Zena Young grew up with coarse hair.
“The scriptures talk about a woman’s hair being her glory,” Young said. “We want to do everything to make our hair beautiful, and by using relaxers, that was a way for my hair to be beautiful to me.”
Young lives in Douglasville, Georgia. She is among the millions of Black women who often turned to chemical relaxers to straighten their hair – a widely-used method to meet a beauty standard in Black culture.
Originally from Mississippi, Young had 10 siblings. She was one of eight girls and had three brothers. She remembered her mother doing her hair.
“At first, they would use straightening combs to do our hair… and then after that, we started getting perms,” she said.
Hair relaxers, also called perms, are chemical treatments used at home or in salons to straighten hair. Box perms are often marketed to Black women as an inexpensive way to make hair more manageable and to keep it looking sleek and straight.
Young said she was only 11 years old when she learned how to do her own perms.
After decades of relying on the chemical relaxer, she heard about its potential link to uterine cancer.
“I had gone through an experience with cancer back in 2000, 2008, 2009,” she explained. “I knew I had used relaxers for a long time, a really long time, from the age of 11 up until my mid-to-late 40s.”
While battling cancer, Young said she missed work, time with her family, and struggled to reach a diagnosis.
She then learned she had endometrial cancer in her uterus.
“The bleeding for months on end, and I mean, just the toll that it took on my body as well,” she said.
Young saw a commercial about lawsuits filed against businesses manufacturing hair relaxers and their potential cancer-causing chemicals. She filed a lawsuit, too.
It turns out she’s one of thousands of plaintiffs suing on the same grounds.
Combing through lawsuits:
Thousands of lawsuits have been filed nationwide against the makers of chemical relaxers, which alleged the products caused people to get cancer, and the companies knew or should have known the risks.
Hundreds of those lawsuits have been filed in Chatham, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties, where three of the companies are based.
In motions to dismiss some Georgia lawsuits, some of the companies listed as defendants argue that plaintiffs failed to show how “inadequate” warnings caused their injuries and failed to directly link any of the products’ ingredients to uterine fibroids and cancer risks.
They also argue that some plaintiffs didn’t specify which ingredients were defective nor how they caused harm.
11Alive attempted to contact the three Georgia companies several times for a response to the lawsuits but did not hear back. In the meantime, new cases continue to be filed in Georgia and across the U.S. daily.
“What we know so far is that there are these endocrine disruptor type of chemicals, and they tend to be phthalates and parabens,” Dr. Madeline Sutton said. She is a board-certified OBGYN who aims to improve access and health outcomes for women — especially women of color.
In addition to phthalates and parabens, which are chemical compounds that can make plastics more durable and are sometimes used as cosmetic preservatives, various studies also suggest carcinogens like formaldehyde and heavy metals may be present in chemical hair relaxers.
While not all products contain formaldehyde, many do include components that, once heated, can release it, according to the FDA.
“They can disrupt your hormones and depending on what type of disrupted they are, they can disrupt to (the cellular level) which is where the DNA is at,” Sutton explained, “if you are disrupting at the cellular level, you can cause or at least at least be associated with different GYN cancers.”
Sutton said that based on the scientific data available today, some breast, ovarian, and, more recently, uterine cancers have been linked to these chemicals.
A 22-year Boston University study followed nearly 45,000 women with an intact uterus who identified as Black.
The recently released conclusions revealed that long-term use of hair relaxers was associated with increased risk of uterine cancer among postmenopausal Black women. According to the study’s summary, Black women have higher uterine cancer mortality than non-Hispanic white women.
Culture shift:
“We grew up seeing our grandmothers use relaxers; we grew up seeing our mothers use relaxers, and then just naturally, you know, we start to use relaxers, and it’s just being passed down from generation to generation,” April Story, a master stylist, said.
Story decided last year to no longer offer perms to her clients.
“I have been directing my natural hair clients more towards a safer option, which I have found to be keratin treatments, protein-based treatments, amino acid treatments,” she said.
The alternatives can cost much more than a box of relaxer, which typically retails at $10. Story said the alternative is that they lost longer – months compared to a relaxer’s few weeks.
The stylist added that she often has to guide her clients because they trust her, and she’s done the research and knows the harms.
“If I’m being frank, our culture, we don’t really ask questions about the ingredients and the products, and I want to encourage us to do that,” she said. “There’s no big alarm going about it within the salon space.”
Young said she hopes corporations make good with the thousands of people who rely on their products.
“It’s, this is a part of my life that was, that was shattered,” she said. “I feel like they’re responsible, and they should compensate. I think it would send a message to corporations.”
11Alive News Investigates wants to know about your journey with hair relaxers. You can share your story using this link or emailing hair@11alive.com. We’ll make sure your message gets to the right person.
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