Hair Relaxer Lawsuits Highlight The Need For Better Regulation Of The Cosmetics Industry

Cosmetics regulation continues to fall short of offering women using commercial chemical hair straighteners and relaxers the safegards they need.

Wednesday, February 22, 2023 - Hundreds of women, some very young who have filed hair relaxer lawsuit claims tell the court they have experienced scalp burns, hair loss, and even cancer allegedly from using the product. One young women, 28-year old Jenny Mitchell, has filed a personal injury lawsuit against five companies including Loreal, for failing allegedly causing the uterine cancer that forced her to undergo a hysterectomy according to a report in The Washington Post. According to the Post, "In a federal lawsuit filed last week in the Northern District of Illinois, Mitchell blames the hair products that she had been using since she was in grade school. Naming five companies as defendants, including Loreal, Mitchell alleges that the chemical hair straighteners she had been applying to her scalp for decades caused her cancer, which she said does not run in her family." "Mitchell is suing Loreal, SoftSheen Carson, Strength of Nature, Dabur, and Namaste Laboratories, the makers of the chemical straighteners and hair relaxers that she says caused her uterine cancer. The lawsuit alleges that the companies knew, or should have known, that their products increased the risk of cancer but manufactured and distributed them anyway, while giving no warning to consumers that they carried such risks." Hair relaxer cancer lawyers are interviewing women that have used hair relaxers and have been diagnosed with uterine cancer.

Companies like Loreal and others that manufacturer chemical hair relaxers have failed to disclose the potential life-threatening health risks using their products pose and have exacerbated societal pressures on Black women and young girls to conform to an unnatural look. Black women may start using hair straightening product in grade school and subject themselves to being regularly exposed to dangerous substances that cause cancer, tumors, and scalp burns. Chemicals in hair relaxers and straighteners are so caustic that they change the basic structure of wavy, curly, and kinky hair, enabling the molecules to be restructured to form straight hair when heat is applied. Unfortunately the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulatory Act does not mandate pre-market safety testing. The Act also fails to for chemical hair straightener marketers to disclose all the chemical components in their products.

The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation (MOCRA) was introduced a couple of years ago in the US as a response to the lack of accountability the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was tasked with regarding the safety of the ingredients that make up cosmetic products. Chemical hair relaxers may pose serious health risks including utering cancer, breast cancer, and ovarian cancer as they contain endocrine disrupters chemicals that may cause DNA damage. Women with cancer of the reproductive system may face a partial or radical hysterectomy to treat the disease, a very high price to pay for thinking that having straight hair was a must. MOCRA was intended to warn women of the dangers in hair relaxers and other cosmetics but falls far short according to experts in the field of cosmetics safety.

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Lawyers for Hair Relaxer Cancer Lawsuits

We will represent all persons involved in a hair relaxer cancer lawsuit on a contingency basis, meaning our lawyers never charge legal fees unless we win compensation in your case. For a free no-obligation consultation please fill out our short online contact form and one of our hair relaxer attorneys for uterine cancer or breast cancer will contact you to answer any of your questions.