The Hairy Truth

After having exactly 2 haircuts at a trendy salon here in Lansing, I ended up on their email list and have been getting some interesting SPAM from them lately. You can identify Viagra ads, penis-enlargement ads, and all sorts of other goodies in your email box by their *ahem* suggestive title lines, so I was suspicious when my ex- hair salon sent me an email with a title line reading "Brazilian Blowout Special!"

Now, if you don't get out much, you might not realize that there are a few definitions of the term 'Brazilian' with regards to the salon industry. We won't get into the other ones, but this one in particular referred to a type of hair treatment that claims it can straighten your otherwise frizzy, mousy, and generally horrible- looking hair into sleek, supermodel- esque tresses. The catch? It uses Formaldehyde- yeah, the stuff they use to embalm dead bodies- as its primary active ingredient.

Oh, don't get your panties in a twist just yet: OSHA, or Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the authority on all work-related health concerns in the nation has deemed the exposure of clients and cosmetologists to the Formaldehyde in the treatments to be "...well below the accepted level of .5 parts per million..", so you don't have to worry your pretty little embalmed head over the side effects of inhaled vapors, such as nasal cancer. A nose job ought to go real nice with that new, slick hairdo.

When I took high doses of immunosuppressants last fall after having my kidney transplant, my hair fell out. Anyone living with cancer and suffering through chemotherapy or radiation loses their hair. Alopecia, or hair loss, affects many people due to genetics, environmental factors, or side effects from medications. It might be wise for people putting harsh chemicals on their heads and close to their brains to stop and consider that they are extremely blessed just to have hair.