Black women say hair relaxers gave them cancer: Report

New York, United States

Sheila Bush was lounging in the recliner at her St. Louis-area home last winter when an ad from a law firm flashed up on her television screen, urging viewers to call a toll-free number if they or anyone they knew had used hair relaxers and been diagnosed with uterine cancer.

The fourth time she saw the ad, Bush picked up the phone, she said.

The television advertisements Bush viewed were part of a nationwide effort by plaintiffs’ 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 last October, days after a US National Institutes of Health (NIH) study found an association, though not a causal link, between frequent use of chemical hair relaxers and uterine cancer.

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 and that they do not believe current science supports the allegations in the lawsuits. The other companies declined to comment or didn't respond to requests. L’Oreal and Revlon declined Reuters’ requests to interview their lawyers.

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So far, about 6,000 cases have been filed– more than 5,700 of them since mid-August, according to the US Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. But the cases face hurdles: The NIH study showed only correlation, not causation. Plaintiffs are suing multiple companies, but many women lack receipts and may struggle to provide evidence that they used specific products.

The success of the legal claims will hinge on demonstrating the companies were negligent and failed to warn customers about allegedly toxic products. Marketing hair relaxers to Black women isn’t in and of itself illegal.

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, in October last year. Crump has sought to cast the cases as “essentially civil rights issues.”

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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.

A master complaint filed in a proceeding consolidating the lawsuits alleges the companies took advantage of “centuries of racial discrimination and cultural coercion which emphasized—both socially and professionally—the necessity of maintaining straight hair.”

A cosmetologist who worked in salons frequented by white customers, Bush, 69, said she had used hair relaxers every six weeks for most of her life. She was diagnosed with uterine cancer when she was in her late 50s.

In August, she joined the litigation, 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.

She hopes her lawsuit can help establish whether hair relaxers cause cancer. “I want to know for sure,” she said.

Uterine cancer is the most common form of reproductive system cancer and rising in the US, especially among Black women, according to the NIH.

The NIH study of 34,000 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. Black women have used the products more frequently than others, the study found.

Hair relaxers have been found to include phthalates, parabens, cyclosiloxanes and metals, and may release formaldehyde when heated, Alexandra White, head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ Environment and Cancer Epidemiology group and lead author of the October study, said in a statement. She declined multiple interview requests through a spokesperson.

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.

L’Oreal and Revlon noted that the NIH study did not draw definitive conclusions about a causal link between hair relaxers and uterine cancer and that its authors said more research is warranted. “We do not believe the science supports a link between chemical hair straighteners or relaxers and cancer,” Revlon said.

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.

The companies also noted that the NIH study consisted of sisters of women previously diagnosed with breast cancer “who therefore may have a genetic predisposition.” Lead author White said in a statement that there is currently no strong evidence linking family history of breast cancer to increased risk of uterine cancer.

The plaintiffs “rely entirely on vague allegations that the products, generally, contain ‘toxic chemicals,’” the companies’ defense lawyers at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind & Garrison, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer and other firms said in a court filing.

The brands named in the lawsuit are intended for use at home and include L’Oreal’s SoftSheen Carson’s Dark & Lovely, Revlon, Dabur’s Namaste ORS Olive Oil, Godrej’s Strength of Nature’s Just for Me, and Sally Beauty Holdings’ Silk Elements.

In an August court filing, all the companies said that plaintiffs in many instances failed to identify specific products they used or how individual products harmed them.

Should plaintiffs survive the companies’ request to dismiss the cases, they will still likely face a request from defendants for the judge to grant them summary judgment, or a ruling in their favor without the cases going to trial.

And if the cases do go forward, the companies’ lawyers could attempt to exclude experts or evidence plaintiffs’ lawyers intend to introduce at trial.

Future trials testing both sides’ cases would determine whether the companies face any liability and how much they must pay in a settlement, should one occur.

“These cases are no guarantee of success,” said Rene Rocha, a Morgan & Morgan lawyer representing hair relaxer plaintiffs, adding he believes the cases will survive the companies’ initial legal challenges “because the science is clear.”

At this stage, plaintiffs can advance their case without proving the products caused cancer, said Jennifer Hoekstra, a lawyer representing Bush. The study from a reputable government institution such as the NIH is likely enough to get cases before a jury, she said.

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.

“Mass torts don’t happen in a vacuum,” Zimmerman said.

L’Oreal said 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.

Since November last year, plaintiffs’ lawyers have spent about $8 million airing more than 40,000 television ads across the US, with much of it concentrated in Baltimore, Houston and Washington DC, according to an analysis of marketing data compiled for Reuters by X Ante, a firm that tracks mass tort advertising for large companies, law firms and investment analysts.

Reuters spoke with six legal experts uninvolved in the litigation who expect the number of hair relaxer lawsuits to grow. The judge overseeing the litigation over the summer approved a so-called short-form complaint that makes it relatively easy for plaintiffs to file lawsuits.

Lawyers seeking hair relaxer plaintiffs have posted on social-media platforms and attended community events. In June, Tiseme Zegeye, a partner at Lieff Cabraser, a large plaintiffs’ law firm, visited a Southern California health expo where she stood at a booth with a sign reading, “Black Health is a Human Right,” according to the firm’s website.

In 2019, law firms seeking to sue manufacturer 3M over allegedly defective military earplugs spent $18 million on television advertising, according to X Ante. 3M, which denied the allegations, faced more than 250,000 legal actions before reaching a settlement.

When Ariana Hester, an event manager in San Diego, decided to stop using hair relaxers in her 20s, her mother Patrice warned that wearing natural hair would attract unwanted attention.

“She never wanted us to do anything to make us stand out or be a target,” said Ariana, now 35.

Photos show Patrice wore a pageboy cut when she worked as a journalist in Baltimore in the 1970s, and a shoulder-length bob in the early 2000s when she embarked on a career as a realtor in San Diego. She continued to straighten her hair after she was diagnosed with uterine cancer in late 2021, although her three daughters begged her to stop applying the chemicals while she was fighting cancer, they said.

When Patrice died last November, her hair was freshly relaxed, Ariana said. She was 68 years old.

The Hester sisters have spoken to a law firm and said they intend to join the litigation against the companies that made the hair relaxers their mother applied including Godrej’s African Pride and Dabur International’s ORS, boxes of which still sit in the bathroom of the home she shared with Ariana and another daughter, Nakisha.