a dangerous experiment… May 10, 2009

Wow, I’m getting into this now. According to this article  permanent hair dyes used to cause cancer, but now ‘only’ cause “severe allergic reactions” and leukaemia. Thanks to legislation, the most harmful chemicals are already banned. You see, the corporate world does not really feel responsible for you getting cancer or not. But they cannot deny legislation.

“Perhaps the most controversial ingredient in modern hair colorants is p-Phenylenediamine (PPD). Found in permanent dyes, it is linked to rare but sometimes severe allergic reactions. Its use in hair dyes is banned in Germany, France and Sweden.”

Thank God I bought this stuff in Sweden. But some of the chemicals mentioned in the article were also in my Schwartzkopf. So this turned out to be quite a dangerous experiment! Ain’t I a daredevil?

Chemicals in my hair May 9, 2009

I certainly have some vanity in me. I colour my hair. Red. Correction: the reddest red that I can find in the shop. There is certainly an environmental friendly alternative for colouring your hair: henna. Well, I’ve tried it, and I totally dislike that stuff. Have you ever tried it? It smells, and it looks like mud. You have to put it in your hair, cover it with plastic, and remain seated like that for two hours. The result is hardly visible (my natural hair colour is dark brown), and worse, after two times washing you can’t see anything anymore. That’s a lot of work for a short pleasure.

No, then the not-so-environmentally friendly hair colouring stuff. Easy to handle, doesn’t smell, only takes half an hour, and it’s permanent. Yeah, that’s more my style.

So this morning I used the stuff again. But started to wonder a bit why they put so many warnings that you can absolutely not leave this stuff on your head for more than half an hour. What will happen? Does your hair melt off or something? What on earth am I exactly putting on my head here…. And after use, I didn’t know where to go with the leftover packaging. Does this go in the chemical waste??

That’s where I started to consult Greenpeace. They have a (Dutch) website which deals with hazardous chemical substances in make-up. There you also find the link to a website with a list of such substances, which you can still find in your products. So I typed in all ingredients of my hair colourant. Which are A LOT. Incredible how many (chemical) substances there are in one small package…. what to think of Acryl amidopropyltrimonium Chloride/Acrylates Copolymer? Yes, that’s a lot of typing guys! I didn’t get any results by the way, but I’m not so sure whether that means that there are no hazardous substances in this particular product, or that I was just making spelling mistakes.

Since 2007 we have in the EU a policy about subsituting hazardous chemicals (REACH).  That was really hard needed, because those crazy substances are even already found in the blood of newborns. It seems that now many of those substances are forbidden,  most producers of beauty products have taken them out. Pfiew. I hope that also applies for all products I’m using. But there are still a lot of chemicals which are currently not being covered by REACH. So, watch out!