L’Oreal’s hair straighteners caused woman’s cancer, lawsuit claims

L’Oreal has been sued by a Missouri woman who alleges she developed uterine cancer as a result of using the French cosmetic company’s hair-straightening products.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Chicago, came days after a study from the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Safety (NIEHS) finding that hair-straightening products may significantly increase the risk of uterine cancer among frequent users.

The plaintiff, Jennifer Mitchell, said she was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2018, after using L’Oreal’s products since about 2000, when she was 10. She is asking the court to order L’Oreal to pay unspecified money damages and to pay for medical monitoring.

L’Oreal did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Uterine cancer is the most common gynecologic cancer in the United States, according to federal government data, with rates rising, particularly among Black women. NIEHS researcher Che-Jung Chang said last week that the new study could be particularly relevant to Black women because they tend to use hair straighteners more frequently and beginning at earlier ages than people of other races.

Mitchell’s lawsuit accuses L’Oreal of deliberately marketing its hair-straightening products to Black women and girls.

“The fact that these companies targeted Black and Latin women for their own profit motive and without regard to the serious health risks that these hair-straightening products cause is a serious wrong that needs to be corrected,” Diandra Debrosse Zimmermann, a lawyer for Mitchell, said in a statement.