Personal Care Products: Hair dyes and treatment shampoos
Purpose: Hair colorants and to treat scalp conditions
Coal tar hair dye ingredients are known to cause allergic reactions in some people, FDA’s Lambert says. Some consumers have reported hair loss, burning, redness, and irritation from hair dyes. Allergic reactions to dyes include itching, swelling of the face, and even difficulty breathing.
Synthetic, organic chemicals, including hair dyes and other color additives, were originally manufactured from coal tar, but today manufacturers primarily use materials derived from petroleum. The use of the term “coal tar” continues because historically that language has been incorporated into the law and regulations.
The law does not require that coal tar hair dyes be approved by FDA, as is required for other uses of color additives. In addition, the law does not allow FDA to take action against coal tar hair dyes that are shown to be harmful, if the product is labeled with the prescribed caution statement indicating that the product may cause irritation in certain individuals, that a patch test for skin sensitivity should be done, and that the product must not be used for dyeing the eyelashes or eyebrows.
The patch test involves putting a dab of hair dye behind the ear or inside the elbow, leaving it there for two days, and looking for itching, burning, redness, or other reactions. The problem is that people can become sensitized–that is, develop an allergy–to these ingredients,” Lambert says. “They may do the patch test once, and then use the product for 10 years” before having an allergic reaction. “But you’re supposed to do the patch test every time,” he says, even in salons….
Hair Color and Cancer
Over the years, some studies have indicated a possible link between hair dye use and cancer, while others have not. In February 1994, FDA and the American Cancer Society released an epidemiologic study involving 573,000 women. Researchers found that women who had ever used permanent hair dyes showed decreased risk of all fatal cancers combined and also of urinary system cancers. The study also revealed that women who had ever used permanent hair dyes showed no increased risk of any type of hematopoietic cancer (cancer of the body’s blood-forming systems).
This research, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, did suggest that prolonged use (20 years or more of constant use) of black hair dye may slightly increase the occurrence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma, but these cases represented a small fraction of hair dye users. This study followed previous NCI studies that raised concern about the use of hair dyes and higher rates of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
In another study, published in the October 5, 1994, issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston followed 99,000 women and found no greater risk of cancers of the blood or lymph systems among women who had ever used permanent hair dyes.
Then in 1998, scientists at the University of California at San Francisco questioned 2,544 people about their use of hair-color products. After integrating the results of this study with those of animal and other epidemiologic studies, they concluded that there was little convincing evidence linking non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma with normal use of hair-color products in humans. The study was published in the December 1998 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. (Meadows M. 2001 Jan-Feb. Heading Off Hair-Care Disasters: Use Caution With Relaxers and Dyes, FDA Consumer, U.S. Food and Drug Administration; http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/fdahdye.html).
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