As a black woman who grew up in the 90s, I got my first perm at the age of 9. I begged my mom for a perm & believed perming my hair would ultimately be my promotion into black womanhood. My hair would finally lay down & smooth easily, & I’d give the little girl on the “Just For Me” box a run for her money. But when they applied the thick white cream to my hair, I smelled a strong chemical smell & felt unsettling scalp tingling. This began a 13-year relationship of dependency and skepticism with chemical straightening. I got my last perm at the age of 22.
On December 4th an NIH study was published looking at hair dye, chemical straighteners, & breast cancer risk. It highlighted the rising rates of breast cancer in black women, & their tendency for more aggressive subtypes, & death from the disease. It also highlighted specific toxic chemicals in hair dyes as well as the carcinogen formaldehyde which is included in many of the chemical relaxers & perms used predominantly by black women.
The study enrolled 47,650 women who all had at least one sister with breast cancer, but no breast cancer themselves. They asked about hair product use for 12 months prior to enrollment & followed the women for ~ 8.3 yrs. Over the 8 year time period, 2,794 breast cancer cases were reported.
They found that 55% of women reported using permanent dye, & permanent dye had an associated increased breast cancer risk of 9%. In black women, however, there was an associated 45% increased risk. 74% of black women reported any prior use of chemical straighteners, although only 9.9% of women in the total group reported straightener use in the 12 months prior to enrollment. Straightener use was associated with an 18% higher risk of breast cancer, but risks with straightener use did not vary by race/ethnicity.
Ultimately, this study was done in a high risk population & included ~10% of black women. It showed correlation of increased breast cancer risk with chemical hair treatments, but did not prove causation. What I take away from this study is that practices specific to the black community may have harmful long term effects & we must be thoughtful in what we apply to our hair.
