October has been quite a month for the relaxer business. First, many of the model girlies who graced the boxes of our childhood relaxers reveal that they were sporting natural hair. Then, the National Institutes of Health released a study about the the product’s health risks: women who frequently used relaxers (i.e.more than four times a year) were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer as women who didn’t. Just days after that study came out, a woman filed a lawsuit claiming that relaxers from five companies led to her uterine cancer, The Washington Post reports.
Jenny Mitchell was 28-years-old when she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She only found out after visiting a fertility clinic. After her diagnosis, Mitchell says she had to get a hysterectomy, ending her plans to become a mom.
Mitchell has now sued L’Oreal, SoftSheen Carson, Strength of Nature, Dabur, and Namaste Laboratories, alleging that the companies knew or should have known about their health risks while they kept the products on the market.
L’Oreal, which owns SoftSheen Carson, told the Washington Post that they are “confident in the safety of our products and believe the recent lawsuits filed against us have no legal merit.” They added, “Our products are subject to a rigorous scientific evaluation of their safety by experts who also ensure that we follow strictly all regulations in every market in which we operate.”
Because Black women use relaxers more often, the NIH study found that they be more affected by its risks: about 60% of the women in the study who reported using straighteners identified as Black.
Che-Jung Chang, Ph.D, one of the study author’s studies points out: “Because Black women use hair straightening or relaxer products more frequently and tend to initiate use at earlier ages than other races and ethnicities, these findings may be even more relevant for them.”
Over 33,000 women participated in the research over an 11-year period. According to an NIH news release:
We estimated that 1.64% of women who never used hair straighteners would go on to develop uterine cancer by the age of 70; but for frequent users, that risk goes up to 4.05%,” said Alexandra White, Ph.D., head of the NIEHS Environment and Cancer Epidemiology group and lead author on the new study.
White also noted that uterine cancer is “relatively rare,” accounting for about 3% of all new cancer cases.
After hearing about the new study, Mitchell said she felt “deceived,” and “hurt.” As she told the Post, “I’ve been lied to my whole life…In some sense, you had to conform to look a certain way for societal norms.”
