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Attorney Ben Crump along with Diandra “Fu” Debrosse Zimmermann and others filed a lawsuit against L’Oreal products.
Not just L’Oréal products but other products associated with them such as Motion, Dark & Lovely, Olive Oil Relaxer, and Organic Root Stimulator.
32-year-old Missouri resident, Jenny Mitchell, has claimed to receive a uterine cancer diagnosis as a result of all the years of using relaxers, which exposed her to cancer-causing phthalates and other chemicals found in these products.
“As most young African-American girls, chemical relaxers, chemical straighteners were introduced to us at a young age,” Mitchell said. “Society has made it a norm to look a certain way, in order to feel a certain way. And I am the first voice of many voices to come that will stand, stand up to these companies, and say, ‘No more.’”
Mitchell was diagnosed with uterine cancer on August 10, 2018, according to the lawsuit, and underwent a full hysterectomy at Boone Hospital Center in Missouri on September 24, 2018.
“At that time, at the age of 28, my dreams of becoming a mother were gone,” she said. In the lawsuit, she said there's no family history of cancer or uterine cancer. Mitchell continued her routine and still was using chemical hair-straightening products from around 2000 until March 2022, and she is seeking compensation of $75,000, according to the lawsuit.
She cited a study conducted by the National Institute of Health, and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute concluded that constant users of chemical hair straightening products, more than four uses a year, were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer than those who didn’t use those products.
“Black women have long been the victims of dangerous products specifically marketed to them,” said Crump. “Black hair has been and always will be beautiful, but Black women have been told they have to use these products to meet society’s standards. Unfortunately, we will likely discover that Ms. Mitchell’s tragic case is one of the countless cases in which companies aggressively misled black women to increase their profits.”
Unfortunately, Ms. Mitchell’s case is one of the many cases in which companies mislead black women.
