US woman files lawsuit against L'Oréal, claiming chemical hair straightening products are linked to her cancer - CNN

CNN  — 

Cosmetics institution L’Oréal, on with aggregate different parties, is being sued implicit claims that its chemic hairsbreadth straightening products enactment women astatine an accrued hazard of uterine cancer.

Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, counsel Diandra “Fu” Debrosse Zimmermann and others filed a suit Friday successful Illinois connected behalf of 32-year-old Missouri nonmigratory Jenny Mitchell, claiming that Mitchell’s uterine crab “was straight and proximately caused by her regular and prolonged vulnerability to phthalates and different endocrine disrupting chemicals recovered successful Defendants’ hairsbreadth attraction products.”

CNN has contacted L’Oréal, Namaste Laboratories LLC, Dabur International Ltd. and Godrej Consumer Products, genitor institution of the Just For Me brand, for comment.

Debrosse Zimmermann told CNN connected Monday that the suit marks a “watershed moment” for women of colour who person utilized chemic hair-straightening products, specified arsenic relaxers.

At a quality league Monday, Mitchell said that she recalls getting hairsbreadth relaxers astir 3rd grade, erstwhile she was astir 8 years old.

Mitchell was diagnosed with uterine crab connected August 10, 2018, according to the lawsuit, and underwent a afloat hysterectomy astatine Boone Hospital Center successful Missouri connected September 24, 2018.

“At that time, astatine the property of 28, my dreams of becoming a parent were gone,” she said. In the lawsuit, she claims to person nary household past of crab oregon uterine cancer.

“As astir young African-American girls, chemic relaxers, chemic straighteners were introduced to america astatine a young age,” Mitchell said. “Society has made it a norm to look a definite way, successful bid to consciousness a definite way. And I americium the archetypal dependable of galore voices to travel that volition stand, basal up to these companies, and say, ‘No more.’”

Mitchell continued utilizing chemic hair-straightening products from astir 2000 until March 2022, and she is seeking compensation successful excess of $75,000, according to the lawsuit.

Two different idiosyncratic cases person been filed – successful California and New York – against cosmetic companies, including L’Oreal, claiming a transportation betwixt chemic hair-straightening products and crab diagnoses, Debrosse Zimmermann said.

“We ideate that we volition proceed representing further women successful filing cases, arsenic volition different firms, and much and much women volition travel forward,” she said.

Mitchell’s suit was filed conscionable days aft the work of a survey successful the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which estimates that among women who often usage hair-straightening chemic products, the hazard of processing uterine crab by property 70 is astir 4%. In women who did not usage hair-straightening chemic products successful the erstwhile 12 months, the survey estimates the hazard of processing uterine crab by property 70 to beryllium 1.6%.

Black women thin to usage these chemic hair-straightening products much often than White women, the researchers noted.

The survey information showed that the relation betwixt hairsbreadth straightening products and uterine crab cases was astir pronounced for Black women, who made up lone 7.4% of the survey participants, but 59.9% of those who reported ever utilizing straighteners.

Several factors astir apt play a relation successful the predominant usage of hairsbreadth straightening products: Eurocentric standards of quality and societal pressures placed connected Black and Latina women successful workplace settings related to microaggressions and the menace of discrimination, on with desired versatility successful changing hairstyles and self-expression.

“Black women person agelong been the victims of unsafe products specifically marketed to them,” Crump said successful a quality release. “Black hairsbreadth has been and ever volition beryllium beautiful, but Black women person been told they person to usage these products to conscionable society’s standards. We volition apt observe that Ms. Mitchell’s tragic lawsuit is 1 of countless cases successful which companies aggressively misled achromatic women to summation their profits.”