Damage Control: Thousands of women sue, call for transparency after hair relaxers linked to cancer (2025)

INDIANAPOLIS — Permanent chemical hair relaxers remain popular, despite studies linking usage with uterine and other cancers. Two studies supported by the National Institutes of Health show a higher risk of developing uterine cancer among Black women and post-menopausal Black women who used the products extensively.

More than 9,800 people are suing beauty companies, as part of a federal class action lawsuit. Women have also taken legal action at the local level in California, Illinois, Georgia and other states. In court filings a number of manufacturers issued a joint statement which said in part, “Defendants deny that their hair relaxer products are toxic and/or defective in any manner. Defendants further deny that they engaged in wrongful practices and/or misconduct of any kind."

The women's story

One of those women suing the cosmetic companies is retired stylist Irene Sanderson.

A love of hair resulted in her working as a kitchen beautician before becoming a licensed stylist.

"I was the queen,” she said with pride.

Queen of her beauty school’s class of 1976.

"I was in the business of helping people look good, and I loved it,” said Sanderson.

In 2021, Irene learned she had uterine cancer.

"It was devastating."

She needed radiation treatment. Daughter Stephanie Thomas watched as cancer stripped her mother of health, mobility and her passion for hair.

The family did not associate her cancer with the relaxers until they started seeing advertisements by law firms explaining the possible connection. The family completed a quiz and then connected with law firms that helped Sanderson file a federal lawsuit in Indiana.

“I had to do it for my mother because I saw her suffer from hormonal issues for years,” Thomas said. “I thought that having the fibroids and, you know, the heavy bleeding, I thought that that was just normal. I had no idea that this was something that she was inflicting upon herself, not knowing that this was, you know, possibly caused by the permanent relaxers.”

In Indianapolis, Marilyn Yarbro also saw an ad about the lawsuits.

“It's like a light bulb that came on,” Yarbro said. “You think back over your life, and you think about the times when you would just go and get these products and use them … If I had known that, I wouldn't have gone there. I wouldn't have put my life at risk to do this thing. It wasn't worth it.”

Yarbro now also believes decades of permanent relaxer use is why she was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. Doctors told her she needed a full hysterectomy.

She’s glad she made the decision to undergo surgery.

“That was really a weight lifted off me,” she said.

Yarbro also mourns the loss of a potential future.

“I still was at that age, I could still have a child if I wanted to,” she said. “… But I was glad to have my life saved.”

Yarbro and Sanderson no longer use relaxers. They hope their stories and scientific research encourage others to follow their example.

Studies raise alarms over hair relaxers

In October 2022, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) publishedthe Sister Study, which tracked nearly 34,000 women of different races for almost 11 years. Researchers collected information for participants’ usage of a number of hair products like bleaches, hair dyes, perms and chemical straighteners.

While the data showed no significant links between most of the products and cancer, researchers reported that women who used chemical hair straighteners or relaxers more than four times a year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer as those who never used the products.

Critics of the Sister Study argued that the researchers did not study the women for a long enough period and that they weren’t specific about the products in question -- lumping different types of products into one group.

But nearly a year later, another study came out with similar results.

“When we saw that they were seeing a positive association, we were very concerned that that’s just one study,” Dr. Kimberly Bertrand, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, said of the Sister Study. “Is that still true in another study? That’s what we call replications in this field. Seeing that paper and their results did really spark us to look at this more closely in our population.”

Dr. Bertrand is a co-researcher for the Black Women’s Health Study. The project, like the Sister Study, was searching for a connection between different exposures women face and adverse health outcomes. Bertrand’s study followed nearly 45,000 women -- who were all Black -- for more than 20 years.

“We wanted to understand whether women who had a history of using chemical hair relaxers had a higher risk of developing uterine cancer compared to women who didn’t or only occasionally used chemical hair relaxers,” Bertrand said. “Our results from the Black Women’s Health Study and the Sister Study were relatively consistent.”

The Black Women’s Health Study, published in October 2023, found post-menopausal women who used chemical hair relaxers for more than 15 years, or many times per year, had about a 60 percent increased risk of developing uterine cancer compared to women in the same age group who never used them or who only used them occasionally.

Targeted marketing and mystery ingredients

One of the main takeaways from both studies is the specific impact on Black women whose natural curls, kinks and coils make them the target consumer for a product that functions as a straightening agent.

The National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute have published findings that indicate that Black women are also disproportionately impacted by uterine cancer and other adverse reproductive health conditions.

“Thinking about what are the unique experiences and exposures that Black women face in this country, one of the exposures potentially is chemical hair relaxers because these are products that are heavily marketed to Black women,” Bertrand said.

Critics also point out that the studies don’t specifically identify a certain brand, product or ingredient that could be harmful to women.

Bertrand, however, said there is a reason for that.

“Not only are these products heavily marketed to Black women, they also have proprietary formulations, and women don’t always know what’s in these products,” Bertrand said. “They’re minimally regulated by the FDA. One of the chemical classes we’re concerned about in these products is endocrine disruptors. These include parabens and phthalates, but you may not know that the product you’re using contains these chemicals because they’re not required to be listed on the label.”

While different relaxers have different ingredients, nearly all list “fragrance” or “parfum” as an ingredient. The FDA does not require manufacturers to delineate the specific chemicals in those ingredients. There have also been a number of studies that have already determined “fragrance” to be an endocrine disruptor -- meaning it can disrupt hormones and potentially cause health complications.

“I think women have a right to know what they’re exposed to and whether there’s potential toxicity to the chemicals they’re exposed to,” Bertrand said.

Growing legal battle

As awareness of these findings spread, lawsuits against hair relaxer companies began to mount. Attorney Brooke Cohen, a partner at the Cohen Hirsch law firm, represents about 100 women in cases against major beauty brands concerning this issue.

“Anytime there's a product that harms women, we think it’s important to get behind it because there has to be change,” Cohen said.

In February 2023, more than 50 lawsuits were gathered in a federal court in Chicago in what’s known as multi-district litigation, or MDL. Cohen said an MDL allows for plaintiffs and attorneys who sue the same defendants for the same issues to consolidate the work and cost, essentially making the process more balanced and efficient.

“If you have just one woman who got hurt who goes after them individually, it would be prohibitively expensive,” Cohen said. “They would not be able to be probably win. It would be a David and Goliath situation really, so in an MDL all the discovery, the fact finding and the evidence is shared across the plaintiffs, across the nation, and those costs are shared.”

As of February 2025, more than 9,800 cases have been filed in the MDL.

In a joint response to that suit several manufacturers denied "their hair relaxers are or were defective, toxic or harmful and further deny that any action or omission of Defendants caused or contributed to any alleged injury purportedly suffered by Plaintiffs and the other putative class members."

Several lawsuits were also filed in state courts including California, Illinois and other states. Yarbro filed in DeKalb County, Georgia despite living in Indianapolis.

“Anytime the public is in danger, it's good for them to know what they're getting into,” Yarbro said.

Attorneys like Navan Ward, a partner with Beasley Allen Law Firm, hope legal action will force cosmetic companies to release documents that list the exact ingredients in these products.

"The toxic soup of these chemicals is what makes this, these products dangerous,” Ward said.

"The manufacturer is responsible, if they're going to sell a product, to make sure that it's safe,” he said. “And based on the information that they know and have known for years, quite frankly, it's time that they step up and do the right thing."

Defendants include multiple hair relaxer manufacturers, with L’Oréal as the largest named company. L’Oréal sells both at-home relaxers and professional-grade products under its SoftSheen-Carson brand.

L'Oréal and industry response

In a statement, L’Oréal defended its products, stating:

“Our highest priority is the health and wellbeing of all our consumers. Our products are subject to a rigorous scientific evaluation of their safety by experts who also ensure that we strictly follow all regulations in every market in which we operate.

L'Oréal does not add formaldehyde as an ingredient in any of its products in any market in the world. We welcome and support the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) recent proposal across the entire beauty industry.

 While we understand the desire of each plaintiff to find answers to and relief from their personal health concerns, we are confident in the safety of SoftSheen-Carson's products and believe the allegations made in these lawsuits have neither legal nor scientific merit. 

The novel study upon which all these lawsuits is based recognized the need for further research and it made no finding of a causal connection between the use of those products and any conditions alleged by the plaintiffs. Tellingly, while the study clearly states that 'more research is warranted,' one of the lead researchers of the study has also acknowledged repeatedly that there could be other potential contributing factors to the health outcomes.” 

Bertrand, while acknowledging the limitations of epidemiologic studies, emphasized that more than 20 years of research found an association between chemical hair relaxers and uterine cancer risk.

“No one can tell what caused any individual woman’s cancer. It’s like a multi-factorial disease ideology, so it’s a lot things factoring together. There’s no doctor or scientist on earth who could look at a tumor and say this was caused by x exposure…that’s just not a possibility,” Bertrand said. “That’s maybe what the manufacturers in these lawsuits are kind of hanging on, right, and it’s true. But when there are these associations, it makes you want to understand better.”

Bertrand also pointed out that previous studies have indicated that chemical hair relaxers have been linked to other health concerns.

“As early as 1997 is when we first started asking about women’s experience with using chemical hair relaxers,” Bertrand said. “…We published and found associations between use of chemical hair relaxers and uterine fibroids. We’ve seen modest associations for breast cancer, so these are reproductive outcomes we’ve been interested in for a long time.”

While she agreed with researchers who wrote in the Sister Study that more work would need to be done to determine a causal relationship, she said transparent ingredient labels would be an important, welcome first step.

“For example, manufacturers being required to actually list what the ingredients are, and then women will know what they’re being exposed to,” Bertrand said.

Community skepticism

Despite the studies and the lawsuits, women continue to use chemical relaxers.

Which is why Pam Searcy is teaching students how to properly apply the products at Textures Institute of Cosmetology in Indianapolis. Searcy believes trained professionals are the most equipped to properly use permanent hair straighteners.

"It's really not the relaxer itself,” Searcy said. “It's just the improper use and application of the relaxer.”

Growing up she and other Black girls and women did not always go to a salon, instead many received kitchen hair services.

"My mother didn't know what she was doing, she wasn't a licensed stylist,” Searcy said. "Just over processed our hair."

For years, it wasn’t uncommon for Black women and girls to get a relaxer every month or every five to six weeks. Now Searcy will only do a touch up after 10 weeks.

She didn’t read the study or lawsuits, but like many in the community, she’s skeptical and is not sure if requiring warning labels will change behavior.

"If they want it, they're going to still use it regardless,” she said. “It's like, to me, a pack of cigarettes. If they still want to smoke it, it's there."

The Sanderson family wants companies to be held responsible for what's in the relaxers and how they were marketed to the Black Community.

"It was glamorized,” Thomas said. “It was ingrained in our society that this is, this is how you're supposed to look."

Sanderson and Yarbro want women to be able to make an informed choice.

“I would like to say, take heed” Yarbro said. “You know, take seriously your health, and at least look into it and see what the side effects could do to you because it could damage your life in a way that you can never possibly recover from.”

While some women may still choose to use the products, others may make a different choice based on their family medical history and news “hair relaxer use may be a potentially modifiable risk factor for uterine cancer.”

A disease that kills more than 13,000 women annually. Black women are disproportionately impacted by the disease and the most likely to die.

"Everybody's going to die,” Sanderson said. “But it's the suffering before you die. It’s the burden that’s put on your family and I don’t want that for my family.”

What's Next?

When it comes to the legal battle, written discovery in the MDL was due on February 28. Next, there will be what’s called a Bellwether Trial in which both the plaintiffs’ and defendants’ attorneys will be able to select some of the women whose cases are part of the suit to be tried first to get a gauge of what a formal trial would look like.