A Hairy Problem

‘Tis the season for ads that tell us all the ways we don’t measure up and promise to fix it for us. Among all the “keep up with the Joneses” commercials are a good number of “you don’t look good enough for holiday gatherings” offerings. You must whiten your teeth! You must get rid of your wrinkles! You simply must do something about your hair!

I’ve been thinking about hair in particular ever since I watched the CMA awards this year and saw Mickey Guyton’s show-stopping performance of “Love my Hair.” Guyton, who’s black, wrote the song in response to an incident in which a young black girl was sent home from school because her hair didn’t meet the school’s dress code requirements.

Most of us haven’t faced anything quite that in-your-face when it comes to not meeting appearance standards, but it doesn’t mean we don’t get the message. Every culture has a standard of beauty, and the farther we think we are from it, the more time, energy, and money we’re likely to spend on trying to hit the mark. Unfortunately, that’s not all it can cost us. Beauty products are mostly unregulated and untested and can also cost us our health.

Sickening Beauty

We don’t know all we need to know about the health effects of commonly used products. We don’t even know everything that’s in them. As a Guardian article notes, the single word “fragrance” can mean a combination of 50 to 300 different chemicals. The same article also quotes an expert who says, “No state, federal or global authority is regulating the safety of fragrance chemicals. No state, federal or global authority even knows which fragrance chemicals appear in which products.”

What we do know about personal care products is alarming. The documentary Toxic Beauty (which is well worth watching) notes that many products we use every day contain chemicals which are endocrine disrupters, meaning they mess with our hormones. We have over 50, including insulin, serotonin, melatonin, cortisol, thyroid, and reproductive hormones, and disrupting them can have wide-ranging effects. The film reports surprising product ingredients, such as coal tar in soaps, creams, and lipstick; arsenic in toothpaste; mercury in skin lighteners; and formaldehyde in deodorant and shampoo. The long list of potential health effects of the nine products they list includes cancer, heart disease, infertility, miscarriage, tremors, cognitive dysfunction, lung disorders, kidney damage, insomnia, and depression.

The Gender and Color Gap

There are products almost all of us use (soap, shampoo, deodorant, and toothpaste), products more women use (makeup and nail products), and products used more by women of color (skin lighteners and hair straighteners). A Popular Science article reports that the average white woman in America is exposed to 168 personal care chemicals every day and that for women of color, the number is even higher. Not surprisingly, women, and black women in particular, have a higher body burden of the chemicals generally found in cosmetics.

Most of us aren’t going to give up soap and shampoo, but we could give up other products if we decided not to try to conform to arbitrary standards. It’s a great goal, but there are reasons we don’t. There’s plenty of research showing that physical appearance affects career success and all sorts of other things. Personally, I wear less makeup and use far fewer products than I once did, but I do still make a bit of an effort to look culturally acceptable. I feel the pressure as an aging white woman. I can only imagine the pressure for women of color.

Actually, I don’t have to just imagine. I certainly have no idea what it’s like to be black or brown in the USA with all the history and cultural baggage that entails, but I did live in Central and South America for a decade, so I know what it’s like to have skin and hair that don’t fit. I know what it’s like to be told by my friends about places I shouldn’t go because the color of my skin made it too dangerous. I know what it’s like to be pulled over while driving because of how I look.

On one hard-to-explain occasion I realized how much I had internalized the message that a normal skin tone was one that was different than mine. I drove past a brown skinned woman holding a white skinned baby and thought “That baby looks odd. He’s so white.”  It took a few beats for me to remember that I was pregnant and that my own baby was going to look like that. It took a few more beats to recall that I myself had that same strange skin.

And then there’s hair. There’s only so much we can do to change the color of our skin, but there’s a lot we can do to our hair. When I was younger and sillier, the combination of not loving my hair and not focusing on chemical dangers prompted me to get a perm. Because I lived in a country where my hair was different from the norm and the hairdresser was unfamiliar with hair like mine, the results were fairly disastrous. It led to the following conversation with my 3-year-old son.

Son: Why did you get your hair big?

Me: I thought it would be pretty. Do you think it’s pretty?

Son: No.

My point is simply this: As much as I believe the goal (for all of us, white, black, and brown) should be to get to a point where we celebrate ourselves and each other for the uniquenesses of our individual bodies, I know there are also valid reasons we try to fit in. I also understand the added pressure of being farther from the norm. So if we aren’t going to give up all the things we think will improve our appearance, we need to make sure that what we’re using isn’t going to make us sick.

Choosing Healthier Products

Fortunately, not all personal care products are created equal. The Skin Deep database is a good place to look for information on healthier options. Unfortunately, there’s disparity in product offerings as well. In 2016 the Environmental Working Group evaluated more than a thousand products marketed to black women and concluded that there were fewer healthier choices in that category.

The good news is that often we can achieve our goals without having to purchase manufactured products at all. Simple, natural ingredients can work surprisingly well in many instances. It does take time and experimentation, though, to find what works best for you. As people around me may have noticed, my experimentation with DIY mascara isn’t going particularly well (but I haven’t given up!) At least I haven’t had the experience one chemically sensitive woman shared. She used something a bit sticky on her eyelashes, then went to church and shut her eyes to pray. When she tried to open them again, she found they were stuck together.

Whatever the current state of your eyelashes, I hope you feel beautiful today (or handsome, for the guys reading this). I hope you never have to choose between trying to meet beauty standards and your health, but if you do, I hope you choose to protect your health. I hope you’ll remember that you’re made in God’s image and are his absolute masterpiece. I also truly hope you love your hair.

The Name Game: Deciphering Furniture and Home Improvement Terms

I’m still deep in the throes of preparing for a move. As I look at space allocation options for the suite that my son and I are planning to build in his garage, it’s becoming increasingly clear that even the few furniture pieces I had planned to take are going to be too big and I’m going to have to make some new purchases. For people with chemical sensitivities, any purchase can be problematic, and requires much research. As I shop for possibilities online, I’m reminded of the games that manufacturers and marketers play and the confusion that exists among the general public regarding materials used in furniture and housing. It’s not easy to figure out what we’re actually getting.

Here are a few confusing terms related to the home environment:

· Solid wood – Technically, something made of solid wood is made of basic lumber. Much of the wood furniture sold today, however, is made of a manufactured wood product, such as particleboard, medium density fiberberboard (MDF), high density fiberboard (HDF) or oriented strand board (OSB). Chipboard, flakeboard, furniture board, composite wood, and engineered wood are other possible terms. Manufacturers may refer to them as “solid wood products” or as of being made of “wood solids.” Sometimes private sellers advertising products on sites like eBay or Craigslist will say that a piece of furniture made from particleboard is solid wood. This may be due to confusion as to material type, but sometimes I think they just mean that the piece doesn’t contain metal or upholstery.

Manufactured wood products combine small wood particles with an adhesive resin. Plywood uses layers of wood rather than particles, but otherwise the principle is the same. When used in furniture, manufactured wood is generally covered with a laminate or veneer, making the identification process more challenging. The toxicity of manufactured wood can be high, and comes from the adhesives, which often contain large amounts of formaldehyde and other problematic chemicals.

· Bonded leather – Bonded leather is the fabric equivalent of manufactured wood. Wikipedia expains that “bonded leather is made by shredding leather scraps and leather fiber, then mixing it with bonding materials. The mixture is next extruded onto a fiber cloth, or paper backing, and the surface is usually embossed with a leather-like texture or grain.” The amount of natural leather in bonded leather products can vary significantly and can sometimes be quite low. The primary bonding material is generally polyurethane, and among the other chemicals commonly found in bonded leather are plasticizers, which have been associated with a range of health problems.

Terms for leather-like synthetic fabrics (which are generally some form of vinyl) include leatherette, pleather, and naugahyde. “Vegan leather” is an especially interesting term. It can refer to any non-animal leather-like product. Generally it refers to vinyl, but can occasionally refer to alternative leathers made from cork or kelp.

· Linoleum – True linoleum is a product made from linseed oil and natural materials such as powdered cork, tree resin, and limestone. It was once used widely as a flooring material, but has now been largely replaced by vinyl. Generally, manufacturers and marketers don’t use the term incorrectly, but private sellers, realtors, and landlords may refer to linoleum flooring when the flooring is actually a vinyl product.

· Hardwood or ceramic floors – Another flooring issue that people searching for healthy housing often encounter is that homes or apartments advertised as having hardwood or ceramic tile floors may actually be floored with a laminate. Laminates have a manufactured wood core with a photographic layer bonded to it that simulates wood or ceramic. Generally the term “floating floor” refers to laminate flooring.

Shopping with health in mind means learning to be a code-breaker. It’s not easy, but it’s important. Once I’ve cracked this code, I’ll move on to another: trying to decipher the color designations. Is elm bark, for example, more brown or gray? This all makes my head spin.

Trying to Get a Product Off the Market

I read an article this week that did a good job of illustrating how little regulation there is for cosmetic products and how hard it is to remove them from the market. A special report by Environmental Health News looked at the history of a problematic hair straightener. That article and a page of information from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) made the following points:

  • About 2,000 new cosmetic products enter the market each year and companies are not required to gain approval for them or disclose their ingredients.

  • Removing a product from the market requires a federal court battle. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not have authority to recall cosmetic products.

  • The hair straightening formulation contains high levels of methylene glycol, the liquid form of formaldehyde, which has been linked to a wide range of health concerns, including cancer. When OSHA tested the air in hair salons using the product, they found formaldehyde levels that exceeded the federal safely limit. During the blow drying phase of treatment, the formaldehyde levels in one salon were found to be five times the safety threshold.

  • An employee of the California Department of Public Health noted that the sale of the hair straightener violated five separate laws and resulted in numerous injuries, but that they had not been able to get it banned.

  • The product remains in salons despite the fact that several states have issued health alerts and the California Attorney General won a settlement regarding deceptive advertising and failure to disclose a cancer-causing ingredient. The Food and Drug Administration also cited the manufacturer for adulteration and misbranding of the product and a review panel of health experts called it unsafe.

  • Stylists profiled in the article now suffer from what the author calls "an odd, lasting sensitivity" to products such as cleaning agents, fragrances and hair spray. Readers of the this blog know the situation is actually not odd at all. Formaldehyde is a known sensitizer, which often sets people on the path of chemical illness.

  • OSHA found that many products containing formaldehyde did not list the chemical on either the label or the MSDS (material safety data sheet). They note that even products that claim to be formaldehyde free can still expose workers to the chemical.

It's nice to assume that products allowed to be sold are safe and that those proved otherwise can be easily recalled. Unfortunately, that just isn't the case. We have to take the initiative ourselves to protect our health and the health of those around us. I mentioned in last week's blog post that I didn't think deodorant was worth dying for. I also wouldn't trade my health for straighter hair. How about you?

A “Fresh” Blog Post

I've been thinking about the word "fresh" recently. Although there are alternative meanings, the general definition of the word is "new." Often something fresh replaces something old, stale, or worn-out. We put on fresh socks or ask a friend to help us think of some fresh ideas for a project.

The air inside a building gets contaminated by the products used within it. In addition, humans inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, so when people are in a building, the air gets progressively less healthy from the simple act of breathing. We replace old, stale air with new, fresh air by opening windows or using ventilation systems. In no way whatsoever do we improve air quality by using those ridiculously named products known as “air fresheners."

Here are a handful of "air freshener" facts:

  • The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that most air fresheners contain formaldehyde and petrochemicals. They also contain a chemical known as 1,4-Dichlorobenzene (1,4,-DCB) which is an EPA-registered pesticide. It can cause cancer and lung damage and increases asthma rates. The chemical "freshens" the air by damaging nasal receptors. It does not remove odors, but removes people's ability to smell them.

  • A study comparing homes in which air fresheners were used every day with those in which they were used once a week or less found that babies in the daily-use homes had significantly more earaches and diarrhea, and their mothers suffered nearly 10% more headaches and had a 26% increase in depression.

  • Many air fresheners contain acetone and propane. They are toxic to the heart, blood, respiratory system, skin, gastrointestinal system, kidney, nervous system and liver.

  • Exposure to air freshener chemicals as little as once a week can increase your risk of developing asthma symptoms by up to 71%.

  • Most air fresheners contain phthalates, which are hormone-disrupting chemicals that can cause birth defects and infertility. These chemicals are even found in air fresheners designated as "unscented" or "all natural".

  • The human body stores chemicals like those found in air fresheners in fatty tissue. The body may hold onto fat as a way to protect itself from the release of the toxins.

  • Air freshener chemicals, including camphor, phenol, ethanol, formaldehyde, and artificial fragrances can cause a wide variety of health symptoms, including dizziness, coughing, rashes, mental confusion, and headaches, including migraines.

  • One study found that women with the highest usage of household chemicals, including air fresheners, had twice the risk of breast cancer of those with the lowest chemical usage rates.

Although air fresheners abuse and misuse the word "fresh," they aren't the only product to do so. I recently saw an advertisement for a laundry detergent that claimed it now had a higher percentage of "freshness." Really? I imagine what the marketers mean is that more fragrance chemicals have been added to the already potent and toxic mix. It's easy to get duped by marketing ploys, but we don't have to buy into the crazy-ness. We can break away from the crowd. We can have a fresh perspective. We can make a fresh start.

Sources: Are Air Fresheners Bad for Your Health?
Silent Menace
Air Fresheners: Easy Greening
How Air Fresheners Are Killing You
Air Fresheners' Real Impact on Indoor Air Quality

A Bit of Good News

There's some good news on the toxins-in-common-products front this week. The Johnson and Johnson company has announced plans to remove a number of problematic chemicals from its products by 2015. The company had previously begun moving in a safer direction by setting a goal of 2013 for reformulating its baby product line.

The move comes after several years of pressure from health and environmental groups. Chemicals to be removed include formaldehyde, which is released from common preservatives, and triclosan, a widely-used antibacterial ingredient. Phthalates, certain fragrance ingredients, and some parabens will also be eliminated.

I have to admit to a bit of cynicism. History shows that sometimes toxic ingredients are removed from products only to be replaced with something that later proves to be equally problematic. I also doubt that enough health-impacting ingredients will be removed to make most of the products safe for those of us with serious chemical sensitivities.

Still, there is reason to be pleased with the news. In a New York Times article on the announcement, a Johnson and Johnson official is quoted as saying that “there’s a very lively public discussion going on about the safety of ingredients in personal care products.” The fact that manufacturers are beginning to hear and respond to the discussion is certainly positive.

Activists hope that other manufacturers will follow Johnson and Johnson's lead. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics plans to continue to put pressure on other companies to do so. There are more than 175 nonprofit groups represented in the coalition.

The work of advocates and activists is important and welcomed, but none of us need to rely on them or wait for manufacturers to make changes. We can value our health and the health of those around us enough to make safer product choices now. Every purchase we make not only impacts us in the present, but is a vote telling manufacturers what we want to see on the shelves in the future. No one can force us to buy toxic products. We get to choose what we buy and what we use. Every day we get to make that choice and every day it has consequences. Let's choose wisely.

How Does Someone Become Chemically Sensitive?

It seems likely that chemical sensitivity has a variety of etiologies, similar to the way that nausea may be caused by such diverse factors as food poisoning, chemotherapy, and pregnancy. At the heart of the matter, however, is generally a problem with the body's detoxification system. When people are unable to fully process toxins they accumulate and cause damage and symptoms.

Despite the determined efforts of some to paint MCS as a psychological disorder, there is no shortage of evidence proving it to be a very real physical condition. For instance:

  • Animal models point to a physical cause. Studies show that animals exposed to repeated low levels of chemicals over a period of time can become extremely reactive and sensitive to minute traces of those chemicals.

  • People who became sick after exposure to certain chemicals in Operation Desert Storm were found to have lower amounts of a specific enzyme than others who had higher amounts and weren’t sickened.

  • Women with a genetic profile involving two genes associated with detoxifying toxic compounds were found to be over 18 times more likely to have MCS compared to women with a different genetic makeup. Women with variations in just one of the implicated genes were also more likely to develop chemical sensitivities.

  • Genetic abnormalities can themselves be caused by chemicals. Many chemicals are capable of mutating genes or turning them on or off.

  • Lab tests of some MCS sufferers reveal abnormal activity in one or more of the eight enzymes involved in heme production. (Heme is the primary component of hemoglobin in red blood cells.)

  • Nasal abnormalities consistent with chronic inflammation have been found in patients with MCS. Damaged mucosa enhances absorption of inhaled chemicals, and often permits rapid entry into the brain.

  • Testing often shows people with chemical sensitivities to be “pathological detoxifiers” in which Phase I of liver detoxification is faster than Phase II, leading to a buildup of toxic metabolites in the body.

  • Groups of independent researchers have found distinct abnormalities of brain metabolism in people with MCS. The neurotoxic pattern is very different from the abnormalities reported in psychiatric disease.

  • Tests measuring blood flow to the brain (SPECT scans) show differences between MCS patients and normal controls. MCS patients demonstrate severe deterioration when they are challenged by chemicals in concentrations found in everyday situations.


Certain people may be more likely than others to become chemically sensitive, but no one is immune to the danger. We all have finite bodies capable of detoxifying a limited chemical burden, and it's impossible to know who might be one exposure away from exceeding that limit. Although it's wise to reduce and eliminate all chemical exposures, some substances are especially likely to set people on the road to MCS. These are known as "sensitizers." Pesticides and formaldehyde (found in many personal care, cleaning, building, and furniture products) are known sensitizers that are very important to avoid.

People with chemical sensitivities need your help to function in this world. Those without chemical sensitivities need your help to stay that way. You, yourself, may be one chemical exposure away from developing MCS. Reducing chemical exposures is the right thing to do for everyone's sake.

For more information:
http://www.environmentalhealth.ca/Ross2000.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0041008X99987033 http://www.nettally.com/prusty/case-control%20study.pdf http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/epigenetics-workshop http://www.mcsrr.org/factsheets/porphyri.html http://www.mcsbeaconofhope.com/meggsa2.html http://www.digitalnaturopath.com/treat/T355089.html