Diagnosed with cancer at 28, her lawsuit blames hair relaxers

JENNY Mitchell always dreamed of having children. But in 2018, when the 28-year-old was diagnosed with uterine cancer and underwent a hysterectomy, those dreams were dashed.

“I was devastated,” Mitchell, now 32, said. In a federal lawsuit filed last week in the Northern District of Illinois, Mitchell blames the hair products that she'd been using since she was in primary school. Naming five companies as defendants, including L'oréal, 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's lawsuit was filed days after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a study that found that women who frequently use hair-straightening products are at a higher risk of developing uterine cancer than women who do not use them. Tracking nearly 34 000 women in the US over a decade, the study found that the risk more than doubled among women who reported frequent use of chemical straighteners, compared with those who didn't use the products.

Uterine cancer is relatively rare, making up a little more than 3% of new cancer cases this year, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Yet cases are on the rise in the US, especially among black women, who the NIH study notes use chemical hair straighteners or relaxers more frequently than women of other groups and ethnicities. The

NCI estimates there have been nearly 66 000 new cases of uterine cancer in 2022 and an estimated 12 550 related deaths.

The heightened focus on the potential negative health effects of straightening products comes as an increasing number of black women are embracing natural hairstyles and rejecting white beauty standards.

Mitchell said societal pressure is what pushed her to start using hairstraightening products at such a young age. She is suing L'oréal, 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.

It further alleges that the companies misrepresented their products as safe. For example, Strength of Nature, which markets Soft & Beautiful, has sold products that use descriptions such as “botanicals” and “ultra nourishing”, according to the lawsuit.

In a statement, a spokeperson for L'oréal, which owns the Softsheen Carson brand, said the company is “confident in the safety of our products and believe the recent lawsuits filed against us have no legal merit”.

Mitchell said she found out about her uterine cancer after visiting a fertility clinic because she wanted to start planning for a family. About a month later, after her diagnosis, she had her uterus removed, according to the lawsuit. The diagnosis baffled Mitchell, she said. The cancer was rare, she was young and her family had no history of it, she said. But last week, after she saw news of the NIH study, she said she believed she had found an answer.

“I felt deceived. I felt hurt. I felt like I've been lied to my whole life,” Mitchell said. The lawsuit seeks more than

$75 000 (about R1.3 million) in monetary damages, as well as payment for medical bills and other expenses.

Mitchell said she is regularly monitored following her hysterectomy and suffers from early menopause.

In filing her lawsuit, Mitchell said she's thinking about the millions of other black women who use hair-straightening products. “It's my family. It's my nieces… It's young girls.” Ben Crump, one of Mitchell's attorneys, said the lawsuit is intended to tell black girls and young women that they are “beautiful enough, and having straight hair is not worth losing your uterus”.

Diandra Debrosse Zimmermann, another one of Mitchell's attorneys, anticipates more lawsuits will be filed. “A lot of women have come forward and will come forward,” she said.