The lawsuits also allege that makers of popular chemical hair straighteners such as L’Oréal and Revlon, knew, or should have known, about their products’ long-term health risks from endocrine-disrupting chemicals, but they chose profits over the health and safety of women, most of whom are African-Americans.
Hair Relaxer Lawsuits
The first hair relaxer lawsuit was filed in October 2022 by Jenny Mitchell. She was diagnosed with uterine cancer in her 20s but filed the lawsuit when she was 32. Mitchell claimed that her cancer was directly and proximately caused by her regular and prolonged exposure to phthalates and other endocrine disrupting chemicals found in Defendants’ hair care products.”
Mike told Drugwatch about his late wife’s use of chemical hair relaxers. “If there were a warning on those products, my wife Michele Lynn wouldn’t have kept using them. She would have stopped immediately…These companies put money before people’s lives, and all they care about is what’s hitting their bank account.” After his wife died, Mike discovered that hair relaxers are linked to breast cancer. “She’s been straightening her hair since she was a kid… Maybe that’s where the cancer came from. She used it four or five times a year,” Mike said. A 2019 NIH study linked hair relaxers/straighteners to an increased risk of breast cancer. Scientists determined that women who used chemical hair straighteners every five to eight weeks had a 30% increased risk of breast cancer.
Heidi Parks began using chemical hair relaxers as a child. Parks learned in 2022 that she had stage 3 ovarian cancer, which she believes is a result of her decades-long use of chemical relaxers.“I wasn’t aware of any potential side effects or dangers of using the products. If I had known, I absolutely would not have used the products,” Parks told News4jax. She recently filed a hair relaxer cancer lawsuit. “I’m almost afraid to plan for the future,” Parks said. “I feel like we are always waiting for the rug to be pulled out from underneath us. I constantly live in fear.”
Why Hair relaxer Cancers Take Years to Develop
Hair relaxer cancers can take years to develop, particularly uterine and ovarian cancers, for numerous reasons:
Cumulative Chemical Exposure: Chemical hair relaxers contain endocrine-disrupting compounds, including formaldehyde, parabens, and phthalates. (The FDA still hasn’t banned formaldehyde in hair relaxers.) Although these chemicals don’t cause immediate cellular damage, they accumulate in the body and each application adds up to a toxic overload. Typically, repeated exposure over months or years will cause cellular damage to occur.
Hormonal Disruption Process: Many chemicals in hair relaxers are endocrine disruptors that mimic or interfere with estrogen. This hormonal interference gradually changes normal cellular activities and over time, and while it doesn’t immediately trigger cancer, it can result in abnormal cell growth and division, especially in sensitive tissues found in the uterus and ovaries.
Cancer Development Timeline: Cancer is fundamentally a multi-step process that usually takes 5-20 years, and even longer. Normal cells must undergo several genetic mutations before becoming malignant, and this process typically requires:
- Initial DNA damage from chemical exposure
- Failure of cellular repair mechanisms
- Additional mutations that allow uncontrolled growth
- Development of blood supply to feed tumors
- Potential for metastasis
Individual Variation: General health, genetic factors, immune system function, and other environmental exposures can determine how slowly or quickly cancer develops. Some people may be more susceptible due to genetic variants that affect how their bodies process these chemicals or repair DNA damage.
One attorney explains that the delayed onset is actually typical for most chemically-induced cancers and why establishing causation requires long-term epidemiological studies tracking people over decades.
Statute Of Limitations
READ MORE HAIR STRAIGHTENER LEGAL NEWS
There is some good news. This delayed onset can help many women’s hair relaxer lawsuits. Because the connection between uterine cancer and chemical hair relaxer products did not become public knowledge until October 2022 were findings from the NIH Sister Study were published, in states that follow the discovery rule (which is most of them), the statute of limitations (SOL) on hair relaxer lawsuits did not begin to run until October 2022 at the earliest.
This means that women diagnosed with cancer years ago can still file lawsuits because the SOL’s start date is determined by the “discovery rule.” Under this common law rule, the statute of limitations period does not begin to run until the plaintiff knows (or reasonably should know) that they have a potential lawsuit.
Since many of the hair relaxer cancers take years to develop, it is widely expected that the size and scope of the litigation will continue to grow significantly for the next several years to come.
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