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Elissia Franklin is an analytical chemist with an infectious giggle, a penchant for braided hair extensions and a fierce dedication to decreasing well being disparities for Black girls. Rising up on Chicago’s South Facet, she noticed firsthand the systemic boundaries Black girls face and resolved to assist her neighborhood profit from all she discovered as she pursued her profession as a chemist.
She by no means anticipated simply how private her analysis path would grow to be.
Eight years in the past, Franklin was engaged on her Ph.D. thesis as a visiting senior analysis scholar at Beijing’s Tsinghua College. She was creating analytical methods to characterize various kinds of fatty compound constructions when a paper got here out that may alter the course of her profession.
Scientists with the Silent Spring Institute, which focuses on environmental causes of breast most cancers, revealed the primary research to measure dozens of chemical compounds linked to bronchial asthma and endocrine disruption in relaxers, root stimulators and different hair merchandise marketed to Black girls.
All of the sudden, every part clicked for Franklin. The concept there could possibly be systemic well being dangers from cosmetics had by no means crossed her thoughts till she learn that paper. She determined to harness her experience in analytical chemistry to assist her neighborhood keep away from dangerous exposures.
In a brand new research, Franklin, now a Silent Spring Institute analysis scientist, and scientists with the Southwest Analysis Institute in San Antonio recognized scores of hazardous chemical compounds in hair extensions in what they name essentially the most complete evaluation of this in style hair product.
The research, revealed on Wednesday within the peer-reviewed journal Atmosphere and Well being, examined each artificial and “bio-based” merchandise, fabricated from human hair, banana fiber and silk, and recognized 4 dozen chemical compounds listed as substances of public well being concern. A dozen of the detected chemical compounds are flagged by California’s Proposition 65 as prone to trigger most cancers, beginning defects or reproductive hurt. The workforce discovered 17 chemical compounds related to breast most cancers in 36 of 43 samples, together with substances that improve threat by boosting hormone manufacturing.
“I want it was stunning,” stated Janette Robinson Flint, government director of Black Ladies for Wellness, who was not concerned within the analysis. “Black girls are overexposed and underprotected from harsh chemical compounds in all our merchandise, from the lead in our lipstick to the hair that we select.”
A physique of literature signifies that personal-care merchandise is usually a substantial supply of publicity to chemical compounds of concern, particularly as they relate to hormone disruption, most cancers threat and reproductive and developmental threat, stated Ami Zota, an affiliate professor of environmental well being sciences at Columbia College’s Mailman Faculty of Public Well being, who was not concerned within the research.
Franklin’s research was going by way of peer assessment when Shopper Stories launched outcomes from its testing of 10 in style merchandise used to braid hair for risky natural compounds and heavy metals. The nonprofit group discovered carcinogens in each pattern.
Franklin was not stunned. Artificial fibers are sometimes fabricated from petrochemicals with poisonous properties, together with plastic polymers, acrylic, polyester and polyvinyl chloride. Once they’re discarded, they go to landfills the place they don’t break down.
Prior analysis has highlighted merchandise like chemical hair straighteners as a subcategory of concern, however braids and extensions have acquired loads much less consideration, Zota stated. “The Shopper Stories report put this concern on the map in an enormous approach, however there actually is a dearth of knowledge within the peer-reviewed literature,” she stated. “This new research begins to deal with that substantial knowledge hole by doing this chemical evaluation of over 40 completely different merchandise.”
The hair-extension trade is projected to be valued at $14 billion by 2028 however is essentially unregulated.
“An increasing number of proof is popping out to help that we want safer regulation round cosmetics and sweetness merchandise total,” Franklin stated.
After scientists on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being reported an elevated threat of uterine most cancers and breast most cancers linked to hair straighteners, the Biden-era Meals and Drug Administration deliberate to ban cancer-causing formaldehyde within the merchandise. However since President Donald Trump returned to the White Home, the FDA missed the proposed ban deadline whereas the Environmental Safety Company proposed loosening restrictions on the carcinogen.
As girls discovered concerning the hazards of artificial braids, Franklin stated, they switched to human hair. What the research exhibits, she stated, is that the potential dangers related to hair extensions goes past artificial braiding hair.
Nonetheless, it was the artificial merchandise that contained representatives of a very nasty class of chemical compounds known as organotins. These poisonous substances, used as biocides and warmth stabilizers in PVC, are categorized as “severely restricted” within the European Union.
“We have been fully shocked to see that there have been organotin compounds in among the braiding hair,” Franklin stated. The chemical compounds, which aren’t usually present in shopper merchandise, have been detected within the artificial extensions.
“To have discovered them in a product that we’re utilizing so intimately,” she stated, “was completely stunning.”
“Regulatory Black Gap”
Franklin was nonetheless a postdoc in 2021, when she joined Silent Spring. That yr the institute revealed analysis exhibiting how folks might cut back their publicity to flame retardants, chemical compounds related to most cancers, neurotoxicity and different well being harms. They discovered that ranges of the chemical compounds in folks’s properties dropped considerably just by changing a flame-retardant-treated sofa with untreated furnishings.
As Franklin sat in conferences with colleagues speaking about all of the harms related to flame retardants, she couldn’t consider it. “I’m like, that’s within the hair I’ve on my head proper now. How can that be?”
Franklin has been carrying braiding hair since she was a toddler. “It’s simply what you do,” she stated.
“Rising up, I’d go to the wonder provide shops, the provider of artificial braiding hair, and it was on just about each product that I’d choose up the place it stated ‘flame resistant, flame retardant,’” she stated.
Right here have been her colleagues speaking about how these specialty chemical compounds she’d at all times assumed protected girls—stylists burn extensions to seal the braids in place—are linked to most cancers, hormone disruption and developmental and reproductive issues. Her chemist mind began lighting up like a pinball machine, excited about the best way to check for proof of hurt related to carrying braiding hair.
She couldn’t discover many research within the scientific literature, and began pondering an increasing number of about what was in these extensions. They’re made out of petrochemical plastic polymers. Then they’ve components like flame retardants, so that they don’t catch on hearth when warmth is utilized to set the braids, and poisonous PFAS to withstand water. If these extensions are so chock-full of nasty chemical compounds, she questioned, why are they bought as a secure product to Black girls?
Somebody wanted to determine what chemical compounds have been popping out of that braiding hair. `
However the scientific course of is a slow-moving beast. Franklin began searching for funding in 2022, landed a grant the subsequent yr, then began shopping for completely different hair extension merchandise on-line and at native magnificence shops. She ended up shopping for greater than 40 separate merchandise made of various fibers, together with artificial (largely plastic polymers), or “bio-based,” which included human hair, banana and silk sources. In 2024 Franklin harnessed her experience in characterizing completely different chemical compounds to check the fibers.
By utilizing a way known as “non-targeted evaluation,” she forged a large internet to discover the vary of potential chemical compounds in extensions. The method doesn’t reveal precise compounds or their concentrations however screens for a variety of contaminants.
Franklin recognized potential chemical compounds of concern that aren’t normally on researchers’ radar, just like the organotin compounds, stated Zota. “That was actually attention-grabbing and novel.”
The research doesn’t have a look at how a lot of those chemical compounds are getting contained in the physique, Zota stated, which might be vital for excited about well being threat.
However the research means that there are chemical compounds of concern in these braids and extensions that warrant further analysis, Zota stated. And she or he stated it shines a light-weight on the “regulatory black gap” for merchandise with a transparent potential to show shoppers to dangerous chemical compounds, given the prevalence of use, how lengthy they’re worn and their shut contact with the physique and respiratory zone.
Lack of Transparency
How Black girls put on their hair, stated Flint of Black Ladies for Wellness, “is an financial resolution. It’s a political resolution, and it impacts your complete life.”
Flint just lately was honored at Los Angeles Metropolis Corridor as a Black girl chief. However 30 years in the past, the safety crew barely let her by way of the door. She thinks it was as a result of she wore her hair pure.
It wasn’t till 2019 that California grew to become the primary state to cross the CROWN Act—brief for Making a Respectful and Open World for Pure Hair. The regulation, variations of which have now handed in 27 states, prohibits discrimination within the office and faculties primarily based on pure hair textures and types generally related to race, equivalent to braids, locs and twists.
Past office discrimination, Flint stated, Black girls are more and more excited about how hair merchandise have an effect on their well being.
Even when girls, particularly girls of shade, attempt to make safer selections, they’re nonetheless having to navigate a extremely unregulated market with little transparency when it comes to what they’re really shopping for and what they’re placing on their hair, Zota stated.
And if these chemical compounds are moving into girls’s our bodies, it’s a power publicity.
“You aren’t taking the braids out at evening and a few girls put on these braids for months at a time,” Franklin stated, including that she will be able to’t recall ever seeing considered one of her cousins with out extensions.
It shouldn’t be as much as shoppers to determine what’s in these merchandise, Franklin stated. “I’m a chemist and I nonetheless battle with determining what’s unhealthy and what’s not as a result of there’s no transparency right here.”
Regulators permit producers so as to add chemical compounds to merchandise with out testing for security first.
And corporations aren’t required to supply supplies known as “requirements” that permit researchers to establish the chemical compounds they add to merchandise.
“If you wish to put this new compound in your product, one, it is best to check it for security,” Franklin stated. “However when you’re not, it is best to no less than be producing the usual for us to have the ability to see if this new compound is getting used throughout the board in your product.”
There have been solely two samples, labeled as unhazardous or “poisonous free,” with no detections of hazardous chemical compounds. However simply because her methodology didn’t detect something this time, that doesn’t imply they gained’t in a future research, she cautioned.
Two samples fabricated from banana fibers had phthalates, endocrine disruptors known as “in every single place chemical compounds” as a result of they’re present in every part from air fresheners to toys. The samples got here from Rebundle, an organization aiming to create biodegradable hair merchandise.
It’s unclear whether or not phthalates one way or the other contaminated the bananas or whether or not they sloughed off onto the braids from the packaging.
Ciara Imani Might based Rebundle in 2019 after getting fed up with all of the opposed reactions attributable to artificial braids. She got down to see whether or not extensions could possibly be fabricated from supplies that weren’t petrochemical-based.
“That’s how I ended up with banana fiber and figuring out of East Africa,” she stated, whereas getting her hair braided with pure fibers in Kenya. “We’re glad that these kinds of peer-reviewed research are being carried out on these merchandise, as a result of there’s very restricted info and analysis that has been completed.”
This research offers corporations like Rebundle a benchmark to know the place there could be gaps in analysis and the way they’ll fill these gaps of their product-development processes, Might stated. On condition that phthalates are ubiquitous, she stated, they should determine how they’re launched into the fibers.
Extensions fabricated from human hair had among the many most chemical compounds linked to breast most cancers and on the Prop 65 checklist, seemingly reflecting a buildup of contaminants within the individual the hair got here from.
Firms needs to be required to place labels on these merchandise so shoppers know what they could be uncovered to, stated Franklin. She wish to see hair extensions regulated underneath Prop 65.
Prop 65 labels have triggered reductions in poisonous substances, work from Silent Spring has discovered. Firms shifted away from utilizing poisonous substances to guard their model or to make a safer product.
Hoping for a Cultural Shift
The research opens up many avenues of analysis to find out if any of the detected dangerous chemical compounds linked to most cancers, developmental issues, infertility and different reproductive harms could also be taking part in a job in Black girls’s well being disparities.
“The chemical compounds of concern present in hair extensions are actually simply the tip of the iceberg of the issue, as a result of so many different magnificence merchandise that Black girls are utilizing are additionally inflicting hurt,” stated Janet Nudelman, director of Breast Most cancers Prevention Companions’ Marketing campaign for Secure Cosmetics.
Black girls who repeatedly use everlasting hair dyes have a 60 % elevated threat of breast most cancers and a 44 % greater threat of uterine fibroids, Nudelman stated. “And Black girls who repeatedly straighten their hair are 30 % extra prone to develop breast most cancers and twice as prone to develop uterine most cancers.”
Over the previous twenty years, the variety of chemical compounds banned or restricted from cosmetics by the European Union has greater than doubled, from 1,100 to greater than 2,400, Nudelman stated. “In stark distinction, within the U.S. solely 5 further chemical compounds have been added to the banned or restricted checklist by the FDA.”
For the previous six years, Nudelman and her colleagues have been engaged on the Safer Magnificence Invoice Bundle, which incorporates laws that may direct the FDA to manage artificial braids. “We hope that customers of Black magnificence merchandise and everybody will help this federal invoice bundle,” she stated. “It’s simply so vital.”
Research like Franklin’s underscore how society disrespects girls, stated Flint, of Black Ladies for Wellness. “Why regulate a product for anyone you don’t care about?”
Society wants a cultural shift that values and protects girls, Flint stated. She tells girls they need to not blame themselves for the well being penalties of the merchandise they use, however the system of governance that fails to guard them.
And Franklin needs Black girls to have the liberty to put on their hair nonetheless they need with out being uncovered to harmful chemical compounds.
“We must always not have to decide on between carrying a few of these hairstyles and security,” she stated.
