A<\/span>s I took a seat beside my colleagues at a business meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss toxic chemical reform, I could already feel my scalp tightening.<\/p>\n The environmental scientist we were listening to was discussing low-level chemical buildup left in our bodies by personal care products. As she rattled off a list of ingredients\u2014\u201cphthalates, parabens, synthetic dyes, stearates\u201d\u2014I was struck by a profound contradiction in my own life.<\/p>\n In three years, I\u2019d be 60. And like many women who care about their appearance, I had joined the ranks of the 75% of U.S. women who color their hair.<\/p>\n My personal goal for my hair color was \u201cnatural-looking\u201d to complement my natural lifestyle. To achieve this, I spent hours upon hours, and thousands of dollars, attempting to embody the hair color company\u2019s slogan: \u201cHair color unique to you.\u201d<\/p>\n But who was I kidding?<\/p>\n Whatever was unique to me was buried under layers of hair dye.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do we subject our bodies to questionable chemicals?\u201d a young co-worker asked the environmental scientist, wiping off her lipstick.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople ignore potential risks for the sake of convenience, cost, beauty,\u201d she replied. \u201cMany of these products promise a fountain of youth.\u201d<\/p>\n As an environmental writer, I knew that more than 80,000 new chemicals have been invented since World War II and only a handful have been studied for safety. In the mid-20 century, baby boomers sought \u201chappy days\u201d in what DuPont advertised as, \u201cBetter living through chemistry.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until Rachel Carson\u2019s groundbreaking tome Silent Spring that the cautionary principle of preserving what we need to physically survive\u2014and loving what we must protect\u2014was raised.<\/p>\n But 50 years later, we are still dithering with dangerous chemicals that find their way into our bodies and environment.<\/p>\n Most people assume that chemicals in consumer products have been tested and proven safe, but that is not the case. Why do we assume that? Because we believed that something being on the market means it\u2019s been cleared or vetted in some way, when, in fact, the overwhelming majority of chemicals\u2014particularly those in beauty products\u2014have never been independently tested for safety.<\/p>\n The U.S. Food and Drug Administration \u201cregulates\u201d the safety of hair dyes. But according to its website, \u201cThe FDA does not have the legal authority to approve cosmetics before they go on the market \u2026 companies may use almost any ingredient they choose.\u201d<\/p>\n Rather than the FDA protecting consumers from dangerous ingredients, it is the responsibility of the product manufacturers to decide whether the ingredients in their products are safe, according to FDA rules. But day after day, year after year, we are exposed to carcinogens, endocrine disrupters, and allergens in our hair products.<\/p>\n Personal care products are a $70 billion-a-year industry in the U.S., and the cosmetics industry is expected to police itself. The conflict of interest is stunning. By leaving safety oversight to the cosmetics industry, we are essentially letting the fox guard the henhouse.<\/p>\n The toxics meeting was my wake-up call. It spurred me to ask a host of questions and, ultimately, to write my new book, True Roots: What Quitting Hair Dye Taught Me about Health and Beauty. I asked: What\u2019s the connection between coloring and cancer? Who regulates the hair dye industry? What are the risks for hairdressers? Are all dyes created equal? Do safer alternatives exist? Where does all that dye end up after it\u2019s washed out of our hair?<\/p>\n But before I could answer these questions about the potential dangers of hair dye, I was struggling with the idea of giving up by beautiful, dyed, long dark hair. I realized that for me, as is the case for many women, hair dye was the \u201cmagic elixir\u201d that made me feel youthful.<\/p>\n Ditching the dye would mean confronting strongly held cultural beliefs\u2014mine and others\u2019\u2014some of them so ingrained that I was barely aware of them: beliefs about beauty, choice, aging, and femininity. It would also mean flouting fashion and beauty gurus, the media, decades of powerful and seductive advertising, my girlfriends, and even the expectations of the men in my life.<\/p>\n So, as my hair transitioned to shiny silver, I lived with the consequence of my ecological awareness, reckoning with the interplay between health and beauty. I explored new ideas about beauty and aging, learning to quiet my fears. Now, I\u2019ve come to realize that my attitude has changed as much as my hair color.<\/p>\n One thing that made a big difference in reconciling my transition from dyed to natural hair was finding a community of silver sisters. From women leading by example, not only did I get helpful tips, but I also learned about a different kind of transition\u2014the one that happens internally.<\/p>\n Although every woman has to find her path, it helps to share your journey to self-acceptance\u2014the grace of gray. Ideas about turning back the hands of time shift as we learn more and more about what keeps us healthy.<\/p>\n Attitudes and minds change, and, for me, going gray created a challenge to be honest, to transform not only my hair but also my sense of self, and to accept the person within.<\/p>\n By creating a guide to the complexities of environmental health and revelatory beauty for women of all ages, I asked a question that people ask as they move through life: Will the choices I make keep me healthy, and are they worth it?<\/p>\n From my research, I discovered that our hair carries answers and holds other insightful messages about health and beauty.<\/p>\n For our health, we deserve to know what\u2019s in the products we\u2019re massaging into our scalp every day to make informed decisions about hair products that can keep us healthy. It also helps to understand the facts about questionable ingredients and how our regulatory system works.<\/p>\n But with little transparency required from hair care companies, those facts are not always clear or easy to find. When companies fail us in this regard, we can demand change.<\/p>\n If we don\u2019t buy shampoos, dyes, and cosmetics with questionable ingredients, manufacturers will clamor to create healthier ones to meet customer demand.<\/p>\n We can boycott and vote with our pocketbooks, as well as raise our voices to lawmakers so they act in our best interest and in the interest of protecting public health over the profits of industry. This not only yields our power as consumers, but it becomes a new conversation that can change hearts and minds.<\/p>\n When we open ourselves to change, the hope\u2014that most luxurious of feelings\u2014is that we\u2019ll find our way to good health. It springs up because looking good only matters if you feel good.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the prize; the rest is just hair.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What quitting hair dye taught me about health and beauty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2019","category-fall-2019-columns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9216"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9609,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9216\/revisions\/9609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}From True Roots: What Quitting Hair Dye Taught Me about Health and Beauty <\/a>by Ronnie Citron-Fink. Copyright \u00a9 2019. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.<\/h5>\n