Dozens of lawsuits claim hair relaxers cause cancer and other health problems

Nearly 60 lawsuits claiming hair relaxer products sold by L’Oréal USA Inc and other companies cause cancer and other health problems will be consolidated in a Chicago federal court, according to a Monday order from the US judicial panel on multidistrict litigation.

At least 57 lawsuits have been filed in federal courts across the country over the products, which use chemicals to permanently straighten textured hair, court records show. The lawsuits allege the companies knew their products contained dangerous chemicals but marketed and sold them anyway.

The actions will be centralized into a multidistrict litigation before US district judge Mary Rowland, which will streamline discovery efforts and other pretrial issues for the cases, according to the order.

The cases name the US subsidiary of L’Oréal SA and subsidiaries of India-based companies Godrej SON Holdings Inc and Dabur International Ltd. Representatives for the companies, which opposed centralization of the cases, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In a statement posted online after the first lawsuits were filed, L’Oréal said it is “confident in the safety of our products and believe the recent lawsuits filed against us have no legal merit”.

The lawsuits follow the October publication of a National Institutes of Health study that found women who used the products multiple times a year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer.

“We estimated that 1.64% of women who never used hair straighteners would go on to develop uterine cancer by the age of 70, but for frequent users, that risk goes up to 4.05%,” study leader Alexandra White of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Safety said in a statement.

Uterine cancer is the most common gynecologic cancer in the US, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with rates rising, particularly among Black women.

Diandra Debrosse Zimmermann of DiCello Levitt, who filed the first case after the study was published, urged the judicial panel on multidistrict litigation at a hearing last month to send the cases to Rowland.

Debrosse Zimmermann said the panel’s decision “recognized the clear benefits of centralizing the hair relaxer litigation”, adding that she expects many more firms to file their cases in the coming weeks.

She estimates that thousands of women could end up suing over the products, which are typically marketed to women of color.