Is your makeup making you sick? |
The context you need, when you need it
When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.
We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?
Is your makeup making you sick?
How to find cosmetics that are better for you, explained.
I’ve been getting my hair braided ever since I was a little girl. In elementary school my Moesha obsession meant Brandy-style box braids; in middle school, Alicia Keys was the reason behind my cornrows, and even now, a vacation is not a vacation without a head full of boho braids.
I always thought of braids as a healthy alternative to what I could be doing with my hair: no more chemical straighteners with their awful smell, inevitable scalp burns, and adverse health effects.
Earlier this year, however, the Silent Spring Institute — which researches the environmental causes for breast cancer — released a study that made me question how healthy that choice actually is.
Elissia Franklin is a chemist and exposure scientist at the Institute who decided to test what chemicals are in braiding hair after noticing a phrase pop in her colleagues’ work that was familiar to her.
“They were helping study participants swap out their couches because they wanted to reduce flame-retardant chemicals in the indoor dust in the homes,” she told me. “Anytime I bought my braiding hair, it said flame-resistant. It just dawned on me: If they’re trying to get rid of flame retardants from couches, why can we so intimately use these products in our everyday lives?”
Franklin evaluated 43 hair extension products and found “chemicals that were associated with cancer,........