Thousands of Black women claim hair relaxers gave them cancer
Sheila Bush poses for a picture in her living room holding a photo of herself during her cancer treatment in St. Louis, Missouri. Bush filed a lawsuit against cosmetic companies after a study showed an association between hair relaxers and uterine cancer risk. REUTERS/Lawrence BryantBy MIKE SPECTOR, RICHA NAIDU and KRISTINA COOKE
Filed Nov. 4, 2023, 10 a.m. GMT
Sheila Bush, a cosmetologist, was lounging in the recliner at her St. Louis-area home last winter when an advertisement from a law firm flashed up on her television screen, urging viewers to call a toll-free number if they or a loved one had used hair relaxers and been diagnosed with uterine cancer.
After seeing the ad three times, Bush, who said she had used hair relaxers every six weeks for most of her life and was diagnosed with uterine cancer about a decade ago, decided to pick up the phone.
The ads Bush saw, on television as well as on her social media feeds, were part of a nationwide effort by law firms to sign up Black women to file lawsuits alleging at least a dozen cosmetic companies, including L’Oreal and Revlon, sold hair relaxers containing chemicals that increased the risk of developing uterine cancer – and failed to warn customers.
The recruitment campaign launched in October last year, days after a U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) study found an association, though not a causal link, between frequent use of chemical hair relaxers and uterine cancer. Hair straighteners such as L’Oreal’s Dark & Lovely and Revlon’s Creme of Nature are marketed overwhelmingly to women of color, according to the lawsuits.
Some of the ads show Black women applying hair products before cutting to a summary of the NIH study’s findings.
L’Oreal and Revlon told Reuters their products are subject to rigorous safety reviews. The companies noted that the authors of the NIH study said they didn’t draw definitive conclusions about the cause of the women’s cancers and that more research is warranted.
Excerpts of television advertisements for hair relaxers from the 1970s through 2014, found via YouTube. The makers of these products are seeking to dismiss the lawsuits against them.
“We do not believe the science supports a link between chemical hair straighteners or relaxers and cancer,” Revlon said. L’Oreal added that it is committed to offering the best products “for all skin and hair types, all genders, all identities, all cultures, all ages” and that its hair relaxers have a “rich heritage and history” originating with Black inventors and entrepreneurs.
Namaste, which markets ORS Olive Oil relaxers, said all ingredients in its products are approved for cosmetic use by U.S. regulators. “We do not believe the plaintiffs have shown, or will be able to show, that the use of Namaste hair relaxer products caused the injuries that they allege in their complaints,” a lawyer for Namaste and its parent company, Dabur India, said in an email response to Reuters.
The other companies named in the litigation declined to comment or didn't respond to requests.
The success of the legal claims will hinge on demonstrating the products were harmful and that the companies knew, or should have known, of the danger and failed to warn customers. But the cases face hurdles: In addition to the potential limitations of the NIH study, plaintiffs are suing multiple companies, and if women lack receipts, they may struggle to provide evidence that they used specific products.
Ben Crump, who represented the family of George Floyd, the Black man murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, and another lawyer, Diandra “Fu” Debrosse Zimmerman, filed the first hair relaxer lawsuit on behalf of a Missouri woman, Jenny Mitchell, shortly after the NIH study was published.
Since then, more than 7,000 similar lawsuits have been filed by many plaintiffs’ lawyers. The cases have been consolidated in a Chicago federal court as part of a multidistrict litigation proceeding (MDL), a procedure designed to more efficiently manage lawsuits filed in multiple jurisdictions.
Even though the legal claims asserted in the lawsuits don’t allege racial discrimination, Crump says the cases should be viewed as “essentially civil rights issues.”
For Black women, “it’s projected on them that they have to live up to some kind of European standard of beauty,” Crump, who represents plaintiffs in high-profile racial discrimination cases and is a regular on cable news, said in an interview.
Bush, aged 69, told Reuters about being mocked by the white children in the schoolyard of her St. Louis school for her “cotton” hair, a common derogatory term used for Black hair texture. “You felt as though you didn’t belong, or weren’t as good as they were,” said Bush, who was born in 1954, the year a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision found racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
The vast majority of the plaintiffs are women of color, according to Jayne Conroy, a lawyer whose firm has filed at least 550 hair relaxer cases, adding that attorneys don’t have full demographic data on their clients.
Excerpt from a master complaint filed in the court proceedings consolidating the lawsuits. Plaintiffs’ lawyers have sought to frame the litigation as a civil-rights issue.
A master complaint filed in the court proceeding consolidating the lawsuits features many examples of advertisements that plaintiffs contend improperly took advantage of historical racial discrimination. One L’Oreal ad touted “how beautiful Black hair can be,” the complaint said.
The complaint seeks unspecified damages.
Framing the litigation as a civil rights issue could resonate with jurors beyond arguments over complex product liability claims, said Adam Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law who studies mass tort litigation.
The cases come at a time when Black people are increasingly embracing natural hairstyles. At least 23 states have passed legislation aimed at protecting people from hair discrimination in the workplace and public schools. The U.S. House of Representatives passed similar legislation last year that stalled in the Senate.
Women are taking cosmetic companies to court, alleging hair relaxers increased the risk of uterine cancer. The companies deny the claims and are seeking to have the cases dismissed.
Twice as likely to develop cancer
Uterine cancer is the most common form of female reproductive system cancer and rising in the U.S., especially among Black women, according to the NIH.
The American Cancer Society estimates there will be about 66,000 new cases of uterine cancer diagnosed this year in the United States, less than a quarter of the number of 297,790 new cases of invasive breast cancer, and more than three times the 19,710 cases of ovarian cancer.
The NIH study of more than 33,000 women found that those who reported using hair straightening products more than four times in the previous year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer as those who did not. A total of 378 women in the study developed uterine cancer. Black women used the products more frequently than others, the study found.
The researchers did not collect information on the ingredients of specific products the women used, the NIH said. But Dr. Alexandra White, the lead author, told Reuters in response to written questions that hair straighteners have been found to include phthalates, parabens, cyclosiloxanes and metals, and may release formaldehyde when heated. She declined interview requests through a spokesperson.
4.05%
The percentage of women who frequently used hair straighteners and were predicted to develop uterine cancer by age 70, compared to 1.64% of women who never used hair straighteners, according to an October 2022 study by the National Institutes of Health. Defendants have pointed to what they say are flaws in the study.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration plans to propose next April a rule that would ban formaldehyde and formaldehyde-releasing chemicals from hair-straightening products. An agency spokesperson provided no further details on timing.
Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen and has been linked to nasopharyngeal cancer and leukemia, according to the World Health Organization. The NIH study said phthalates and the other chemicals are suspected endocrine disruptors, which can interfere with the body’s hormones and are suspected of contributing to cancer risk.
“Formaldehyde is not an ingredient in Namaste’s hair relaxer products,” the company’s lawyer said. The other companies declined to comment or did not respond to a Reuters query on whether their products contain or release formaldehyde.
Companies and defense lawyers have pointed to what they say are flaws in the NIH study. The companies named in the litigation asked the presiding judge in July to dismiss the lawsuits, noting that the study was the first to raise a possible association between hair straightening products and uterine cancer, undermining plaintiffs’ argument that the companies knew or should have known of any risks related to the products.
