Hair Products Targeted Towards Women Are Causing Multiple Cancers

A lot of products on the market that we have talked about on this program over the years have been known to cause cancers, endocrine problems, reproductive issues, but one thing you wouldn't typically expect that might cause cancer would be a hair relaxer, but that is what we're seeing. Farron Cousins fills in for Mike Papantonio and is joined by attorney Chelsie Green to explain what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A lot of products on the market that we have talked about on this program over the years have been known to cause cancers and all sorts of issues. Endocrine problems, reproductive issues, but one thing you wouldn't typically expect that might cause cancer would be a hair relaxer, but that is what we're seeing. I've got attorney Chelsie Green with me here, Chelsie, this is an absolutely just kind of mind blowing case, really. Because what's happening is, correct me if I'm wrong, but we've got these hair relaxers that are now being linked to cancer in women.

Correct. So think of a beauty product, a product that you're applying to essentially help professionally, help you just to feel better about yourself, you're applying to yourself in order to gain confidence, and ultimately that product is causing you extreme harm. Ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, in some cases endometrial cancer.

And this is a hair relaxer. It's got chemicals in it, things that giant names I can't even begin to try to pronounce here.

Exactly.

And so what's happening, I guess, you put it on your scalp, and so the chemicals just seep into the skin?

Yes. A lot of people are unaware that what actually comes in the hair relaxer box, it's multiple products. So it's not one product that has this one set of chemicals that you're applying to your hair. So the box comes with the base, and that's the cream or the lotion that's typically put on your hair. But in order to use the base, you have to put in the activator. And the activator has its own set of chemicals that you've now added to the base. And now you're applying all of this to the most absorbent feature of skin that we have on our body, and that's our scalp. The hair relaxer manufacturers try to tell us, protect your scalp. Don't put the product on your scalp. Apply a petroleum jelly or some type of protected layer on your scalp before you apply the hair relaxer. But we know that these harsh chemicals are seeping through any layer of protection that we could potentially provide.

So, they're telling you, or allegedly, they're telling you protect your scalp, so obviously if they're telling you to protect it, they've gotta know that there's some kind of danger here.

Exactly. And ultimately, I believe that the hair relaxer manufacturers wanted to warn against the burns or lesions that the product causes. So they tried to say that's what the scalp protectors were for. But we know when you mix that combination of chemicals to your scalp, ultimately the end product cannot be healthy for the consumers.

And so obviously this is a relatively new case. But from what I've seen, there's close to 300 so far, absolutely documented cases, people involved in or I guess plaintiffs at this point 300, and that is expected to grow. Am I correct?

Yes. Actually, that number has recently just went up. In the litigation there was a deadline against Revlon, one of our manufacturers, or defendants in the hair relaxer litigation is coming out of bankruptcy. So they had a deadline for us to file all complaints against Revlon by September 14th. As of September 14th, over 7,000 cases are filed in the Northern District of Illinois.

Oh my goodness. Okay. So that, yeah, that's a little more than 300.

Right. Three weeks, 7,000 cases.

Wow. Absolutely astonishing. And so obviously the hair relaxers, this is a product typically involved with women. But it is something that men have used as well. The cancers that we're seeing, as you mentioned, uterine cancer, ovarian cancer. Have we seen anything in men so far?