc.
A spokeswoman for Associate Health Minister Steve Chadwick said yesterday she had not yet been briefed by Ministry of Health officials.
Today, the national clinical director of the ministry cancer programme, John Childs, told the ministry had only become aware of the Harvard Medical School research through news reports.
Asked what the ministry was doing to warn women, Dr Childs said: "The findings of this study and the implications will have to be carefully reviewed before further comment can be made."
He said the implications for New Zealand of new research findings were "being constantly reviewed".
"When there is an appropriate level of evidence, advice can be provided to inform development of new information to the public," he said.
But a spokesman for the Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma), Mark Walles, was more blunt, saying that New Zealand relied heavily on European regulatory authorities for guidance on regulation of non-medical cosmetics, and is unlikely to seek label warnings on talcum powder unless it was first required in Europe.
"We run in parallel, basically, with the European Union, so we upgrade ourselves to their level," Mr Walles said.
The EU had significant research capability, and NZ's standards were closely aligned to those of the EU.
"If there is a threat to public safety from talcum powder, Erma will publicly notify an assessment," he said.
The new scientific work, published this year, shows particles of talc applied to women's genitals may travel to the ovaries and cause inflammation that allows cancer cells to flourish.
Researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston said using talc only once a week raised the risk of cancer by 36 percent, rising to 41 percent for those applying powder every day.
And women carrying a gene called glutathione S-transferase M1, or GSTM1, but lacking a gene called glutathione S-transferase T1 (GSTT1) -- about one-in-10 Caucasian women -- are nearly three times as likely to develop tumours.
A spokesman for a major manufacturer, Johnson and Johnson Pacific said today its own scientists "are confident of the safety of talc".
Nine studies reviewed in 1994 at a big international workshop on health perspectives of talc led experts to say epidemiology studies did not show an association between talc and ovarian cancer.
Another evaluation published in 2007 showed no association between talc in the genital area and ovarian cancer.
But Ms Kedgley said the latest US research had shown not only that inert particles can travel through fallopian tubes to the ovaries but that some genetic groupings of women had a particularly high risk of ovarian cancer after using talc.