We have never talked about this publicly. But it is time we did.
Earlier this year the LAEL Foundation submitted written evidence to the UK Parliament’s Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. The topic was the safety of hair and beauty products. Specifically, chemical hair relaxers being marketed at children.
And we had a lot to say.
LAEL was founded by someone who grew up in the UK knowing exactly what it felt like to be told your natural hair was not enough. Before building LAEL, our founder spent 2 years working in children’s social care. In those rooms, how a child felt about themselves was never a small thing. Hair, identity, appearance, it all mattered deeply.
So when we started building LAEL’s catalogue and looked seriously at what was actually in some of these products, we could not just move on.
Chemical burns on children as young as five or six. Hair loss. Lasting damage. These were not rare horror stories. They were normalised. Expected. Treated as just part of the process of conforming to a beauty standard that nobody asked Black children if they actually wanted.
That is not okay. And we are not going to pretend it is.
What the science actually says
This is not just a values conversation. The evidence is there.
A 2022 study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute looked at data from more than 33,000 women and found that women who used hair straightening products more than four times a year were more than twice as likely to develop uterine cancer. Around 60% of the women who reported using straighteners in that study were Black. Because Black women use these products more often and tend to start younger, the researchers said the findings were likely even more significant for them.
A separate peer reviewed study tested 18 hair products used by Black women including relaxers and found 45 endocrine disrupting chemicals across every single product category. The ones marketed at children had the highest levels of chemicals either banned in the EU or flagged under California law. And 84% of those chemicals were not listed on the label.
Another NIH funded study found that using hair relaxers was linked to lower chances of getting pregnant.
This is not fringe science. This is peer reviewed, government funded research.
So what did we actually call for
Three things.
A ban on chemical hair relaxer products specifically made or marketed for children under 16. There is no good reason, health, cultural, or commercial, for a children’s version of a product with these risks attached to it.
Mandatory ingredient transparency. If a product contains chemicals linked to cancer or hormone disruption, that needs to be on the label in plain English. Not buried in a technical INCI list that nobody except a chemist can read.
UK funded research into the long term health impacts on Black British women and girls. The US has been studying this for years. The UK has almost nothing. That gap needs to close.
What this means for LAEL
We do not stock chemical relaxers marketed at children. Every brand on the platform is chosen with ingredient safety as a standard we do not compromise on. That has always been the case and it always will be.
The LAEL Foundation exists because we believe beauty access and beauty safety belong together. You should never have to choose between the two.
The full submission is publicly available on the UK Parliament website if you want to read everything we said. 🐝
