L’Oreal is facing a lawsuit from Arizona alleging that the cosmetics giant concealed evidence suggesting its hair relaxer products may raise cancer risks for women.
Arizona Attorney General Kristin Mayes filed the case Thursday against L’Oreal USA Inc., parent company L’Oreal SA and SoftSheen, a brand owned by the beauty conglomerate. Arizona is the first state to bring legal action over alleged cancer risks connected to chemical hair relaxers.
The complaint alleges L’Oreal violated Arizona consumer protection laws by selling and promoting the products without alerting customers to their alleged potential association with ovarian and uterine cancer.
Chemical relaxers are highly alkaline treatments designed to straighten textured or curly hair by breaking down and restructuring the bonds that determine a strand’s natural form. The products have historically been marketed largely to Black women, who are also their primary users.
According to the lawsuit, the relaxers contain potentially harmful substances, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals, phthalates, parabens and compounds categorized as known or probable human carcinogens.
“L’Oreal knew or should have known about the dangers associated with these toxic hair straightening products,” Mayes said in a statement, repeating an allegation outlined in the complaint.
“Yet, instead of warning their consumers, they put profits over the safety of women and children. That is unacceptable and we will hold them accountable for it,” she added.
Arizona is seeking damages and civil penalties, along with a court order that would require L’Oreal to place cancer warnings on the products or remove them from store shelves.
Arizona has sued L’Oreal, alleging the beauty company withheld evidence that its hair relaxer products could cause cancer in women. (Stock image)
The lawsuit claims the cosmetics company “marketed and sold toxic chemical hair relaxers to women and girls of African descent while concealing the devastating carcinogenic risks associated with those products.”
‘In doing so, [L’Oreal] exploited centuries of social pressures and discriminatory beauty standards affecting people of African descent, all while prioritizing profit over consumer safety,’ the suit added.
The products, sold under names including Dark and Lovely, advertise their ability to permanently straighten textured hair.
This is just one of thousands of lawsuits brought against the company by consumers who used its hair relaxer products.
L’Oreal has faced more than 12,000 similar cases from women and their families, which are now bundled together in a Chicago federal court to handle the cases more efficiently.
In a statement to the Daily Mail, a company spokesman said: ‘L’Oreal’s 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.’
‘We are confident in the safety of SoftSheen-Carson’s products and believe the allegations made in this lawsuit have neither legal nor scientific merit,’ the representative added.
‘The study upon which this lawsuit 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 that there could be other potential contributing factors to the health outcomes,’ they concluded.
The first wave of lawsuits were filed after a 2022 National Institutes of Health study found that women who used the products several times a year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer.
The lawsuits seek money for the women’s alleged pain and suffering, medical bills, product costs and other expenses. The cases are still moving through the courts, with trials potentially starting next year.
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The lawsuit states that the beauty giant marketed and sold Optimum hair relaxer
Another product, the Dark & Lovely hair relaxer, was also referred to in the lawsuit
Mizani hair relaxer was also named as being marketed and sold in Arizona by L’Oreal
Experts have long been concerned about the presence of the carcinogen formaldehyde in chemical hair-straightening and relaxing treatments, such as Keratin treatments and Brazilian blowouts.
And in a bid to see the long term health consequences of this chemical, researchers from Emory University in Georgia analyzed data from a long-term health study involving more than 50,000 US women.
The Sister Study enrolled participants who were between 35 and 74 years old, had no personal history of breast cancer, but had at least one sister who had been diagnosed with the disease.
Enrollment took place between 2003 and 2009, and participants were followed through September 2021.
For the final analysis, researchers included data from 46,287 women who were followed for an average of 13.1 years.
The study focused on cancers with at least 100 reported cases during the follow-up period and examined whether participants had used hair straighteners or relaxers in the 12 months prior to joining the study.
Use of these products was linked to significantly higher cancer risks. Compared to non-users, women who used hair straighteners or relaxers had a 166 percent higher risk of pancreatic cancer, which is considered one of the deadliest forms of the disease because it lacks a specific screening test, making early detection difficult.
Women who used hair straighteners or relaxers also had a 71 percent higher risk of thyroid cancer and a 62 percent higher risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The risk increased further among frequent users – defined as using the products more than four times per year.
A graph showing cancer prevalence and projections in the general US population from 1975 to 2040 by age
In this group, the risk of pancreatic cancer more than doubled, while thyroid cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma also showed elevated, though not statistically significant, risks.
The researchers also noted a possible link between straightener use and kidney cancer, though the association was described as ‘positive but imprecise’.
Formaldehyde, which is used as a preservative in hair products, can escape from them as a gas over time, a process known as ‘off-gassing’ – especially when they come into contact with heat.
If these fumes are inhaled repeatedly, they can lead to anything from minor side effects like eye and respiratory irritation to major health issues like an increased risk of head and neck cancers.
The American Cancer Society notes that in animal and human studies, formaldehyde has been linked to various forms of cancer, including in the nose, the upper throat and the stomach, and it has also been shown to increase the risk of leukemia.