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06/19/2003
Hair Talk
My wife and I were shocked recently to find that our 15-year-old
granddaughter was sporting dyed reddish auburn hair. In our
opinion, she has beautiful hair in its natural state. We consoled
ourselves with the thought that at least it wasn’t flaming pink or
purple. And I did remind my wife that, when I met her, she had
an artificial yellowish streak in her brown hair. In fact, I told her
that I almost didn’t marry her, thinking that this yellow streak
might imply that she was on the wild side. This proved not to be
the case but the coloring of one’s hair in those days, over 50
years ago, was much less common than it is today.
After learning of our granddaughter’s venture into hair coloring,
I ran across an article by Marc Reisch entitled “Flush with
Color” that appeared in the March 3, 2003 issue of Chemical and
Engineering News (C&EN). The article cited a study of
consumer buying habits by the consulting firm Kline & Co. I
once prepared a study dealing with lithium batteries for that firm.
In fact, I started the study just before breaking my leg pacing off
the distance from the tee to the yardage marker on the hole on
which I had earlier carded a hole-in-one. (Longtime readers will
know that I shamelessly bring in my hole-in-one as frequently as
possible.) At any rate, the Kline job saved me from going stir
crazy. With my leg elevated, I was able to work on the Kline
project with a laptop they loaned me and actually get paid for the
work while I was recuperating.
According to the C&EN article, Kline’s study showed that 42
percent of women and 25 percent of men in this country use hair
dyes. What really surprised me though was the breakdown of
hair dyers by age. In the 16 to 20 year old age group, 48 percent
purchase hair dyes, more than the 45 percent in the 40 to 49 year
old category and twice the 24 percent in the over 60 group. A
caveat – I don’t know if the hair coloring performed in beauty
shops was counted in the Kline study.
What makes (or made) your hair the color it is (or was)? It’s the
presence of granules of protein, the pigments supplying the color.
If you look at a hair under the microscope, it looks like a shaft
covered with overlapping scales called cuticular scales. These
scales resemble shingles overlapping on a roof. The pigment
granules lie under those scales and consist of melanin protein,
which comes in two flavors – eumelanin and phaeomelanin. The
color of your hair depends on the type of melanin, as well as the
size of the granules. Black to brown hair means the pigment is
eumelanin while red and yellowish hair is associated with
phaeomelanin granules. The darkness or lightness of your hair
color depends on how densely distributed are the particular
melanin granules.
If you’ve lost the pigments, your hair is white or gray. It seems
to me that, back in the good old days, this loss of pigment was by
far the main reason for one to consider going the hair-coloring
route. This is not to say that there were not those who believed
that blonds have more fun and acted on that belief. Indeed, the
allure of golden hair has been with us pretty much throughout
recorded history. Women would apply dangerously alkaline
soaps and sit in the sun to achieve a degree of blondness. Others
would simply apply a powder of pollen and crushed yellow
flower petals. For the affluent, costly wigs were available.
Then, in 1907, came paraphenylenediamine (PPD). This is the
compound that French chemist Eugene Schueller incorporated
into a hair coloring product he began manufacturing in his
apartment in Paris. He called his company L’Oreal and the rest
is history. Today, almost a century later, L’Oreal is still the
leader in the $7 billion dollar world hair dye market with a 36
percent share of the market. And PPD is still widely used.
What is the science and technology of hair coloring? It’s sort of
a “search, destroy and replace” approach as I see it. If you’re
changing your hair color, you’ve got to get in under those scales
and bleach those melanin granules. Then you’ve got to slip in
the new particles of the desired color. If I wanted to darken my
gray hair, I might opt for a relatively simple, but surprising
chemical reaction. One manufacturer markets a hair coloring
solution for men that contains a lead compound, lead acetate. If I
applied this solution, my hair would get darker when the sulfur in
my hair keratin reacts with the lead acetate to form particles of
lead sulfide. I personally would feel rather squeamish about a
lead compound being formed on my head but the Food and Drug
Administration has run tests showing that lead is not absorbed
into the body from such hair dyes. I’m still sticking with gray.
The above product is one of many hair dye products that are of
the so-called “permanent” variety. That is, the dye job lasts for 6
weeks. Most permanent products come in two parts. One
component typically contains a solution of hydrogen peroxide in
a water or lotion of some sort. The hydrogen peroxide solution is
called the “developer”. The other component is a more complex
mix of an ammonia solution of dyes and dye intermediates with
names such as diaminobenzene, aminohydroxybenzene, and the
aforementioned PPD. I mention these names just to let you
know that there’s real chemistry going on on top of your head.
When you mix the two solutions and apply it to your hair, the
hair swells, allowing the mix to penetrate under the scales of the
hair shaft. The normal pigment is bleached and the dye is
“developed”, much like a photographic film is developed, as the
mixture penetrates the hair shaft. The developing process takes
some time, accounting for the fact that those of you using hair
coloring find that the gunk you work into your hair looks whitish
initially. Later, if you’re fortunate, the desired color appears.
I also stumbled across the site hairrific.com, which contains an
article “Kathie Rothkop Hair Design – Hair History”. There I
learned that women should be thankful that they aren’t living
back in the time of Louis XV of France. This was when the term
hairdresser (or its French equivalent) came into vogue, thanks to
Louis’ mistress, Madame de Pompadour. While fancy wigs had
been in style, the Madame was a bit over the top with her
voluminous head adornments. Women began to use artists of the
hair, hairdressers, to fashion true works of artistic creativity.
Towering hairdos arose, often containing objects such as ships,
live birds in cages and other outlandish embellishments.
Fashionable women were not only encumbered by these heavy
creations on top but also by being tightly corseted and by
wearing bustiers. At least at night they would be relieved of the
latter two constraints. But, because of the cost and effort
involved in creating the toppings, they would suffer the
discomfort for a week or two. What kept the hairdos together
were frames stuffed with fabric or even straw with some kind of
hardened paste holding things together. To prepare the hair for
this construction, a “styling pomade” was applied. This pomade
was essentially a mix of beef lard and bear grease with some sort
of oil added. Well, after a week or so, the towering concoctions
could become rancid and even attract vermin. Yuk! The article
states that the term “rats nest” had its origin with these hairdos.
Today, the hair dye industry is not resting on its laurels. For
example, semipermanent dyes are available or in the works for
brighter, purer colors. Some dyes even fluoresce under black
light. I should think the latter would have a limited market or is
black light a common feature in the nightlife scene these days?
Other, more practical research is directed towards safer dyes,
dyes that last longer and dyes that address the problem of those
whose skin is sensitive to today’s products.
Having more or less reconciled ourselves to our granddaughter’s
dye job, we were jolted again on Father’s Day when her brother,
our 10 year old grandson, arrived sporting a new haircut. It was
quite nice but in front there were spikes of hair, their shape
maintained by some sort of gel or paste. We grandparents will
adjust to these modern hairstyling trends but, for our grandson’s
sake, I hope the formulation of the gel has advanced significantly
beyond the beef lard/bear grease stage!
Allen F. Bortrum
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