How Worried Should We Be About Hair Relaxers and Uterine Cancer Risk?

Table Of Content

• People who use hair straightening chemicals have an increased risk of cancer
• What Black Women Need to Know About Breast Cancer
• What can I do if I suspect my health has been put at risk by using chemical hair straighteners?
• FDA May Ban Hair Straighteners With Formaldehyde Over Cancer Concerns
• Chemical Relaxers and Hair-Straightening Products: Potential Targets for Hormone-Related Cancer Prevention and Control
• Uterine Cancer and its Impact on Black Women

When they are applied to the hair, we believe they may be absorbed right through the scalp and then enter the body. Through entering the body, they can then alter estrogen-dependent pathways — processes that determine and regulate the amount of estrogen in the body — which can lead to endometrial tumors. For a long time, straight hair has been held up as the standard, especially in the workplace, and historically, many Black women conformed to this standard by chemically straightening or relaxing their hair. Many get their hair relaxed for the first time as young children; it’s almost like a rite of passage. The other types of hair dyes, known as semi-permanent and temporary hair dyes, do not involve such chemical reactions. Many Black women have consulted with attorneys to sue Revlon, Just for Me and other cosmetics companies, alleging their hair straighteners cause cancer, fibroids and other health problems.

People who use hair straightening chemicals have an increased risk of cancer

Hair Relaxers Could Be Banned as Part of FDA Crackdown - Newsweek

Hair Relaxers Could Be Banned as Part of FDA Crackdown.

Posted: Thu, 12 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Those with family histories of uterine cancer can also speak to their doctors about genetic testing to identify potential higher risks for certain cancers. U.S. law does not require the Food and Drug Administration to approve cosmetic products and ingredients, other than color additives, before they go on the market, according to the FDA website. However, the FDA announced last week that it would propose a ban on hair-straightening and hair-smoothing products containing formaldehyde. But if you constantly find short hairs lying around right after styling, there's a good chance it's just breakage. Shorter also stresses that there are many potential causes of breakage, that may not be directly related to your relaxer.

What Black Women Need to Know About Breast Cancer

If your hair is already on the thinner side, it's important that you speak to a licensed, experienced stylist who can help provide the best treatment for your strands. But Black women will continue to wrestle with the pressure to use relaxers to feel socially accepted, according to Alice Gresham, a Philadelphia-based clinical director for outpatient mental health. The Hair Tales makes “it clear the kind of trauma that we’ve been experiencing around a physical attribute secondary to our skin, which of course is still trauma, and it’s double trauma or complicated trauma,” Gresham tells TikTok viewers in a video responding to the Hulu series. As the modern natural hair movement took off, however, Rooks began noticing Black women talking about undergoing “the big chop” to get rid of relaxed hair and make room for new, naturally curly hair to take its place, using words like “self-care” and moving towards self-acceptance.

What can I do if I suspect my health has been put at risk by using chemical hair straighteners?

There are many potential causes of thinning hair that may not be related to your relaxer, Alexander explains. Still, relaxer damage and over-processing can contribute to hair thinning over time if maintained incorrectly. Shorter says that stylists should focus on lightly loosening the curl, versus making the hair stick straight to avoid over-processing and thinning out hair over time. The agency has warned consumers since 2010 about the potential health risks of formaldehyde exposure, especially in poorly ventilated salons where the gas can build up in the air.

FDA May Ban Hair Straighteners With Formaldehyde Over Cancer Concerns

Three years ago, Rhonda Terrell was diagnosed with an aggressive form of uterine cancer that has since spread to her abdomen and liver. She underwent a radical hysterectomy — the removal of the uterus, cervix, ovaries and fallopian tubes — and tried to come to terms with the way the disease had altered her life. You can also ask your salon professional if the products they use contain formaldehyde or if there’s an ingredient list you can look at. In the short-term, formaldehyde exposure can lead to irritation of skin and airway membranes, which can trigger asthmatic reactions and other breathing problems, said Kleinman. “The heat releases formaldehyde as a gas,” explained Michael T. Kleinman, a professor of environmental toxicology at the University of California, Irvine. The study findings were published on October 17, 2022, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

What are the health risks of formaldehyde hair straightening products?

Our team is made up of doctors and oncology certified nurses with deep knowledge of cancer care as well as journalists, editors, and translators with extensive experience in medical writing.

They were diagnosed with uterine cancer and tumors. Now they're suing the makers of chemical hair straighteners.

“There is evidence that products containing these chemicals are disproportionately found in hair care products marketed to Black women, which wrongly reinforces healthcare disparities,” Bunick said. I’m glad that more recently we’ve seen a movement toward natural hair and embracing our natural textures. I don’t think many people understand the potential harms from chemical straighteners. African American women who used hair dye every 6-8 weeks were 60% more likely to develop breast cancer. If you really want to reduce your risk of uterine cancer, there are other factors that have a much greater impact on uterine cancer than relaxers. The type of uterine cancer that commonly arose in the study supports the theory that hormonal disruption is behind the increased risk.

Chemical Relaxers and Hair-Straightening Products: Potential Targets for Hormone-Related Cancer Prevention and Control

“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,” Dr Che-Jung Chang, a co-author of the study, said in a statement. Bernadette Gordon, who used chemical relaxers from around 1983 to 2015, believes they caused her to develop breast and uterine cancer. According to her lawsuit, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017 at age 44, underwent six months of aggressive chemotherapy and had a double mastectomy in March 2018. In 2021, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer and underwent a hysterectomy, followed by six months of chemotherapy and radiation.

Just days after the study was released, a 32-year-old Black woman from Missouri, Jenny Mitchell, filed a lawsuit against L’Oréal, Strength of Nature, SoftSheen Carson, Dabur International, and Namaste Laboratories – all makers of chemical straighteners and hair relaxers. She got her first relaxer around age eight, amid social norms about having “sleek, nice, laid hair”, Mitchell said. Now, as a uterine cancer survivor who has undergone a hysterectomy and premature menopause, Mitchell cites relaxers as the reason she will never be able to bear children. This risk was also independently identified in a 2022 analysis of more than 10 years of data collected in the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ Sister Study, a long-term study of nearly 34,000 women whose sisters have had breast cancer. Both the Black Women’s Health Study and the Sister Study have also found connections between women who used hair relaxers and an increased risk of breast cancer. Such racist standards, which in essence required many Black people to straighten their hair, are why relaxers and chemical hair straighteners exist at all, says Jasmine McDonald, a Columbia University epidemiologist who has studied the heath impacts of hair products.

“Cosmetic products and ingredients, other than color additives, do not need FDA approval before they go on the market,” according to an agency spokesperson. If a product has been adulterated or misbranded, consumers can report it to the FDA. So Baum and his wife got to work developing a way to straighten hair without the adverse effects of the lye, no-lye, thioglycolate and formaldehyde-derived straightening products. He spent months testing out different chemical mixtures and applying them to hair swatches. Baum focused his attention on compounds that work at vinegarlike levels of acidity, as opposed to many existing methods that operate on the alkaline end of the pH spectrum. Human cells and other biological molecules can handle some acidity, he says, but they have greater difficulty surviving alkaline environments.

The lawsuits allege the companies knew their products contained dangerous chemicals but marketed and sold them anyway. You don’t necessarily have to have hair that is speaking to Black pride as much as an aesthetic of an afro, but that’s looser and wavy,’” Rooks says. The 2000s ushered in a generational change as young people prioritized versatility, she says, so if they wanted to wear straight hair one day and a pink wig or locs the next, everything was fair game.