What’s In Them Anyway?
A Scientific-y Overview of the Relaxer (Part 2/3)
BlackBeautyPop is doing a series on the relationship between relaxers and Black women’s health. Chemical relaxers have been in and out of the news because of (1) concerns about their impact on our health and (2) the growing legal responses to these alleged harms. Each week I will cover the historical, scientific, and legal context of Black women’s relationship with relaxers in the U.S. You can read or listen to part one now.
This week we’re taking a scientific approach to relaxers. While none of the sciences are in my area of expertise, I hope you find the information provided here accessible and useful. Some of the questions we’ll be exploring are what’s in them and how exactly do they work?
I reached out to a few chemists who specialize in Black women’s beauty & cosmetic products, so this post will be edited to include their input at some point.
How do relaxers work?
According to Dr. Amanda Joy Calhoun, “Relaxers work by more permanently breaking the disulfide bonds that form between sulfur atoms found in keratin, a protein in hair strands The more disulfide bonds in the hair, the curlier it is. Relaxers help pull those sulfur atoms away from each other, so they can’t naturally rejoin.” However, because relaxers only affect the hair shaft, “...newly developing hair will not be affected by these alterations, [and] the new emerging hair will grow with its natural, original shape, and therefore, hair straightening needs to be repeated every 4–6 weeks.”
What are the different types of relaxers?
There are two types of relaxers, lye and no-lye. The difference between the two are their active ingredients. Lye relaxers are stronger, typically used by professionals in salon settings, and its active ingredient is sodium hydroxide. In no-lye relaxers, the active ingredient is calcium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide. No-lye perms are somewhat milder and available for purchase in retail stores.
Are kiddie perms gentler than adult perms?
In part one of this series I address this decades old myth, with a simple nope. Although companies marketed kiddie perms as “gentler” than others, scientists have debunked this lie. This marketing tactic was employed by corporations who wanted to develop a new customer base.
Is it true that relaxers contain dangerous chemicals which disproportionately affect Black women’s health?
Dr. Calhoun writes that when rinsing out relaxers with hot water and adding the required neutralizing shampoo (this stops the chemical reaction), “this heat step breaks down the relaxer solution, releasing formaldehyde, a colorless gas, into the air.” A 2022 study revealed that women who regularly use hair products containing hazardous chemicals (e.g. endocrine-disrupting and carcinogenic) have twice as much risk of developing uterine cancer as women who don’t use similar products.
Scientists also insist that formaldehyde is not the only culprit in Black women’s hair products and relaxers aren’t the only product that contains potentially dangerous ingredients. Studies have shown that phthalates, parabens, and other endocrine-disrupting compounds are also extremely dangerous. Dr. Tamarra James-Todd explains, they “...mimic the body’s hormones and have been linked to cancers as well as early puberty, fibroids, diabetes, and gestational high blood pressure, which is a key contributor to Black women’s outsize risk of maternal mortality.”
It is important to note that, to my knowledge, the studies listed here do not argue that the “relationship between straightener use and uterine cancer incidence was different by race.” Rather, we experience these harms more because we use the products more frequently than non-Black women.
Why are these studies about Black women’s hair products, including relaxers, coming out now?
The realities of how dangerous chemicals impact Black women’s health are not new to scientists and environmentalist groups. A widely cited study published in Oxford University’s Carcinogenesis Journal, revealed a 33% increase in breast cancer in Black women. This study tracked its participants over the course of about twenty years. In 2011, the Environmental Working Group first petitioned the FDA to ban formaldehyde in hair straighteners and sued them over this issue in 2016. The studies and advocacy discussed in this piece are only a small portion of a long conversation about Black women’s health and hair.