Are these popular salon treatments a health threat?

A few years ago, strange things began to happen to Merideth Pedack.

The Washington-based hairstylist found she could taste her clients’ deodorant on the back of her tongue, even from ten feet away. A sharp metallic smell clung to her nose throughout the day, and she started getting grinding headaches that seemed to last longer and longer with each passing week until one day they simply never stopped.  

“The pounding in my brain and skull and spine and eyes and ears. It was all day. It was all night,” says Pedack, who started having panic attacks from the pain. “The sound of people’s voices hurt. My eyeballs hurt to move. I couldn’t look at screens. I couldn’t watch TV. I couldn’t listen to music. It is a nightmare to be in that much pain.”  

She says she could no longer work or even leave her house.  

Pedack says her doctors told her she had developed a severe form of chemical intolerance known as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) from the products she used at work, causing her body to overreact to any and all chemicals in her environment. 

Although there is no medical consensus on the exact definition of MCS, studies show that sufferers experience debilitating headaches, respiratory discomfort, impaired memory and chronic pain, which can lead to significant emotional distress and isolation. Pedack said her friends and family couldn’t enter her home unless they conducted a complex decontamination protocol. 

Though Pedack’s case is extreme, hers is one of many health struggles that disproportionately affect those who work with hair dyes and chemical straighteners that contain formaldehyde, polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), DNA-damaging phenylenediamines, and hormone-disrupting phthalates. 

Multiple studies suggest that, compared to the general population, hairdressers have a higher risk of cancer; reproductive disorders and respiratory illnesses; and are more likely to give birth to babies with congenital defects. 

In 2022, a study led by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) found that women––particularly Black women who used chemical hair straightening products—were over twice as likely to develop uterine cancer than those who didn’t. Thousands of ongoing lawsuits have been filed on the heels of these findings, claiming some of the country’s most popular hair relaxing manufacturers sold products they knew, or should have known,could hurt people.

“Salon workers shouldn’t have to choose between their health and their career,” said Danica Winters, owner of The Plum, a holistic hair salon in San Francisco.

Risks to hairstylists 

Hairstylists are overexposed and under-protected from dangerous and potentially life-threatening chemicals, says Astrid Williams, an adjunct professor of health sciences at the University of Phoenix and environmental justice manager for Black Women For Wellness. 

“Studies show that salon workers suffer from significantly higher rates of disease compared to other occupations,” she said.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has legal limits for workplace chemical exposure and issues fines to salons that violate safety regulations. But, according to Jamie McConell, deputy director at Women’s Voices for the Earth (WVE), an organization that has been advocating for salon workplace safety for nearly a decade, many salon workers are independent contractors who are not officially employed by the salon they work at, meaning they don’t have the same workplace protections. 

As a result, salon workers are a particularly under-protected demographic. Something many of them remain unaware of. 

“There’s this idea that there are folks out there who care and would not subject us to products that would be super harmful to our health,” said San Francisco-based hair stylist Opal Baedeker.

Since 2023, the FDA has repeatedly missed self-imposed deadlines to propose a ban on formaldehyde in cosmetics products.

During reporting for this article that occurred last year, an FDA representative told National Geographic that the ban continues to be a high priority, and that the agency had been conducting additional research ahead of a rule to ban formaldehyde. They added that “the rulemaking process takes time. Before a proposed rule can be published in the Federal Register for public comment, it must be reviewed and approved within both the FDA and other parts of the Federal government.”

The FDA did not respond to a recent request to comment on whether the ban remains a high priority.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) obtained FDA emails via the Freedom of Information Act, which show that the first reported adverse event for hair smoothing products in the FDA’s CAERS database occurred in 1993.

A complicated regulatory landscape

Unlike food or drugs, cosmetics manufacturers, with the exception of color additive manufacturers, don’t need FDA approval before they are put on store shelves, according to the FDA’s website. Instead, the FDA relies on post-market surveillance and voluntary reporting when something goes wrong, or someone gets hurt.

In 2023, chemical exposure from cosmetic products triggered the most health risk alerts issued by the European Union’s monitoring network, which prompted some member nations to recall products. Yet, not a single cosmetics product was recalled in the U.S. in 2023, according to the FDA’s database of recalled products.

Part of the reason for this discrepancy is the difference in banned and restricted chemicals in cosmetics. Since 1976, European countries have banned or restricted over 2,500 chemicals used in cosmetics, while the FDA has banned or restricted only 11 chemicals in nearly double that timespan.

Instead, the FDA issues public health alerts and sends manufacturers warning letters, which are essentially advisory notices asking for voluntary compliance.

According to an FDA spokesperson earlier this year, “the FDA can, and does, take action on unsafe cosmetics, even if the unsafe ingredients are not specifically banned or restricted.”

What do ingredient labels really tell us?

Until the recent passing of the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act in 2022, the FDA’s regulatory power over cosmetics was concentrated on labels, requiring that personal care products contain a complete and accurate list of ingredients on the packaging. The new law gives the FDA more authority to regulate product labels and production facilities and recall harmful products.

Providing a list of ingredients should, in theory, allow both consumers and salon workers to make informed choices about product safety.

The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act prohibits misleading labels. However, companies are not required to disclose trade secrets like “fragrance” or “flavor”, according to the FDA’s website, making it difficult to determine whether or not toxins are present.

And if a hair stylist knew the dangers of a particular chemical, they would also need to be able to identify it from a lineup of what OSHA refers to as chemical “synonyms” on product labels.

Known toxins like polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) can show up as polytetrafluoroethylene, perfluorooctyl triethoxysilane, perfluorodecalin, and perfluorohexane. 

Formaldehyde can appear as formalin, methanal, diazolidinyl urea, morbicid acid, glyoxal, methylene glycol, glyoxylic acid, cyclopentasiloxane, and a number of other alphabet-salads.  

“It’s absolutely ridiculous to expect anyone to know what all of these ingredients are,” said Baedeker, a hairstylist for 25 years who claims she started getting debilitating migraines and developed symptoms of asthma after doing chemical hair straightening treatments.

She points out that product labels in the U.S. don’t indicate chemical concentrations, or harmful byproducts that might result when the product chemically reacts with other common hair products. 

“No person on this planet is going to memorize these ingredients or know how they work together, aside from someone who is specifically a chemist making these products,” Baedeker added.

Baedeker says she assumed that the hair products being sold were completely safe to use.  

“If somebody said, you need to stop what you’re doing or you could be so sick that—maybe you won’t be dead, but you’ll wish that you were—I would have made different choices,” said Pedack. “I found out the hard way.”