Dandruff or cancer?

October 4, 2004 9:40 AM

Chemical heads Your hair is drab. Dull. Needs more volume. Needs less frizz. It needs something. Maybe it needs cetyl alcohol. Mixed with a dash of propylene glycol, and how about a little butane, or acrylamide? Once upon a time, people lathered, rinsed, never repeated, and went on their merry bad-hair days. Then, science and chemistry specialized the way folks condition and shine. Companies began creating new compounds so they could design products for specific hair types. Now, some consumer groups worry about the mix of chemicals: they point to incomplete labeling and little government oversight of the cosmetics and hair industry, accusations the Food and Drug Administration does not deny. "The FDA needs to define what is safe to put in these products, and come up with standards," says Tim Kropp, a senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit consumer organization in Washington that helped produce a study on problem ingredients in everyday products. "There are no safety standards in place." (to access main link, a little help from BugMeNot). More inside.
posted by matteo (18 comments total)

More info on that sneaky acrylamide here and here

FoodNews here

The classic "Want Cancer With That?" story here
posted by matteo at 9:42 AM on October 4, 2004

There was a great link recently that allowed you to put in a personal care product and it would tell you what harmful/cancerous materials it contained and it's own 'rating' of how dangerous each one was. . . Woudl be relevant, but I can't seem to find it.
posted by Espoo2 at 9:58 AM on October 4, 2004

Ooo there was a study done recently where they took some people and had them stop using any kind of cleansing product on their hair at all - they could only use water to clean it. Supposedly, your hair goes thru an initial oily period, which lasts a few weeks, and then you have the fabbest hair after that, which never needs to be shampooed again, only dry brushed, and then rinsed with water. I have to try and find the article.
posted by iconomy at 10:31 AM on October 4, 2004

Worlds Apart on Consumer Safety
As EU Makes It Easier To Ban Faulty Products, Red Tape Reigns in U.S.
The Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2004
posted by matteo at 10:34 AM on October 4, 2004

Espoo2 - that Mefi thread is here, by Ufez Jones.
posted by pitchblende at 11:03 AM on October 4, 2004

"Repeat." The most profitable single word ever written by an advertising copywriter.
posted by luser at 11:20 AM on October 4, 2004

All is vanity.
posted by jonmc at 11:32 AM on October 4, 2004

The theory goes something like this:

Shampoo strips away all of the hair's sebum, while conditioners are manufactured and pumped up with alcohol to alternately strip moisture and restore it back again. The hair overproduces more oil at the roots to compensate, which you then have to wash away with MORE shampoo. Meanwhile, the ends get overprocessed and fried.

If you find your hair needs extra cleansing power, you use a little baking soda or lemon juice, or both.

Anyway, that's the theory.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:37 AM on October 4, 2004

Any Curly Girls out there? Similar result from a different angle.

When I tell people I don't use shampoo they look at me like I'm nuts. They immediately think I don't wet my hair or something. I'm still working out the kinks of my no-poo method (go ahead, make your jokes), esp. now that the weather has changed, but reading up on this makes you realize all the crap that is in products and how much we've been brainwashed.

Like brushing one's hair every day. What a load of crap for those of us with curly hair. It is the worst thing you can do! And most people who cut hair don't get that you can't cut curly hair like you do straight hair.

Anyway, if you don't wash your hair you have to be careful of the styling products you use (silicones mainly), or so I've read . I was actually going to post an Ask MeFi question to see if anyone can analyze all this info and see if some of the advice is good or not.
posted by evening at 12:00 PM on October 4, 2004

Galaxy Glue, Galaxy Glue, life would fall to pieces without Galaxy Glue!
posted by Addlepated at 12:13 PM on October 4, 2004

wah wah wah chemicals. I heard shampoo also often contains dihydrogen monoxide
posted by delmoi at 12:15 PM on October 4, 2004

Actually, unless you're female or gay, you shouldn't be spending more than five minutes a day on hair care, so this is all irrelevant, anyway.
posted by jonmc at 12:23 PM on October 4, 2004

With a new secret ingredient: Smylex.
posted by NedKoppel at 12:41 PM on October 4, 2004

I once dated a girl that washed her hair with olive oil and/or mayonnaise, and occasionally some goop made for a horse's mane. Her long curly locks were always soft, supple and silky smooth.
posted by shoepal at 1:48 PM on October 4, 2004

Supposedly, your hair goes thru an initial oily period, which lasts a few weeks, and then you have the fabbest hair after that, which never needs to be shampooed again, only dry brushed, and then rinsed with water.

This may be true for some people, but I think the claim is way hyped. My cousin was living on an organic collective for a while and stopped using hair products (because of this popular belief among hippies), and her hair was ok, didn't turn into dreads or anything, but the texture definitely roughened up a bit, like horse mane - it wasn't all silky and soft or anything.

Anyway, if this is true for hair, why not the rest of the body? Why use soap, etc? Or, if hair cleans itself, why use mayonnaise or avocado or any other "natural" methods?
posted by mdn at 2:32 PM on October 4, 2004

This is true. I have very straight fine blond hair, and after I shampooed it it would be wispy and difficult to style. After about a night it would build up some oil or sebum or whatever my scalp secretes, but then I thought it felt too 'oily'. After stopping for a week so using only water, my hair has this funky cool texture. It is not quite as soft as it was with shampoo but it is very stylable and not at all oily. It is definitely superior to the shampooed look for me. I can't say anything about what happens to people with curly or frizzy hair though.
posted by spatula at 3:35 PM on October 4, 2004

I guess I always assumed shampoo was somewhat suspect (Propylene Glycol ?) and I assumed that the operating test of toxicity was something like holding bunnies - submerged but for their noses - immersed in the stuff in question to see if their fur and then their skin and bodies began to disintegrate after a few days.
posted by troutfishing at 11:37 AM on October 5, 2004

Come on, nobody does mean stuff to bunnies. That's crazy talk.
posted by NortonDC at 5:45 PM on October 6, 2004