Many women with curly or wavy hair who want straight hair use hair straighteners. However, these chemical agents are now suspected of increasing the risk of uterine cancer. According to a recent US study, hair straightening products increase the risk of developing cervical cancer if they are used frequently. The risk of developing the cancer, which is rare in itself, was twice as high in women who used chemical hair straighteners as in women who never used the products.
“We estimated that 1.64 percent of women who have never used hair straighteners would develop cervical cancer by the age of 70, but for frequent users that risk rises to 4.05 percent,” says study leader Alexandra White US National Institutes of Environmental Health Safety (NIEHS).
Hormonally effective
The researchers studied around 34,000 women between the ages of 35 and 74 over a period of eleven years. During this time, 378 women developed cervical cancer. After accounting for other risk factors, women who had used straightening products more than four times in the previous year were more than two and a half times more likely to develop uterine cancer.
Less frequent use of the straighteners over the past year was also associated with an increased risk of uterine cancer, but the difference was not statistically significant.
Previous research has shown that hair straighteners contain endocrine disrupting chemicals, meaning they can affect the hormone system. They have previously been linked to a higher risk of breast and ovarian cancer. “These results are the first epidemiological evidence of an association between the use of straightening products and cervical cancer,” wrote White and colleagues in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The study found no association between cervical cancer and other hair products containing chemicals used for dyeing, bleaching, highlighting, or perming.