Alarming Chemical Emissions Found in Common Hair Products

A Purdue University examine reveals that every day hair care routines expose people to dangerous chemical compounds, notably D5 siloxane, discovered in many hair care merchandise. This publicity poses unknown long-term health dangers and contributes to environmental air pollution, particularly in city areas. The examine suggests avoiding these merchandise or utilizing air flow to scale back publicity, highlighting the necessity for additional analysis and potential regulation.
The common morning routine for a lot of Americans entails inhaling a number of milligrams of doubtless dangerous chemical compounds, in line with Purdue University researchers.
In a newly-published paper in Environmental Science & Technology, a journal of the American Chemical Society (ACS), Nusrat Jung, an assistant professor in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, found that a number of chemical compounds, notably cyclic unstable methyl siloxanes — that are ubiquitous in hair care merchandise — linger in the air after use. On common, Jung’s crew stories, a person can inhale a cumulative mass of 1-17 milligrams of doubtless dangerous chemical compounds in a single hair care session in their dwelling.
“We found the results to be extremely alarming,” Jung mentioned. “We did not expect to see such significant emissions of volatile chemical mixtures from off-the-shelf hair care products during typical hair care routines that many people perform each and every day.”
The Main Culprit: D5 Siloxane
The usually biggest — and most regarding — chemical inhaled, Jung mentioned, is decamethylcyclopentasiloxane (aka D5 siloxane). It is an organosilicon compound and is commonly listed first or second in the ingredient lists of many hair care merchandise, indicating it may be among the many most considerable substances. It has turn out to be a typical ingredient over the previous few many years in many private care merchandise resulting from its low floor stress, inertness, high thermal stability, and easy texture.
“D5 siloxane has been found to lead to adverse effects on the respiratory tract, liver, and nervous system of laboratory animals,” Jung mentioned. “The use of the chemical in wash-off cosmetic products has already been restricted in the European Union because of this. Many of these products are scented, too, and some of the chemicals used to make these fragrances are potentially dangerous to inhale as well.”

Within a residential architectural engineering laboratory, Purdue researchers studied how numerous hair care merchandise can launch chemical compounds that linger in the air after use. Credit: Purdue University photograph/Drew Stone
According to the European Chemicals Agency, D5 siloxane is classed as “very persistent, very bioaccumulative.” And whereas the take a look at outcomes on laboratory animals are already regarding, Jung mentioned, there’s little data on its human influence.
“There has not been much in-depth research into this, so we really have no idea to what extent the threat these chemicals pose when inhaled over a long period of time,” Jung mentioned. “There have been tests into ‘wash-off’ products like shampoos, but almost none for ‘leave-on’ products like hair gels, oils, creams, waxes and sprays.”
Jung’s analysis additionally famous that making use of high warmth to those chemical compounds, comparable to by curling irons and hair straighteners, serves to additional launch the chemical compounds into the air. When met with temperatures of 210 levels Celsius, researchers discovered the chemical emissions from the hair care merchandise elevated wherever from 50% to 310%.
Widespread Urban Impact
To make issues worse, Jung mentioned, these airborne chemical compounds don’t merely stay in a single room — and even simply the house.
“Home ventilation is likely a major pathway of indoor-to-outdoor siloxane transport,” Jung mentioned. “In urban environments, this is especially significant as you will have hundreds — even thousands — of homes ventilating out potentially harmful chemicals into the urban atmosphere all in a short span of time as people get ready for work and school in the morning. These chemicals are then collectively piped back into buildings through ventilation systems once more. So even if using products with harmful chemicals is not part of your hair care routine, you will still be impacted due to your surroundings in an urban environment.”
Surveys on completely different inhabitants teams point out that 16% to 70% of contributors use leave-on hair care or hair styling merchandise, Jung’s analysis reported. Considering a mean use frequency of hair care merchandise between two and 5 occasions per week, primarily based on surveys on hair care product utilization patterns, and assuming that 10% of leave-on hair care merchandise are siloxane-based, the whole indoor-to-outdoor emission of D5 may attain 0.4 to 6 metric tons per yr in the U.S.
So, how can individuals shield themselves from inhaling these chemical compounds?

Nusrat Jung, a Purdue assistant professor of civil engineering, opinions information exhibiting the chemical compounds emitted into the air from utilizing a hair styling instrument. Credit: Purdue University photograph/Drew Stone
“The best solution is to simply not use these products,” Jung mentioned. “I used to use similar products myself to straighten my hair, but after we analyzed the data, it became immediately clear that the best thing I could do to protect my own health was to stop using them.”
If one should use these merchandise, the following smartest thing is to have an exhaust fan running to attenuate the quantity of chemical compounds inhaled, mentioned Purdue civil engineering PhD scholar and researcher Jinglin Jiang.
“Ventilation can be an effective way to reduce siloxane exposures during indoor hair care routines,” Jiang mentioned. “Our model shows that turning on the bathroom exhaust fan can reduce D5 inhalation exposures by over 90%.”
That, nevertheless, additional contributes to its environmental influence. Jung’s analysis stories that the cumulative indoor-to-outdoor D5 emission with the exhaust fan at all times off reaches 710 milligrams inside three hours, whereas the indoor-to-outdoor D5 emission with the exhaust fan at all times on reaches 900 milligrams inside just one hour.
“There’s a good reason why these chemicals are restricted from being used in wash-off hair care products in certain parts of the world,” Jung mentioned. “The effects on people and the planet need to be studied further and regulatory action needs to be taken.”
Gathering the info
Jung’s experimental analysis was carried out in a residential architectural engineering laboratory that she designed: the Purdue zero Energy Design Guidance for Engineers (zEDGE) Tiny House.
zEDGE is a mechanically ventilated, single-zone residential building with a conditioned inside. A state-of-the-art proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer (PTR-TOF-MS) from Jung’s laboratory was used to measure D5 siloxanes and different unstable chemical compounds in the indoor air in real-time, second-by-second.
The hair care routine emission experiments had been carried out throughout a measurement marketing campaign in zEDGE over a interval of a number of months, together with three experiment varieties: reasonable hair care experiments that replicate precise hair care routines in the house setting, scorching plate emission experiments that discover the connection between the temperature of the hair care instruments and unstable natural compound emissions, and floor space emission experiments that examine how hair floor space impacts unstable natural compound emissions throughout hair care occasions.
For the reasonable hair care routine emission experiments, contributors had been asked to convey their very own hair care merchandise and hair styling instruments to duplicate their routines in zEDGE. Prior to every experiment, the contributors had been instructed to separate their hair into 4 sections. The hair size of every participant was categorized as lengthy hair (under the shoulder) or quick hair (above the shoulder). The sequence of every experiment consisted of 4 intervals, to duplicate a real-life routine.
After hair styling, the contributors had two minutes to gather the instruments and depart zEDGE; this was adopted by a 60-minute focus decay interval, in which zEDGE was unoccupied, and the high-resolution PTR-TOF-MS monitored the decay in indoor unstable natural compound concentrations. The experiments and subsequent evaluation centered on indoor unstable natural compound concentrations and emissions throughout and after lively hair care routine intervals.
Reference: “Siloxane Emissions and Exposures during the Use of Hair Care Products in Buildings” by Jinglin Jiang, Xiaosu Ding, Satya S. Patra, Jordan N. Cross, Chunxu Huang, Vinay Kumar, Paige Price, Emily Okay. Reidy, Antonios Tasoglou, Heinz Huber, Philip S. Stevens, Brandon E. Boor and Nusrat Jung, 16 November 2023, Environmental Science & Technology.
DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.3c05156
This analysis was funded and supported by Purdue University, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. Jung’s crew plans to analyze the numerous different chemical compounds detected in these experiments that weren’t reported in this examine.