Hair Relaxers Will Be Safer without Formaldehyde, but It’s Just a Start

I was in fourth grade when I got my hair relaxed for the first time. My mom took me to a professional salon, and Game Boy in hand, I sat in the chair, nervous but excited. My mom and sometimes other relatives had always braided my hair at home, and now, at age nine, I wanted straight hair. The hairdresser took out my long braids, washed my hair, and then applied a thick white cream that looked like my dad’s shaving cream.

Within seconds, it began to burn, a lot. I clenched my teeth, bearing the searing pain in my scalp because that was what it would take to get the silky, straight hair I coveted.

My natural hair was long and soft, but somehow, I had gotten the message early on that it was inadequate. I knew, even then, that the pressure I felt to straighten my hair was rooted in white supremacy, but I didn’t have the words to name it yet, let alone the wherewithal to fight it.

I got the straight hair I wanted, but only temporarily. My healthy, thick, long hair began to thin and break off. It took several years to get it healthy. I never relaxed my hair again and now I have learned that relaxers can cause hair loss, pain and scalp inflammation.

The announcement that the Food and Drug Administration was proposing a ban on hair relaxers that contain formaldehyde and compounds that off-gas formaldehyde, brought back all these memories. Researchers are finding more and more evidence that formaldehyde causes health problems. As a Black woman and a physician, I think this proposed ban is reassuring. But safer beauty products are not enough to protect Black women. We need to end the anti-Black racism that pushes women to use those products in the first place.

While we can use flat irons to straighten our hair, this is temporary. 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. Typically, a stylist will keep the relaxer solution in the hair for 10 to 15 minutes and will use a comb to smooth the hair into a straight position. Then, they will rinse the relaxer out with hot water and add a neutralizing shampoo to stop the chemical reaction. This heat step breaks down the relaxer solution, releasing formaldehyde, a colorless gas, into the air.

Last year, one study found women who used formaldehyde hair straighteners at least four…