57 lawsuits alleging the usage of harmful substances in L’Oreal hair relaxers

A total of 57 lawsuits alleging that the goods in question cause cancer and other health issues have been filed in federal courts in Chicago against L’Oreal USA Inc. and other businesses.

The claims contend that these treatments use chemicals to permanently straighten curly or wavy hair and that the corporations knew these chemicals were hazardous yet nevertheless marketed and sold their goods.

The actions will be centralised into multidistrict litigation before US District Judge Mary Rowland, which will streamline discovery efforts and other pretrial issues for the cases, according to the order.

The cases name the US subsidiary of L’Oreal SA and subsidiaries of India-based companies Godrej SON Holdings Inc and Dabur International Ltd. Representatives for the companies, which opposed centralisation of the cases.

Meanwhile, Reuters quoted L’Oreal as saying that the company was confident in the safety of its products and believed the recent lawsuits filed have no legal merit.

The lawsuits follow the October publication of a National Institutes of Health study that found women who used the products multiple times a year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer.

In a statement posted online after the first lawsuits were filed, L’Oréal said it is “confident in the safety of our products and believe the recent lawsuits filed against us have no legal merit”.

The lawsuits follow the October publication of a National Institutes of Health study that found women who used the products multiple times a year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer.

“We estimated that 1.64% of women who never used hair straighteners would go on to develop uterine cancer by the age of 70, but for frequent users, that risk goes up to 4.05%,” study leader Alexandra White of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Safety said in a statement.