A Safer DIY Hairspray

Toxins in hairspray accumulate over time, instead create your own!

Luckily the 80’s are behind us, so we use less hairspray. But it’s important to think about what is in it and read your labels wisely. In the 70’s hairspray included an ingredient linked to liver cancer in humans (vinyl chloride). Despite awareness it was not removed from the market for 10 years.  Hairspray stillToxins in Hairspray includes many other ingredients that “may or may not” contain cancer-causing properties.

What to avoid?

Some of the ingredients you want to avoid are aerosol propellants, alcohol, polyvinylpyrrolidone plastic (a carcinogen), formaldehyde and fragrance.  Fragrance itself can contain any number of thousands of ingred
ients in that one trade protected word.

Aside ingredients you are applying to your head there are the ingredients you are inhaling when applying. Inhalation of denatured alcohol and hydro fluorocarbons can cause breathing difficulty, low blood pressure, skin, eye and lung irritation.

Environmental Concerns?

Moving on from immediate health dangers is the environmental issue. Hairspray is considered the most dangerous beauty product on the market.  Hairspray contains so many volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) that can harm the ozone layer, which protects the Earth from harmful UV radiation.

What can you do?

The easiest thing to do is swap any aerosols you may have. We don’t use a lot of hair spray at my house so I have not tried these first hand but there are brands that score low on the skin deep website making them much safer than others.  https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/browse/hair+spray/

If you are ambitious you can make your own! I was going to try this recipe out for my daughters last dance recital but in the end I didn’t need to spray her hair. I have talked to people who have tried this one with much success!

1 Cup – Filtered Water

4 TSP – Sugar

2 Drops – Geranium Essential Oil, Lavender Essential Oil, and Rosemary Essential Oil.

 

  • Heat the water and dissolve the sugar. Once your solution has cooled, add the three essential oils and store in a spray bottle.