Recently, Unilever has reached a settlement agreement to pay $2 million in response to a class action lawsuit involving their Suave brand products. The suit alleges that certain Suave products were contaminated with benzene, a well-known human carcinogen.
The class action suit, filed on November 18, 2021, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, was initiated by Yvonne Barnes and Patricia Dean, the plaintiffs. They claimed that the Suave 24-hr Protection Powder Aerosol Antiperspirant was defective due to the inclusion of benzene, which Unilever had failed to disclose on the product labels.
While Unilever issued a recall for these products in 2022, the lawsuit alleges that consumers may still have been exposed to benzene despite the recall efforts. The affected products include the Suave 24-hr Protection Powder Aerosol Antiperspirant and Fresh Aerosol Antiperspirant, which were sold between January 1, 2018, and March 7, 2024.
According to reports from Open Class Actions, Unilever’s internal investigations revealed that some of their Suave deodorant sprays contained higher levels of benzene than anticipated. Third-party testing conducted by Valisure, a pharmaceutical testing company, discovered benzene concentrations of 5.21 parts per million (ppm) in the Suave 24-hr Protection Powder Aerosol, which is 2.6 times the concentration limit set by the FDA.
It is worth noting that Unilever emphasized in their recall statement that benzene was not listed as an ingredient in any of the recalled products. Instead, the unexpected presence of benzene was attributed to the propellant used in the aerosol formulation.
As part of the settlement, class members who purchased eligible products can now claim a refund. The final hearing for this case has been scheduled for September, where the court will review the settlement agreement and consider its approval.
