Can ingredients in your hair care products make you sick?
Hair care products might not be as safe as you’d assume them to be.
“My staple products consisted of relaxers, oil sheen and pink hair lotion, so it could be any number of things,” says Yvette McCormick, speaking about her diagnosis of endometriosis, a painful disorder in which tissue that normally lines the inside of your uterus—the endometrium—grows outside your uterus.
While she can’t be certain of what caused her disorder, McCormick, a 37-year-old administrative assistant, believes that her regular use of beauty products that were full of harmful ingredients caused her to have this disorder. She was diagnosed a year ago.
“My doctor said there is no way of telling what caused me to have endometriosis,” McCormick says, “but now that I know of all the toxic and harmful chemicals I was putting into my body, and onto my hair, I believe there is a chance some of the hair products I was using on a regular basis were the culprit.”
And McCormick may be right. According to the article, “Danger Posed by Black Hair Products,” (from thegrio.com“> environmental justice advocates and scientists say the chemicals found in many hair care products can cause a number of health-related illnesses, including infertility and cancer.
Phthalates, known as “endocrine disruptors,” are disguised as fragrances in many beauty products, and this chemical in particular is linked to endometriosis.
Dr. Ami Zota, an environmental health researcher at the University of California at San Francisco, says, “African-American women, compared to their white counterparts, have higher levels of phthalates and they have higher levels of BPA.”
