Beware of those hair care products.

Ways you can avoid wasting money on these products

Have you bothered to investigate the chemical ingredients used in the formulation of some hair products, which most hair manufacturers boast of? Does the National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, the agency responsible for regulating, testing and verifying what companies put in their bottles do just that? That’s a glaring oversight when you consider that few of the ingredients that are in hair-care products cause colossal damage to your hair.

Paying a visit at most of the supermarkets, the wide array of hair care products on display on the shelves is enough to make anyone dizzy. Worse still is the claim that each tend to make, most of which leaves the consumer more confused than ever.

Mary Ikpe, a 24 year old undergraduate student of the University of Calabar says “Shopping for a relaxer for my hair used to be fun. But these days getting the right kind of product for my hair has proved extremely difficult, what with all the labels promising something different. It bothers me.”

For instance some hair products today claim to be “balancing,” “bio-infused,” “natural,” “nutrient-rich,” “organic” and “voluminizing,” among other terms. How can you tell whether any of the stuff works?

As we discovered from our research and our conversations with experts, you can’t. Manufacturers aren’t required to provide any data for consumers about the effectiveness or safety of their hair-care products, so they don’t. The local manufacturers do not neither do the foreign manufacturers whose products we mostly patronize. You can scan the ingredient label that’s on the back of the bottle, but unless you have a background in materials science, that probably won’t get you far. Besides,most of the hair care products sold in Nigeria are imported and made for whites with silky long hair, not for Africans with kinky short hair. And even those purportedly made for Africans claim to have the same ingredients as the imported ones.

The scary truth is that many hair-care products include toxic ingredients. Even Baby’s products are not exempted. Look at the recent case with Johnson’s Baby Shampoo , which claims to keep babies’ hair “looking beautifully healthy and shiny,” was found to contain the toxins 1,4-dioxane and formaldehyde in a 2009 report by Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CFSC), which is a nonprofit coalition that’s dedicated to eliminating chemicals from cosmetics.

You would think that Food and Drug Administration would jump at the chance to ensure the verification and removal of toxic ingredients from baby products, particularly when you consider that 1,4-dioxane and formaldehyde are deemed probable human carcinogens by Environmental Protection Agency. But unfortunately this isn’t so. Even in the United States, according to reports, the FDA says it is “evaluating” whether the two carcinogens “cause health problems under the intended conditions of use” or whether they are unintended (and thus, permitted) byproducts of the manufacturing process.

“The wise thing to do would have been to take a precautionary approach and just not put known carcinogens in any hair product, but companies aren’t just doing that.

 

 According to reports from an international organization the Environmental Working Group (EWG), all hair-care products contain ingredients that haven’t been assessed for safety by either FDA or the hair-care industry’s Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) panel. And as long as companies don’t claim that their products have a specific health benefit, FDA and Federal Trade Commission allow manufacturers to make any claim that they want. This lack of regulation is why hair care products labels typically are full of vague promises, such as “promotes healthy hair” or “intended to heal hair.”

But recently, there actually was a federal warning in regard to hair-care product safety. In April, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sent a national health-hazard alert to hair-salon workers about the potentially dangerous levels of formaldehyde that are in hair-straightening products. OSHA instructed salon owners who use these products to install proper ventilation systems, post warnings, train workers in chemical-safety procedures and provide protective equipment, such as chemical-resistant aprons, gloves, respirators and splash goggles, according to reports.

We haven’t seen any replication of such efforts from our local agencies here in Nigeria. In the case of Nigeria it is “buyers beware’. The consumer is alone. Therefore the consumer is expected to get educated and make informed decisions