When one reads advertisements promoting hair products, it seems as if the manufacturers want nothing more than to soften, detangle and thicken your hair, providing ultimate lustre and colour that “stays gorgeous from week to week.” Apparently they are also concerned with protecting and nourishing your tresses, repairing damaged ends and restoring “natural balance.” To this end, they offer shampoos, conditioners, gels, mousse, straighteners, sprays and dyes concocted from their secret formulas.
There is no doubt personal care products applied to hair are effective to a degree (although the models in the ads always seem to outshine reality), but how safe are they for humans? In the long run, are you doing yourself a disservice by a constant use of cosmetic hair products?
Over the last few decades consumers have begun to ask questions about what goes into cosmetics we apply to our hair and body. As if to placate the public, manufacturers of hair products use positive and healthy-sounding terms such as “nourish,” “protect” and “restore” in addition to promoting “natural ingredients” and naming their products after fruits and flowers. Have products become safer or is this a gimmick?
First of all consumers need to realize, cosmetics including hair products is a multi-billion business (estimated at $4 billion in Canada), and of course, companies marketing their personal care products will use whatever means they can to sell. Secondly, products need to satisfy consumers and do adequately what they are purchased for – in the care of hair products, they need to clean, add shine and shape, volumize and cover gray. Thousands of products, many of them chemically-based, go into the manufacture of these products, a veritable “witches brew” of ingredients as some have said. The problem is that at least some of these chemical components are confirmed or suspected carcinogens are toxic to the reproductive system or known to disrupt the endocrine system (which regulates hormones).
Confirmed as a carcinogen
While Health Canada does a good job of regulating what goes into the manufacture of cosmetics to ensure they are safe to use and pose minimum health risk to Canadians, there are concerns. First of all, unless a chemical ingredient is confirmed as a carcinogen (or toxic in some fashion) which often takes years of research and testing, it may still be on the market. Experts say that Canada’s list of banned chemicals for use in cosmetic manufacture is too narrow; in Europe, for example, at least 400 more products are on the “hot” list.
A second problem is not all manufacturers are honest about the ingredients they list on the label. It’s a formidable task for Health Canada to monitor and test every single of the thousands of beauty products in various brands found in stores around the country. Cosmetic manufacturers often ignore very potent ingredients, passing them off as insignificant since they are present in miniscule amounts. However, using products day after day creates a build-up. Another ploy is obscuring ingredients found in beauty products by using terms on the label only a chemist can understand, or printing them in such a tiny script one needs a magnifying glass to read them.
Let’s consider three hair products which represent why consumers need to be concerned about the safety of using them. The first one is hair straighteners. When Environmental Workers Group (EWG) interviewed cosmetic companies about using formaldehyde in the product, 15 of 16 stated it was not an ingredient in their straightener when it clearly was according to tests.
Hair dyes that were tested had a number of carcinogens present such as phenylenediamines and DEA which interacts with nitrates to form nitrosamines. These products are on Canada’s banned list, but were either not listed on the label or given alternate names.
Hair sprays clearly have a problem since in addition to polymers and solvents, they contain a propellant. Several propellants have been recalled in the last few years because they were linked to cancer. Most of these products also list “fragrance” as an ingredient – this could mean anything.
Consumers need to be ever vigilant and seek out alternatives that contain fewer rather than more ingredients with names that can be pronounced by lay people. Find cosmetic companies that take the safety and health of both consumers and the environment seriously.
