Best Way to Choose Organic Hair Color

Nature has ways of helping us enhance our natural hair color without resorting to chemicals. Consider the increasing number of herbal hair colors available, or try making your own.

Women were coloring their hair with natural elements such as lemon, chamomile, beets, coffee, walnuts, and turmeric long before hair laboratories came up with synthetic dyes, Today, most people reach for a pack of hair dye or go to a colorist, but there have been some concerns about the use of synthetic hair dyes.

The risks

One 1994 American Cancer Society and FDA study found that women who had used black hair dye for more than 20 years had a slightly higher than average risk of death from non-Ffodgkins lymphoma and multiple myeloma, a rare, leukemialike disease. Dr. Samuel Epstein and David Steinman, authors of The Safe Shopper’s Bible, also point out a link between lifetime use of permanent and semipermanent hair dyes with an increased risk of non-Hodgkins lymphoma and leukemia.

In another study, carried out in 1993 by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Athens Medical School, researchers assessed that the risk of developing ovarian cancer soared 70 percent in women who dye their hair with permanent color 1-4 times a year. Of course, these women may have had other common factors in their lives that caused the cancer. The trouble is, nobody’s sure yet. Even temporary dyes and rinses contain colors such as Acid Orange 87, Solvent Brown 44, Avid Blue 178, and Acid Violet 73, which have shown carcinogenic activity. DEA and TEA are also used.

Bleaches are safer than dyes, with fewer, if any long-term risks. The downside of bleach, however, is that it can dry and damage the hair itself, so you need to condition lavishly.

The natural choice

The good news is that there is an increasing choice of plant-derived colorants that give excellent results, based on natural elements such as henna, marigold, indigo, blue malva, hibiscus, logwood, and chamomile, and which are ever more widely available. Look for dyes by Logona, Rainbow Research Henna, Naturcolor, Urtekram , Herbatint, Igora Botanies, and the Body Shop’s Herbal Hair Colorants, which you mix yourself.

If you don’t want to color your own hair, discuss your concerns with your hair colorist and ask if they would mind if you brought your own natural dye into the salon for them to use. They will probably be reluctant to guarantee results, but you may nevertheless feel safer leaving the actual technique to the experts. Hairdressers may also be able to offer you a vegetable dye, now widely available in salons – but if you’re concerned about avoiding man-made chemicals, ask to see the label: some vegetable dyes contain both vegetable dye and chemicals, and so are not as pure as they appear.

The Aveda Shades of Enlightenment Blonding Process mixes a minimum of ammonia and hydrogen-peroxide bleaches with organically grown sunflower, castor, and jojoba oils, but also features a small amount of mineral oil. Daniel Field, meanwhile, is a London-based hairdresser who is pioneering the use of more natural hair colorants in his salon, even formulating an alternative to traditional bleaches that include seaweed extracts.

Making your own hair dyes is a sophisticated art, but simple infusions can brighten and deliver depth of color to hair.