FDA considers ban of hair relaxers used by Black women and linked to serious health issues, report says [Video]

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Recent studies supporting a long-suspected link between cancer and hair relaxers used by Black women have prompted lawsuits across the country and have encouraged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to consider banning those containing formaldehyde.

The Sister Study, led by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in 2022, and several other studies, offer compelling scientific evidence of what has long been suspected to explain racial disparities that scientists have struggled to explain for decades, according to a report in The New York Times.

And over the past year and a half, the studies have prompted lawsuits involving nearly 9,000 plaintiffs across the country along with the potential new action from the federal government, according to the report.

Dr. Tamarra James-Todd, of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has motivated others, most of them Black women like her, to conduct studies with tens of thousands of subjects as they pursue explanations for …