From Straw to Gold : Sunscreen-Formula Hair Care Is the Newest Attempt to Prevent Dry, Bleached-Out Locks
Most people have gotten the message that it is vital to protect their skin from the sun’s rays with conscientious applications of sunscreens. The sun wreaks havoc on hair, too, and it’s not just a summer problem. The wisest people protect year-round--whether in swimwear or street wear--because sun damage knows no season. In Southern California, ultraviolet light can be just as harmful in February as in August.
Is a hat or scarf the only way to keep hair from becoming sun-bleached straw? Hair-care researchers don’t think so. They claim that consumers can let their hair flow freely with protection that comes from a bottle or tube.
Some sun lovers, male and female, who now forgo brown skin in favor of healthier shades of pale, still want the sun to streak their hair. Rather than take the controlled, professional-salon approach, they may even drench their hair in lemon juice, which can speed up the bleaching process. But the price is a dry mane. “People must understand that for hair to change color, there is damage to the strand. Many think that because the sun is doing it, the process is more natural and less harmful,” says Sergio Nacht, a San Francisco Bay Area biologist. The sun breaks down sulfur bonds, making strands vulnerable to split ends, he says. Ultimately, “the hair loses its shape and feels like straw.”
Furthermore, sun-bleached hair “quickly becomes brittle and breaks when you comb or brush it,” says Dr. Albert Kligman, a Philadelphia dermatologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The sun will dry and bleach any shade of hair, but “just as white skin is more easily damaged than black skin, so light hair is more easily damaged than dark,” says Dr. Wilma F. Bergfeld, head of clinical dermatological research at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
Cosmetics and hair-care companies are now introducing products that apply to hair the same protection principles that sunscreens offer to skin. Recently, many shampoos, conditioners, mousses, gels and sprays containing sunscreens derived from PABA or other active agents derived from Vitamin B-5 have appeared in stores and salons. “If the sunscreens are not rinsed out, they provide protection,” Kligman says.
But, Kligman adds, most of the shampoo or conditioner protection does go down the drain. Nacht says, however, that leave-on products such as creams, gels and sprays can provide long-lasting protection. “They act as a barrier between the hair and the sun,” explains John Sebastian, president of Sebastian International, which produces the Systema sun-protection hair-care line.
John Corbett, vice president of technical development at Clairol, questions whether consumers are willing to coat their heads with a sunscreen mousse or gel. “To get the same protection as a sunscreen for the skin, one would have to wear slicked-back hair. In most cases this is unacceptable.”
Some products, such as Pantene’s Sunbrella and Revlon’s Flex Sun & Sport lines, carry numbers similar to the sun-protection factor (SPF) labels on sunscreens for the body. The numbers indicate degrees of protection: low numbers for skin that can take a lot of exposure, high numbers for skin that can tolerate very little. The SPFs for skin products are assigned by the Food and Drug Administration, but there is no federal or industrywide standard governing the numbers for hair care. John Wenninger, associate director of cosmetics for the FDA, says that sun-protection lotions, creams and sprays for the skin are considered drugs but that items intended to protect hair from the sun are not. Therefore, FDA approval for the effectiveness of the latter is not required.
The concept of adding sunscreens to hair-care products has a sound scientific basis, Wenninger says, but he warns that consumers should not assume that such products protect the scalp. “The scalp is skin and therefore needs a sunscreen designed for skin,” he says.
Kligman says that using sunscreens serves as a preventive--not curative--measure. “Repair the hair? That’s impossible,” he says. “You can put protein film around the split ends of a hair, like a Band-Aid, but that’s all you can do.”
Many hair-care scientists and dermatologists report that there is no conclusive research on the effect of the sun on hair. But even though “nobody ever died of cancer of the hair,” as one doctor remarked, it’s essential to protect it from the drying, damaging aftermath of sun exposure. Preventive products that include sunscreens and PABA may be a way to year-round, healthy-looking hair.
