Q. I just heard that National Institutes of Health issued a warning recently about hair-straightening products being linked with uterine cancer. Do you have a resource for this?

A. Uterine cancer is said to be the most common cancer of the female reproductive system, with 65,950 estimated new cases in 2022. It appears to be on the rise. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a report in October 2022 citing an 11-year study that linked an increased risk of uterine cancer with the use of hair-straightening products. Women who reported using hair straightening products over four times in the previous year, had more than twice the risk of developing uterine cancer when compared with those who did not use those products.

Che-Jung Chang, Katie M. O’Brien, Alexander P. Keil, Symielle A. Gaston, Chandra L. Jackson, Dale P. Sandler, Alexandra J. White. Use of Straighteners and Other Hair Products and Incident Uterine Cancer. Journal of the National Cancer Institute DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djac165 (2022).