A study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute has suggested that there’s a connection between hair-straightening chemical products and an enhanced risk of uterine cancer. The products in question include chemical relaxers and other pressing items.
Previous research has stated that hair-straightening chemicals play a part in increasing the probability of hormone-related cancers in women, specifically breast and ovarian cancer. Now, it seems uterine cancer has joined that list. The research noted that black women are at a greater risk than their white counterparts because they tend to use these products more frequently.
According to the study – published on Monday – less than 2% of women who had not used chemical hair straighteners in the previous 12 months developed uterine cancer by the age of 70. On the other hand, among those who frequently use such products, 4% were diagnosed with uterine cancer by 70. Here, ‘frequent use’ is defined as over four times more than in the preceding year.
Chandra Jackson, one of the study’s authors, noted that these findings indicate that uterine cancer is quite rare in a general sense, but still, the fact that the risk more than doubles for women using the products is a cause for concern.
Almost 34,000 women between the ages of 35 and 74 in the U.S. participated in this study. Surveys were the main tool used to collect data. The questions pertained to the women’s usage of certain hair products, from straighteners and dyes to relaxers and perms.
The National Institute of Health’s researchers kept tabs on how frequently cancer diagnoses occurred in the study group. Interestingly, they discovered a strong correlation between the use of hair-straightening products and cases of uterine cancer, but no connection between the cancer and the use of other products like body waves or dyes.
Black women, who constituted less than 8% of the study participants, were shown to be more susceptible to uterine cancer – nearly 60% of the women who reported using straighteners were black.
A multitude of factors play a role in the usage of hair-straightening products. These include – but are not limited to – the desire to change hairstyles as a form of self expression, current beauty standards, and the pressures placed on black women in the workplace vis-a-vis discrimination and microaggressions.
“Based off of the body of the literature in this area, we know that hair products marketed directly to Black children and women have been shown to contain multiple chemicals associated with disrupting hormones, and these products marketed to Black women have also been shown to have harsher chemical formulations,” Jackson continued. “On top of that, we know that Black women tend to use multiple products simultaneously, which could contribute to Black women on average having higher concentrations of these hormone-disrupting chemicals in their system.”
Although the research team did not gather data on the manufacturers or ingredients in the products the women used, they did assert that many chemicals found in straighteners may increase the risk of uterine cancer.
The study’s lead author, Alexandra White, stated that more investigation is required to determine the precise chemicals in question and to determine whether the findings apply to other populations.
