The popular practice women use to straighten their hair with chemicals could increase their odds of getting uterine cancer, according to a new study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
I knew it.
According to the research, among a group of women who did not use hair-straightening chemical products in the past 12 months, 1.6% developed uterine cancer by the age of 70. Meanwhile, about 4% of the women who frequently used chemical straightening products developed uterine cancer by age 70.
Researchers “found using permanent hair dyes and chemical straighteners could heighten risks for ovarian and breast cancers,” USA Today reported.
More than 34,000 women, ages 35-74, participated in nearly 11 years of research at the National Institutes of Health.
“Women who reported using hair-straightening products — permanent processes like chemical relaxers, for example — more than four times in a year were more likely to get uterine cancer at some point than a person who didn’t use those products, according to the study,” USA Today reported.
“Hair products are a potential source of exposure to chemicals, including both endocrine disrupters that impact our normal hormonal system as well as potential carcinogens,” a lead researcher Alexandra White, was quoted as saying.
Black women are more likely to feel the impact. About 60% of the study participants who said they used straightening products in the past year were Black women.
“It’s not that the chemicals are necessarily conferring a higher risk in Black women, it’s just that we know Black women are much more likely to be using these products, using them more frequently and to start at an earlier age,” White said.
Now, we know. Those hair straightening products are not just painful and unnatural. They may be killing us. Researchers suspect that certain chemicals in the hair straightening products, such as formaldehyde and parabens, may interfere with our hormones.
Patrice Weatherly Jackson knows. “Hair straighteners are caustic. We know this to be true in our profession,” Jackson, my hair stylist, told me last week.
“Hydroxide is the leading chemical in all straightening products. The degree is accompanied by sodium, calcium or lithium all which alone are known to cause cancer. Also, the product is ingested into the scalp which means that the blood stream is affected,” said Jackson, a cosmetologist who is African American.
I am fearful for my sisters. These chemicals are the dangerous consequence of the pressure we endure to go — and stay — straight, by applying harsh, unnatural chemicals to our scalps.
We know the Caucasian-dominated society values long, bone-straight, gleaming hair. That is not our hair. Black hair hails from deepest Africa. Our follicles are kinked. Knotty. Nappy. And beautiful.
Yet, many of us have been brainwashed to believe “Black hair” is “bad hair.” We are pressured to conform to America’s demand for whiteness.
There is a long history of employment discrimination against Black women who wear natural hairstyles. To be beautiful, accepted, to get ahead, to get a job and keep it, the straighter the better.
So, to conform, we resort to wigs, expensive weaves, and yes, we even “burn” our hair. As a child, the “straightening comb” was my painful enemy. Mama placed the iron comb on the stove’s fiery flame, then pulled it through my hair. I cried, before, during and after I got my hair “done.”
The hair products industry brought us salvation, or so we thought, with the “relaxer,” a silly label for the chemicals that fry our naps into submission.
There is nothing relaxing about it. The products are smelly, laden with lye and other mysterious chemicals. If the stuff is left on your scalp too long, it sears your skin. We know those chemicals had to be bad for us, yet we endure the corrosive and painful treatments. Because we are told our naps are unruly, ugly and undesirable.
This new study is a long-awaited wake-up call. Hair straightening chemicals are a self-imposed plague we cannot afford. Black women already face so many medical perils. In a 2021 analysis of COVID-19 deaths in Georgia and Michigan, researchers found that Black women died at more than three times the rates of white men and Asian men. The only other group to die at a higher rate from the disease was Black men, showed the study from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Compared to white women, we suffer from higher rates of some cancers, heart disease, high blood pressure, maternal morbidities, and obesity, shows data from a 2021 report by the Journal of Women’s Health. Yet we submit to dangerous chemical hair treatments so that we can look more like white women. As they noted a “disproportionate rate of fibroids in the Black community, Black stylists began to believe that there was a connection,” Jackson said. “So, we began to push natural hair styles and products to back away from the chemical use.”
I went natural decades ago. I wear my nappy locs proudly. In recent years, more Black women are embracing their natural beauty. Locs, braids, twists and Afros are in, and we look marvelous in them.
This news should give Black women a No. 1 incentive to go natural and ditch the chemicals. The incentive to live.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist.
