Submitted by MistWeaver80 t3_10no1mj in science
Similarly finger-nail salons are probably toxic chemical factories that expose workers and clients
Do...white hairdressers not use the exact same products?
There's a belief that makeup and hair artists are crazy because of all the chemicals they expose themselves to.
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I'm not sure about Latine hairdressers, but Black hairdressers are exposed to more dangerous chemicals and at a more frequent rate.
Sounds like they should use different products then
Oh wow! Why have they not thought about that before?!
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Yeah?
"Many people are saying?" Now where have I heard that before.
The exposure of the workers will be chronic, which can lead to bad long-term health problems. I have seen this in guys that paint automobiles.
Clients will be exposed for short times every few weeks, which would reduce the risk.
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Why do they use different products?
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Generally speaking black people's hair has different care needs so they use different products, but there should still be natural/gentler alternatives with less chemicals available.
The fumes can also be deliberately abused as inhalants...and lead to brain damage not to mention cancer etc
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I feel like there’s a super hero origin story lurking in here somewhere.
Wait why is this specific to the ethnicity of the workers…? I have to be missing something here
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Do you not know that different races have different hair texture
edit: ya'll truly do not go outside or mingle with diverse races and it shows
This is what I think of when someone condescendingly says “Everything is a chemical.” Yes, but we are pretty familiar with the effects of water and oxygen.
I think hairdressers can serve different races.
Rarely is the case, very obviously observable in real life too.
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Majority of the case each race is going to their own for their haircut. Why would you NOT go to someone who KNOWS your hair texture? When I get my haircut by black barbers it looks hilarious, I had to a couple times due to military.
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But like they're doing this to themselves correct? There's no epidemic of women being forced to be hairdressers and being forced to choose toxic products to use right?
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I am guessing hair relaxers?
It kind of doesn't work like this. Because science isn't some kind of magical thing that can just solve anything, but also because many people don't care that much about their own safety.
For exemple there is a whitening active banned in european cosmetics because it is known for being very bad, but because it works well there is a full black market of it
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Ethylmethacrylate (glue for acrylic nails) is the main culprit. That stuff reeks as well. I have personally experienced building up a tolerance to a smell but it's so pungent that you should always detect some amount of it.
Maybe it’s different for different groups but I have never in my life requested or even thought to request a barber that is my specific race. I feel like it’s mostly ever been barbers who aren’t my race actually, they seem to give me what I’m looking for either way
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The entire concept of black hair/dreads is that they’re natural and healthy.
All hair is "natural" - we're talking about hair care products.
Are you ethnic?
I’m not trying to be difficult but I don’t really want to answer that in a public forum. Never know how the data is being collected and used. Maybe just give a dual response for if I was and if I wasn’t?
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Are we talking about barbers or are we talking about hairdressers....
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I wonder if it could be because of hair relaxers , blow out hair stuff and gels for wigs and such.
The products that will straighten hair and that will dye hair dark colors are extremely toxic. All women are under strong pressure not to have gray hair and women with curly ethnic hair are under extreme pressure to straighten it to be seen as attractive and professional. This is still true, but was even more true in the past.
Link re: PPD key ingredient in permanent dark hair dye https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5261844/ main alternative also toxic (coal tar dyes) https://www.gao.gov/products/hrd-78-22
Hair straightener products risk: https://dtsc.ca.gov/scp/chemicals-in-hair-straightening-products/
You are certainly of some ethnicity… the universal answer to that question is yes
If 80% of the population in a community has one hair type, every hairdresser will learn how to dress that type of hair. Not every hairdresser will learn to dress the various types that make up the other 20%. This is especially true if the 80% group has more money than the 20% group.
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Is hair relaxer more toxic than perm solution?
Seems to me that all hairdressers are exposed to awful chemicals.
The question is whether or not you have some spicy genetics that makes your hair different from white people
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also carcinogenic exposure to UV used to "cure /harden /set" the acrylic nails, people getting skin cancer in their fingertips, for real.
people need jobs, "freedom" sure as shinola ain't "free", and many workplaces are toxic. Products of many kinds are poisonous, and for some reason those poisons are often not advertised or printed on the label. the deathculture doesn't care about you, it just needs to extract your wealth.
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Are you guys just choosing not to read "undisclosed on the product labels", it's not as easy as just choosing other products if you aren't being told what's in the products or that they're harmful
But this should be addressed by the epa fda etc.
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Thank goodness white women are immune.
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Maybe just don't buy products where the ingredients aren't listed
All races are equal and exactly the same you bigot!
That makes sense. But I would still think that those hairdressers and barbers would still have some diversity in who gets affected, but hey things aren’t always as yo expect
It’s still an active area of research, but quite possibly, yes. There are multiple chemicals involved that are being studied as endocrine disrupters and carcinogens. The background document at the link I posted goes into some detail.
The main chemical in perms, Ammonium thioglycolate, is also not great for you, but mostly functions as a strong irritant and sometimes allergen https://www.barbercosmo.ca.gov/forms_pubs/permwav_lfs11.pdf
Perhaps more importantly, though, perms are generally an option used for variety when they are in fashion. Even as a former fan of the perm, I haven’t had one since the ‘80s. Straighteners and relaxers have been treated as necessary for women of color with curly ethnic hair to be seen as professional and presentable. This means repeated regular use for decades.
Perms are a very common thing in Caucasian women once they hit their 60’s and their hair thins out - unless you want to look like a plucked bird. I suppose black women get their poisonous styling done earlier in life.
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You guys would’ve never made it 50 years ago. If the environment didn’t kill you, you would’ve been beat up for being so annoying
According to the abstract, samples were only taken from Black and Latina hairdressers, and compared to a sample of female office workers. So no White or Asian hairdressers were part of the study. But according to some of these comments, many people are overlooking that fact. So lots of the argumentative comments here don’t even apply. People are reading too much into this without checking the facts.
FYI I’m a white woman and get my hair chemically straightened as well.
What does race have to do with this
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At least most nail salon workers wear N95s. (The one I go to, they do, anyway.)
Heck, they did even before the pandemic. They know they shouldn't be breathing in acrylic dust.
While most hair stylists and cosmetologists are trained to handle multiple textures of hair (they have to be, to pass their exams) they ultimately go on to serve primarily one type of clientele - those who come to their shops.
In areas dominated by Black and Latino populations, their primary clients will also be of those populations.
Black hair chemicals are notoriously noxious. I'm assuming that there may also be a cultural difference in the requested chemical usage for the hair of Latino populations, and less of a hair texture difference (most will probably have Type 1 (straight) or Type 2 (wavy) hair, same as European descendent Americans, although occasionally Type 3 (curly) may come into play. Black Americans almost universally have Type 3 or Type 4.)
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Did not say any one is better or worse. You can be different and equal can you not..?
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Natural hair is a term used in the hair care world. It refers to hair that it not chemically treated, thus being in it's "natural state" if you ever accompany a women to a salon you might see it posted on the wall, salons typically charge more $ for natural hair.
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Idk, why haven’t they? Clearly there are products on the market that don’t have this problem.
Maybe PoC should be more comfortable with their natural hair. Why shouldn’t that be normalized?
The only “product” i use as a white person is head and shoulders once every few days.
The natural hairstyle of PoC should be ok right?
50 years ago they inhaled lead like it was no ones business. Sorry we don’t want brain damage like you boomers. No wonder you resorted to violence because people were “annoying”.
The African hair market is different from the European hair market. The products you're thinking of are different and have nothing to do with treatments that would be applied to African hair. Relaxers, for example.
Wouldn’t this be true of hairdressers of all ethnicities?
Watch the documentary Hair by Chris Rock.
It's a different hairdressing skill set. Often, a black person might want to have a hair procedure done that takes 6 hours or more. (Braiding).
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Why do you think people used lye to straighten black hair? Because it worked.
They don't have healthy processes/chemicals which achieve the same result.
Most hair-dressers I know smoke. So it’s probably that which will kill them, not the hairspray chemicals.
Since this is a science sub, can you back your assertion up with some kind of evidence?
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I’m lost on why they are focusing on women of color can some example what I’m missing thanks
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Unfortunately N95 masks offer 0 protection against harmful fumes. Though perhaps as you say it's actually just invisible dust and then they would protect.
No, white people are exempt from chemicals like the ones discussed.
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The ones who wear that are usually the ones at the nail station, where the primary risk is from the acrylic dust. They use a tiny dremel of sorts to drill directly into the acrylic and shape it, and that dust gets EVERYWHERE.
I've seen some of the acrylic nail techs wear goggles as well.
The ones who primarily deal in pedicures and such only started wearing masks during the pandemic. They still deal with harsh chemicals (acetone etc) but they can wear gloves to protect their hands at least.
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In a perfect world, yes, but beauty standards have long pushed for straight hair as the norm to the point where a lot of black women begin relaxing their hair very young. There’s also a stigma in a lot of professional settings that natural hair isn’t professional enough, to the point where some office and school policies would ban natural hair styles. Which is why the Crown Act had to be instated in the first place.
It’s gotten better in recent years, a lot more black women including myself are going completely natural. But even then, a lot of people have noted that the natural hair community does still have a “texturism” problem where looser curls and completely slicked edges are preferred. Some hairstylists won’t even work on 4c hair.
No, products for textured hair are different.
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Black women usually go to black hairdressers. I would guess it's the same for Latina women. You want someone who knows how to handle your type of hair.
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Agree, I was a construction super and used to tell my wife if I told my guys to work in an environment toxic I could be arrested. (BTW, worked in Cali, where it is a criminal offense)
Everybody is part of some ethnicity.
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Blaming this on individuals does absolutely nothing. Multiple people in the comments have mentioned, for example, how black people are often discriminated against professionally for their different hair. Anyone would feel pressure to change themselves under those circumstances
"with less chemicals" is not a meaningful statement.
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What products is it? The hair relaxers or the keratin treatment?
Ok but like, any race hairdresser can do the hair of any race customer.
I get that obviously there are parts of cities that have different ethnic makeups in different ratios, but surely a more accurate title would be "hairdressers working on Black or Hispanic hair" would be more accurate, due to the chemical used being unaffected by the person applying it, and moreso by the person it is being applied to.
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people can become alleric to latex due to constant exposure which is why nitrile became a standard. Nail polish is a lacquer like car paint.
Not necessarily. I have curly hair, not the same texture that someone who is black or hispanic, and I find that a lot of salons don't even have the right products (or stylists for that matter) for my white people curly hair.
While knowledge of proper treatment for curly hair has gotten better over the last decade, a lot of salons cut and treat hair as if it were straight hair. I have had HUGE issues with salons in the past with no one there knowing how to even deal with curly hair correctly.
If I were black or hispanic I would 100% go to a salon that specialized in that texture hair over a place that didn't.
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Different wavelength if you are using LED and perfectly safe.
Only bad if you use some outdated cfl thing…
Stop trying to conform to European beauty standards. I guarantee that's a big part of the issue.
Yeah I don't think I've ever had a set of acrylic nails put on by a nail tech who wasn't wearing a serious mask. I wonder if its legally required in California or something.
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In theory yeah, but in practice, most stylists work with clientele that has a similar hair texture, and thus same race. Even when I lived in a mostly white neighborhood, I still had to look for a black hair stylist, which meant traveling to a different town. Just think of it as, would you take advice for hair care from someone who has completely different hair than yours, will never use those products on themself, only worked on hair like yours a couple times in school, and hasn’t worked on hair curlier than beach waves since? If another black girl went to a white hairstlyist and vouched for them, then that’s a different story. It’s the same with makeup artists, tattoo artists, and dermatologists for me, you want to go to someone who you know has experience working on skin like yours.
I wouldn't be surprised.
There's also a really neat story about the diaspora of Vietnamese nail salon owners, most of whom got their start in California at a technical college taught in Vietnamese, and how they came to dominate the industry around the US.
California's rules and regulations still dominate how the practice and business is taught in all the other states as a result.
That's not necessarily true. Many hair colleges don't really go over Black hair, so Black women are more likely to go to Black hair salons, where the hairdressers are well acquainted with their hair texture.
Many White and Asian hairdressers will not necessarily know how to style their hair texture without them already having straightened hair first.
If you mean "earlier in life" as " starting in middle school", then yes, they do.
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Society will need to stop forcing European beauty standards first, especially hiring managers. I promise that the culture of using relaxers didn't pop out of a vacuum.
Like acetone? Production workers at small paint companies (where ventilation isn't nearly as good as compared to medium and large companies) are probably exposed to solvent concentrations - including formaldehyde - at least two orders of magnitude higher than salon workers.
Why not go after the companies that make these products to make them safer?
Sure, but it's not 1950 anymore. Show me a corporate work space that hires white people with dreadlocks and I'll show you 50 with black people sporting dreads.
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wrong. Lamps that emit ultraviolet (UV) radiation are standard in some nail salons to speed-dry regular manicures and to set gel manicures. These lamps can be called UV lamps or LED lamps and both emit UV radiation, predominantly UVA rays which have been linked to increased risk of skin cancer
Oh interesting, at least they wear masks. I always figured the fumes would be worse, but I didn't realize there was that much grinding.
No, but hair discrimination STILL EXISTS today. Did you know that only 14 states in the US have laws (often known as the CROWN Act) that officially ban discrimination against natural hairstyles and 15 more are even considering passing CROWN Act legislation?
Even then, unconscious bias is still going to exist. There are still going to be hiring managers who don't perceive natural hair in Black women as being "professional" or even attractive. That is going to influence who they hire and they may pass a Black woman with natural hair for a Black woman with chemically straightened hair.
Our actions don't exist in a vacuum, and you cannot pretend that there will be no residual effects from centuries of discrimination just because legislation is passed.
You would think, but that doesn't make it true.
All races are equal in value, but hair types are observably not the same.
Yes, I know all this. I just don't think conforming is going to cure it ESPECIALLY in this day and age when things like the CROWN Act exists. I also think it needs to extend to everyone. So many jobs will discriminate against men with long hair for example. But you're right, even then people will still be bias and hair discrimination is hard to prove unless they specifically mention it. The only true way to solve this would be "blind" hiring, where employers don't see what the candidate looks like. I believe orchestras already do this because the bias against female performers is so heavy.
I also don't think the ONLY reason people use relaxers and whatnot is for jobs. The entire expectation to conform should be shunned imo
I guess white hairdressers aren’t exposed to the same chemicals.
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You seem to not have read my entire comment. CROWN Acts only exist in 14 states, meaning most of the country can still discriminate based on hair. Try again.
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There are ingredients listed just not all of them
The types of hair they frequently work on receives different chemical treatments more often.
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I’m Hispanic a lot of Hispanics buy some shady products because “it’s cheaper”
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I'd just like to point out to American voters is this situation is exactly what is meant by the phrase, "smaller government." That's the white-washed phrase that can also be called reduced protections and oversight for consumers and workers.
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It’s almost getting to depressing levels of sadness how many toxins are just surrounding us, everywhere. And no one bats an eye at it most of the time. All the things we use, daily, sometimes multiple times daily.
What does this have to do with exclusively black and Hispanic hair dressers? Just hair dressers right?
Do the chemicals just not affect you if you’re white?
Not necessarily. Permanent solution/perms are the same chemicals as relaxers, dye, bleach, glue for extensions, tracks, weaves, hairspray, shampoo, heat protectors etc. There are different products for every type of these, but it’s two wings on the same duck.
There was a big study done because they noted that Asian women working in salons were dying of a really specific cancer. Turned out it was from the stuff in the mail products. I think it I learned about this from a series on HBO about the beauty industry... "Not so pretty"? They were saying that women from Asian backgrounds were being exposed to dangerous chemicals every day but not being warned. A lot died very early. It is a sad documentary. The same can be said for people working with textured hair. They use different products on the hair and some of these are maybe not as regulated or are brought in from out of the country and so haven't been through the same checks. It's good that this is coming to light more and more but bad that it's still an issue.
They didn’t sample white or asian hairdressers and then throw out headlines to play the racial angle to feed on inequality outrage and draw in reader when there isn’t even a basis to quantify that this is impacting any particular race disproportionately.
What the article concludes is that black and hispanic hairdressers show to have more chemicals in their system than people of color working in office jobs. It is about profession and not race. The implication that it disproportionately impacting people of color was an unsupported assumption.
Not joking I went into a hair place once trying to get a haircut, I turned away when I realized they only cut women but I would have left anyway. The fumes were visible. You could see vapors in the air and it was thick. I think it was smoke from extensions or a hair curler or straightener. There’s almost no way these people don’t realize this is bad, they probably just don’t know what to do about it.
Those UV leds are cheap 400nm ones. That could be considered visible light. I mean it IS visible light.
You can cure the nail polish in the same 120 seconds by going out around noon in summer.
Soo unless you are avoiding the summer sun that much; LEDs won‘t make a difference.
The problem isn‘t UV LEDs it’s using 50W UV lamps where all of that energy is in the UV spectrum.
Rather than an LED lamp running on a 5V 2A USB supply..
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These chemicals only affect black and Hispanic people??
What does the racial aspect mean? There was no comparison mentioned to other ethnic groups.
Stop using those products with the black face on it with a European behind it all of it fuckery
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Just pointing out it's all races using dangerous chemicals in salons .
I mean to be fair, the headline seems to be insinuating some kind of racial bias.
Even if the sample was only black/Latino hair dressers, if the chemicals are commonly used in the industry there should be no need to mention race at all.
Wouldn’t it be easier to say Hairdressers are exposed to unlabeled chemicals. Which would be illegal under OSHA since employers are supposed to provide SDS and clear labels for any chemicals.
It's the formaldehyde that's in the straightener, and it's released as a gas while being applied to the hair. Formaldehyde is carcinogenic. Also in some of the keratin conditioners sold over the counter I've heard, but never fact checked.
Acetone isn’t good for you and a bunch of shop’s problems still use it.
-someone who coincidentally also has a lot of unprotected acetone exposure doing fiberglass projects.
And commercial roofers, especially ones that deal with pvc and tpo cleaners, primers and adhesives, not to mention hot tar.
Look at OPs post history, OP tends only to post about minorities and birds. OP has a lot of time on their hands to post as much as they do
It’s totally in line with all the other posts From OP
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