Chapter 7: Khemical Warfare

The voices of the wounded tell the story most clearly. They speak of childhoods marked by ritual pain, of scalps scarred by caustic creams, of a beauty industry that normalized suffering in the name of conformity. Their testimonies, now emerging in courtrooms across America, reveal the true cost of this chemical assault on the Black crown.

 

The Chemical Weapons

 

The most infamous of these are chemical relaxers, which function by breaking the disulphide bonds in keratin—the protein that gives hair its strength and curl. Among them, *sodium hydroxide* ("lye") stands at the centre. On the cosmetic shelf it appears as a cream promising sleekness and manageability, yet in industry it is used to pulp paper, refine petroleum, and even unclog drains.¹ It is an unforgiving alkali, capable of dissolving organic matter, and when applied to the scalp it can burn, scar, and destroy follicles. Dermatologists have long documented the epidemic of chemical burns and scarring alopecia among Black women and girls who relied on these products from early childhood.²

 

"The relaxer would burn so bad that I would have scabs on my scalp for weeks afterward,"* recalls Rhonda Terry, another plaintiff in the recent wave of lawsuits. *"My mother would put Vaseline on the burns and tell me it was normal. I thought every little Black girl went through this. I didn't know white girls didn't have to endure this pain just to have 'acceptable' hair."*³

 

When consumer backlash grew in the 1990s and 2000s, the industry responded with so-called **"no-lye" relaxers**, usually combining calcium hydroxide with guanidine carbonate to form guanidine hydroxide.⁴ The marketing emphasized gentleness, yet the chemistry remained caustic. Calcium hydroxide, known industrially as slaked lime, is used to treat sewage, condition soil, and in cement. Guanidine carbonate appears in industrial surface treatments and laboratory synthesis. On the scalp, the mixture still burns, though often more slowly and subtly—leading to cumulative irritation that weakens the barrier of the skin and opens the body to chronic inflammation.