You Shouldn’t Have to Risk Your Health to Care for Your Hair: Tell Sally Beauty to Get Cancer-Causing Chemicals Out of Its Products
Jul 6, 2026Joanna Lee
You shouldn’t have to risk your health to care for your hair. No one should.
But Toxic-Free Future’s new analysis of 577 Sally Beauty hair products marketed to Black and brown women found more than one in six of these Sally Beauty products contained chemicals linked to cancer and other serious health problems!
That’s why we’re teaming up with Toxic-Free Future to ask Sally Beauty to remove cancer-causing formaldehyde chemicals and siloxanes from these products.
Everyone deserves safe products. Yet disproportionate use and gaps in product safety standards can lead to higher exposures to hazardous chemicals for some people.
Black and brown women are the primary consumers of many of these hair products and already face disproportionate exposure to toxic chemicals in personal care products. These exposures raise serious health concerns. A 2022 study found that women who used hair straightening products had an increased risk of uterine cancer.
That’s why we’re rallying together to ask Sally Beauty to develop a safer chemical policy with public, quantifiable goals. We’d like Sally Beauty to present a timeline for removing chemicals of concern like formaldehyde and siloxanes from Sally Beauty products while ensuring whatever substitutions the company uses instead are safer for human health.
Customers are already demanding safer products, and stakeholders ranging from other beauty companies to lawmakers are listening.
Washington State already banned formaldehyde in cosmetics and will expand restrictions to formaldehyde releasers — like the kind Sally Beauty sells — in 2027. Brands like Sephora and Ulta Beauty have begun taking action to get toxic chemicals like these out of their beauty products.
With more than 3,700 stores worldwide and billions in annual revenue, Sally Beauty has the power — and the responsibility — to eliminate these chemicals from all stores and online platforms.
Yet Sally Beauty continues to lag behind other retailers in protecting the health of its customers. The company needs to hear from YOU to do the right thing.