Published March 2026

My Mother Put Relaxer in My Hair When I Was 8. Now I Have Cancer.

I didn't choose to use hair relaxers. I was eight years old. My mother sat me in a kitchen chair and applied the cream to my hair the way her mother had done for her, the way generations of Black women had done for their daughters. It was a ritual, a rite of passage, a practical decision about how to navigate a world that had very specific expectations about what Black women's hair should look like. No one told her — or me — that those creams contained chemicals linked to cancer. No one knew. Or someone knew and didn't say anything.

The Ritual Nobody Questioned

Hair relaxers became mainstream in Black American communities starting in the 1970s, as the civil rights movement's celebration of natural hair gave way to decades of pressure to conform to mainstream beauty standards. By the 1980s and 1990s, chemical straightening was a routine part of many Black girls' childhood — applied at home by mothers, at beauty salons, in church basements before school picture day.

The products were marketed as safe, as convenient, as modern. The directions on the box told you how to apply them. The advertisements showed smiling women with gleaming, straight hair. Nobody mentioned the endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Nobody mentioned the formaldehyde-releasing preservatives. Nobody mentioned the phthalates — compounds that disrupt hormonal signaling in ways that researchers are now linking to reproductive cancers.

For many women now filing hair relaxer lawsuits, the use of these products began before they were old enough to vote, drive, or sign their own medical consent forms. They didn't choose this exposure. Their mothers chose it for them, in good faith, with the information available at the time. The companies that made these products knew more than they let on.

What the NIH Study Found

In October 2022, the National Institutes of Health published a study from the Sister Study — a large, long-running cohort of women studying factors that affect breast cancer risk. The study examined hair product use and uterine cancer rates among more than 33,000 women over an extended follow-up period.

The findings were striking: women who reported using hair relaxers more than four times in the previous year had a 2.55 times higher risk of developing uterine cancer compared to women who never used them. Given that uterine cancer is already the most commonly diagnosed gynecologic cancer in the United States, more than doubling the risk is a significant population-level harm.

The study also found elevated risks of ovarian cancer and uterine fibroids — conditions that can affect fertility, quality of life, and long-term health. And crucially, the risk was higher in Black women not only because of higher relaxer use rates, but also because the products marketed to Black women consistently contain higher concentrations of the potentially harmful chemicals.

The Chemicals That Mattered

Hair relaxer formulations contain multiple compounds of concern. Phthalates — a class of chemicals used as plasticizers and in fragrance formulations — are endocrine disruptors that interfere with the body's hormonal signaling systems. They've been linked to reproductive harm in animal studies for decades. DMDM hydantoin, a common preservative, slowly releases formaldehyde — a known human carcinogen — over time. Parabens, another preservative class, have estrogenic activity that may stimulate estrogen-sensitive tissues, including uterine tissue.

These chemicals don't appear on the front of the packaging. For women who used these products as children and teenagers, they had no realistic way to evaluate the chemical composition of what was being applied to their scalps. The companies that formulated these products made deliberate choices about what to include and what to disclose.

The Girls Who Had No Choice

One of the most painful dimensions of this litigation is the question of children. Women who began using hair relaxers as young as six, seven, eight years old had decades of cumulative exposure by the time they reached adulthood. Childhood bodies, still developing, are often more vulnerable to endocrine disruption than adult bodies. The dose makes the poison, and the dose accumulated over childhood development is particularly concerning.

When courts evaluate hair relaxer cancer claims, the history of use — including childhood use — is part of the factual record. Women who have decades of exposure, starting in childhood, have strong causation arguments. The manufacturers who formulated and marketed products specifically to Black women and their daughters, knowing those products would be used starting at young ages, bear responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of that exposure.

Your Story Matters

If you used hair relaxers starting in childhood and have been diagnosed with uterine cancer, ovarian cancer, endometriosis, or uterine fibroids, your experience is shared by thousands of women across the country. The litigation now underway in MDL 3060 in Illinois is bringing accountability to the companies whose products caused this harm. You deserve to be part of that.