How Safe Are Hair Coloring Products?

One doesn't have to be a woman or man in their baby boomer years witnessing those grey hairs starting to sneak into one's hair to think about the idea of looking a few years younger by using hair color. Even young adults might experiment and color their hair to change their appearance. Dying one's hair has always been probably one of the quickest and easiest ways to shed a few years from one's appearance without expensive plastic surgery, or to just wishing to see what one would look like as a blonde if one's natural hair color is dark. Also, lets face it, many of us might plain be bored with how we look, want a change, and dying one's hair is one means to do so. But just how safe are those hair coloring products?

Looking in the mirror lately, I've noticed those pesky grey hairs coming in again as I have to admit I haven't dyed my hair in sometime. Unlike most women (or men) at my age, I've never had much grey and have more or less have kept most of my dark brown hair color intact without too many grey hairs coming in. Also, even when I first began coloring my hair, I found it just wasn't necessary to continue dying my hair on a monthly basis, more likely I only had to do it every six months or so.

It all started perhaps fifteen years ago, when I decided, that since the public has been programed to believe that blondes are supposed to have more fun, I decided to color my naturally dark brown hair to a radiant, beautiful blonde. The result was a disaster, I looked hideous, as I just plain didn't have the skin tone to compliment the blonde hair. Within a week, I quickly grabbed a dark brown hair color from my nearby Walgreens and changed it back again. So much for being a blonde.

Now that I have that desire of dying my hair again after a long time of not doing it, I'm frankly very hesitant to do so. In the past, while I've used some of the other major known hair dying products, I pretty much stuck with good old, tried and true Clairol's Nice 'n Easy. However, the last two times I did dye my hair, I had a severe reaction. Yes, yes, I know. One is supposed to do a patch test on one's skin and wait 24 to 48 hours to see if one has an allergic reaction to the dye, but since I never experienced any problems before, I was surprised when I had the reaction I did.

The last two times I dyed my hair, at first it didn't bother me. I had made sure I rinsed the excess dye from not only my hair, but any spot where the dye had touched on my skin over and over again. Within an hour however, after dying my hair, I quite literally wanted to rip my own scalp off due the reaction I had gotten. Every place on my skin where some residual dye had touched on my neck, forehead, and so forth turned a beet red. My scalp became super sensitive, scaly, itchy, and also developed areas of redness. I also developed bleeding blisters on my scalp which took a full month to heal and disappear completely. Now you understand my hesitancy of dying my hair again as I just plain don't want to go through that again.

I decided to read up about hair dyes in general to find out what could have caused this reaction when I dyed my hair. Now I have always known that all the popular commercial brand hair dyes had ammonia and peroxide, and yes, people can have an allergic reaction from these two chemicals, but after reading various articles I discovered that there are several other main ingredients that not only can create severe allergic reactions, but are high risk carcinogens. Top of the listing of the Cancer Prevention Coalition's Dirty Dozen of cancer-causing hair care products was, as you can guess, Clairol's Nice 'n Easy. However, this isn't to say that other brands are any safer.(1)

The list of ingredients listed not only in Clairol's Nice 'n Easy, but for the other popular hair dye products reads like a mad-scientist's chemical concoction: Quaternium-15, Diethanolamine (DEA), Propylene Glycol, and P-Phenylenediamine (PPD) just to list a few. It's the latter ingredient, PPD that is the one that is the most likely not only to create the allergic reaction such as I had experience, but the most dangerous as far as being a high risk carcinogen. Each and every single one of these ingredients are carcinogens that can trigger off anything from bladder cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. (2) For some reason the greatest risk for developing cancer for men or women are those who regularly use the darker shades of hair dye, especially black.

One shouldn't be fooled either if the hair dye product adds the words "natural" or "herbal" for while they may contain more natural botanical-type ingredients, they will still have the other chemical ingredients, especially P-Phenylenediamine (PPD). Two such companies that have many botanical type ingredients are EcoColor and Naturtint, however, when reading the listing of ingredients they too have PPD in it.

The bottom line is that any commercial hair dye product that is semi-permanent or permanent will have PPD, and even some non-permanent dyes may also have it in its listing of ingredients. It is this particular chemical that makes hair dye more permanent and won't wash out with the next shampoo. Another ingredient besides PPD that creates the more permanent effect in how long the hair dye will lasts is of course, ammonia. That ingredient alone is not a carcinogen, but mixed with the other popular ingredient found in hair dyes, that is, peroxide turns the blend into a cancer producing one. (3)

I therefore began a search to find a product that truly was more natural and I had heard about Surya Natural Henna Hair Dye, which as you can guess from it's name has henna in it, which is a hair dye that has been used for centuries. I was all set to purchase this product until I was able to read the ingredients from the Natural Expressions Website. This product contains Ethoxydiglicol, Methylpyrrolidone,Ethylene Glicol, Cocoamide Dea, Diethanolamine, Monoethanolamine, Olemide, Acrylates Copoluner, PPG-1 Trideceth-6, all of which are also suspect of being carcinogens. (4)

What then is a safer alternative? I could completely forgo the idea of dying my hair at all, but like most people, I do have a bit of vanity. I want to look my best, and shed some years from my appearance by creating a more youthful look by getting rid of my increasingly greying hair by dying it.

One thing I may explore is to go the total henna route and I found two such possibilities through the Henna For Hair Website and the The Morrocco Method Henna websites. Neither are exactly easier methods of dying one's hair as these hair dying products do not come in nice, neat prepackaged bottles, but are ingredients you have to mix yourself. One usually mixes the henna powders in a glass or ceramic bowl with apple cider vinegar or lemon juice until one gets a thick paste. It may surprise people that since henna is a plant, the color of the powder will be green and so will the paste, yet applied on the hair will turn the hair into the desired color depending on which natural dying powders have been used from the usual red-tones to black. A wonderful detailed 56 page e-book one can download is at the Henna for Hair website and describes in full the whole process of dying one's hair using henna and includes illustrative photographs as well.

So if you are concerned with the safety factor of the familiar chemical hair dye products, either due to the severe allergic reactions one may develop by using them or of their potential for causing cancer due to the carcinogenic ingredients, one may opt for going the totally henna method...I know I'm going to.

Articles for further reference on the chemical dangers of hair dyes

http://www.preventcancer.com/consumers/general/dirty_dozen.htm (1)

http://www.herbalremediesinfo.com/hair-dyes.html (2)

http://www.naturalnews.com/022575.html (3)

http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/cos-818.html

http://www.natural-living-for-women.com/natural-hair-color.html

http://www.preventcancer.com/consumers/general/dirty_dozen.htm

Supposed Natural Hair Dyes

http://www.ecocolors.net/index.cfm?pg=ProfessionalHaircolor

http://www.naturalexpressions.org/hennaforhair.html#Surya%20Nature%20Premixed%20Henna%20Hair%20Dye (3)

Information about the chemicals Ethoxydiglicol, Methylpyrrolidone, Diethanolamine (4)

http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com/ingredient.php?ingred06=702287

http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com/ingredient.php?ingred06=703913

http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com/ingredient.php?ingred06=718373

Henna Products or Websites

http://www.hennaforhair.com/

http://www.morroccomethod.com/henna.shtml#more