The dangers of toxic hair straightening or hair straightening products for African American women were recently explored in a New York Times article. Some of these products have been linked to reproductive disorders, cancer, and other health problems. The decision to use these products or not is just one of the choices black women may make as they try to conform to European beauty ideals.
Micaela Martinez, Ph.D., is the director of environmental health for the group WE ACT for Environmental Justice. Her organization works with city and state health departments to test a wide range of products for toxicity and share their data on health effects.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Martinez, who says such products have a disproportionate impact on people of color, but the problem affects everyone who uses personal care products. She warns that the industry standard is to use toxic chemicals and substances derived from fossil fuels.
MICHAELA MARTINEZ: When it comes to toxic chemicals in beauty products, we find that some of the most notorious toxic products are those designed for and marketed to women of color. Hair straighteners are a really good example that has gotten a lot of attention recently because formaldehyde and hair straighteners have been linked to hormone-dependent cancers like uterine cancer.
Another notoriously toxic beauty product we work on is skin lighteners. Skin lighteners are a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide and are becoming increasingly popular. Skin lighteners are used for many things, such as lightening the skin in general, but they are also marketed as making the skin look younger or brighter and more radiant. There are also skin lightening products that are used for more targeted areas such as freckles or dark spots, underarms, elbows, knees, etc.
But the really dangerous thing about skin lighteners is that many of them contain mercury. And that’s because in much of the world it’s completely illegal to add mercury to cosmetics because mercury is a very dangerous neurotoxin. Companies continue to do it illegally and outside of approved uses because mercury is an incredibly effective skin lightening agent because it blocks melanin production in the skin.
So products with mercury are highly potent and we’re seeing cases of mercury poisoning in the United States as well as many other health problems associated with skin lighteners because they often also contain corticosteroids and another chemical called hydroquinone. Together, these things, mercury, hydroquinone and corticosteroids can effectively lighten the skin, but at a very, very high physical cost in the form of these side effects and in some cases literally brain damage and things like that.
Then of course there are the societal impacts and then the wellbeing and mental health impacts of just the existence of skin lighteners. But generally they are based on white supremacy, colonialism, colorism and classism and a combination of those things. And in some places there is also patriarchy because there, like in India for example, a lot of marketing also has to do with a kind of bridal marketing. Whether a woman can find a husband depends on her skin color, for example, etc. etc.
So some of the most toxic, psychologically toxic ideas in society are associated with the existence of skin lightener marketing. It also depends on whether you’re looking at the consumer or also occupational health, because when we look at hair salons and also nail salons and the use of things like hair straighteners, it’s women – often it’s women – and women of color who work in hair salons and regularly use hair straighteners and hair dye and other products that are highly toxic. So there’s all this occupational exposure.
Another area where there is a very high occupational exposure is nail salons, because there is formaldehyde and a whole range of endocrine disruptors and toxic chemicals that are regularly used in nail polishes. These acrylic paints and so on.
MELINDA TUHUS: It seems like the other aspect, besides trying to actually make these things safer, like removing toxic elements, is a cultural aspect so that women of color don’t feel like that’s the beauty standard they’re trying to achieve. Does beauty come from the inside out? Is that part of your work?
MICHAELA MARTINEZ: Yes, that’s a big part of our work. That’s something we spend a lot of time on in our educational conversations. For example, we talk about colorism, we talk about how these products are based on white supremacy. We also have difficult conversations about how we might be reinforcing some of these negative, harmful concepts in our own communities, I would say. For example, when I do education about the dangers of skin lighteners and I talk about colorism, we have to differentiate that from racism. So colorism happens within a racial or ethnic group when there’s discrimination based on skin color, so when lighter skin colors are favored and people with darker skin are discriminated against. So when we have conversations like, “Okay, when you’re talking to family members, avoid things that have that undertone, like, ‘Don’t stay out too late or you might get too dark,’ or ‘Make sure you cover up.'”
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