WaPo: Straight Hair at What Cost?

Published October 18, 2011

When Adelia Varga visited Brazil four years ago, she tried a hair smoothing product and couldn’t believe how it tamed her wild, curly hair. She brought it back to the Rockville salon where she works and now regularly uses a similar treatment on herself and her clients.

“My hair looks so healthy,” Varga, 38, said recently as another stylist dabbed the white liquid on her brunette hair. “My hair is usually frizzy and bushy. Now it is silky and bouncy.”

Health officials say such smoothing products, often known as Brazilian treatments, may pose a hazard to stylists and users alike. That’s because most of them contain formaldehyde or chemicals that release formaldehyde, which has been identified as a cancer risk.

Read the full story here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/straight-hair-at-w...