COLUMN ONE : Hair Spray for a Hold on Smog : Can household products be reformulated to satisfy air quality rules--and customers? Makers seek to meet deadline, with ‘breakthroughs’ and tales of woe.

Cindy Scheerschmidt is engaged in a top-secret effort to preserve the coiffure as we know it.

In a squat industrial building in Canoga Park last week, she conducted Test No. 5811 on a human volunteer. Scheerschmidt parted her subject’s curly red tresses down the middle. From two coded black containers, she applied a different coating to each side.

Then she ran her fingers expertly through the hair. “It’s tacky,” she said of the portion on the left. She pushed her nose close to the scalp. “Let me smell it,” she said.

Here in the “evaluation center,” a 15-chair beauty salon at Redken Laboratories Inc., hair spray is getting a make-over--after a hard shove from state regulators fighting to cleanse California’s foul air.

All across the country, competitors are hard at work too. If they want to sell hair spray in California after this year, they must succeed.

To satisfy the authorities and reduce pollutants, manufacturers will have to create a very different product. But to satisfy customers, the industry believes, the new sprays will have to perform just like the old ones and cost about the same.

Their dilemma is by no means unique. The makers of 26 other household products, from oven cleaners to insecticides, also face regulation by the state Air Resources Board, which enacted its most recent group of rules last week. Perfume, laundry spray starches, deodorants, non-stick cooking sprays, fabric protectants, glass cleaners . . . all must be reinvented for the sake of cutting smog.

Chemists are furiously mixing and blending in their labs. Evaluators such as Scheerschmidt are giving the prototypes true-to-life workouts. Packagers are designing new nozzles, valves and liners. Marketers are pondering whether to proclaim to the world that the contents have changed or keep very quiet and hope no one notices. And several other states and the federal government are paying close attention, considering whether to follow California’s lead.

As in other industries, hair spray manufacturers squawked loudly in 1990 when the ARB adopted a two-step rule governing their product’s cleanup.

For now, primpers all over the state make smog with virtually every spritz. Whether hair spray costs 99 cents or $15, whether it comes in pump or aerosol form, only a tiny portion of the chemicals actually coats the strands, keeping hairdos in place. As much as 98% of the spray evaporates into the lower atmosphere, contributing to a myriad of ingredients that bake in sunlight to form a potent, lung-irritating brew.

By next January, the maximum for smog-forming compounds in hair sprays will be 80%. In 1998, the limit will fall further, to 55%.

With the first deadline looming, some hair spray makers have already achieved success in the lab.

Others are only getting closer. “We had a breakthrough in the last few months, so we’ll have a pump on the market by 1993,” said Joseph J. Pereira, technical services director for Clairol Inc. “But we’re still working on an aerosol. That’s going to be much more difficult.”

The big question for the firms, though, is whether low-smog hair sprays will sell.

Answers should start coming soon. Over the past year and particularly in recent months, a few hair sprays that meet the impending standards have appeared on the shelves, mostly at salons, but also at some drug and discount stores. The new products sport names such as “New Idea,” “Extra Environ” and “Ecoli.”

Developing those new formulas was not easy. To change a single ingredient means disturbing an intricate balance, and frequently the whole spray must be re-blended.

The smog-forming pollutants in the average hair spray are hydrocarbons, such as butane and propane, and alcohol. The hydrocarbons are found only in aerosol; they are the propellants. In both aerosol products and pumps, alcohol keeps the glue dissolved while it is in the package.

Frustrated researchers tell of replacing alcohol in aerosol products with water--certainly no pollutant--only to watch the stuff cascade down hair models’ shoulders, flattening their hairdos.

Pumps send forth larger particles than aerosols do, so they are often perceived as wet. Adding water to those formulas delivers “a double whammy,” one industry consultant said.

Then there was one company’s short-lived experiment with another type of packaging. Like a pump, it had no need of polluting propellants but, like an aerosol, it delivered a consistent fine mist. The hair spray was injected into a can containing a flexible pleated pouch that, when full, stretched out like a balloon. Whenever a valve was released, the pouch would contract and shoot the product out.

But pressure dropped as the pouch emptied, so the last portions of hair spray tended to dribble. And the containers tended to fracture when subjected to intense heat. In a Texas warehouse, the cans leaked.

Many of the new mixes are relatively expensive, more than $6 for 11 ounces. The water-based sprays, some users complain, are slow to dry. Some salon stylists say the clean-air sprays have a weaker hold, leading to what is known in technical parlance as “curl droop.”

Environmentalists are unmoved by such tales of woe. “We think ‘curl droop’ is a small price to pay for clean air,” said Jim Jenal, who heads the Southern California air quality program of Citizens for a Better Environment. “We think consumers will agree, if you give them half a chance.”

The industry’s chief worry is that customers faced with changes in all hair spray may decide to forgo it altogether.

Some just might. When only low-emission products are available, “we just won’t use spray,” said Richard Lipinski, manager at the Carleton Hair International salon in Century City. He does not like the new environmental product sold at his establishment. “We’ll design simpler, more classic styles. We’ll have to adapt.”

Similar sentiments were voiced across town, at Josie’s Hair Salon in Atwater Village. Helen Rangel, bedecked with curlers, observed: “I can cut off all my hair, like a little boy.”

Hair sprays, however, have survived such upheavals in the past.

The beehive and bouffant styles of the 1950s and ‘60s were welded in place by sprays containing chlorofluorocarbons, a class of chemicals that served two functions. The compounds dissolved the resin that fixes the hair in place and also propelled it out of the aerosol can.

Then came “the Archie Bunker effect,” as industry insiders dubbed it. On a mid-1970s episode of “All in the Family,” the actor playing Archie’s liberal son-in-law delivered an impassioned monologue on aerosol’s role in depleting stratospheric ozone.

Chlorofluorocarbons have a long life once they pass into the air, so they survive the trip into the upper atmosphere. There they stay long enough to react, nibbling holes in the protective layer shielding Earth from the sun’s most harmful rays.

After the “All in the Family” speech, hair spray sales took a nose-dive, said Michael Gibbs, an environmental marketing consultant who has studied the industry. Later, in 1978, the United States banned the use of chlorofluorocarbons in aerosol.

But in solving one environmental problem, the chemists created another. The new ingredients combine so fast with surrounding compounds that they help not to destroy ozone, but to create it--in the wrong place, near the ground where people breathe it. Ozone has been implicated in a wide array of lung problems. It is the major component of urban smog.

In California, where nearly 59 million containers of hair spray are sold each year, the fumes add up. The Air Resources Board estimates that hair sprays annually spew 14,000 to 17,000 tons of smog-forming chemicals into the air.

So in the early 1980s, air quality authorities around California included the vapors from such consumer products on their cleanup list, along with car exhausts and industrial emissions.

The ARB’s research staff hired a Gardena laboratory to evaluate the percentage of pollutants in a number of hair sprays.

Two chemists held down nozzles or pumped various brands into plastic bags, shut the bags and weighed the contents. Then they opened the bags, allowing the gases to escape. With hundreds of them drying on countertops, “it looked like Jellyfish City around here,” said Barbara Belmont, the lab’s director.

Eventually, only a tiny lump of amber or yellow remained in the bag. That was the glue. From there, it was easy to calculate how much of the spray had floated off into the air.

The chemists found high pollutant volumes: 98.5%, 96.8%, 97.6%. The lowest figure, 77.3%, was for a pump, but other pump brands were around 90%.

Hair sprays could do better, the ARB decided. After fierce but unsuccessful lobbying, the industry buckled down to work.

Pressed for details about their new formulas, the industry’s chemists and marketers are as coy as blue-ribbon cooks asked for the winning recipe from last year’s county fair.

But it is clear that there has been a great deal of trial and error. Researchers at several companies say they mixed more than 500 batches before they were satisfied.

As at Redken, the formulas are taken to company salons and, more often than not, pitted against traditional sprays in the “half-head test.”

On a recent rainy day, the halves belonged to Shelley Barry, a medical records auditor and a Redken regular. She started patronizing the company salon after a friend told her about the firm’s standing offer: a free shampoo and style for those who agree to a product test.

Barry was more than willing to come by for an appointment after work for a hair spray experiment.

In her left hand, Cindy Scheerschmidt grasped a container labeled 7341-70C. In her right, she gripped 7341-70B (not the real names). She pushed down on both valves at once.

“Wider pattern, stronger force, little alcohol,” she jotted on a form about the C sample.

Then Scheerschmidt, a veteran cosmetologist, styled Barry’s hair. When she was done, the left side looked a bit limp and the strands were slightly tangled. “I prefer the right side,” Scheerschmidt said. “It’s got body. It’s got less drag.”

But was it the low-emission spray? Only the chemists know for sure.

In its initial aerosol offering, Redken is using a new propellant, hydrofluorocarbon 152a. It does not break down as readily as hydrocarbons but also does not last as long as the old ozone-depleters. The resulting spray comes in under next year’s 80% limit. The company named it “Quick Dry” to separate it from water-based products.

After much internal debate, the firm slapped a sticker on the “Quick Dry” can trumpeting its “Formule Air Pur!” The hair spray has been sold in salons since Sept. 1, said Redken marketing director Martin Flaherty, and is holding its own with the company’s regular line.

But 152a is 10 to 15 times as expensive as hydrocarbons, so it is not likely to be used for mass-market sprays, said Donald P. Dunn, aerosol marketing manager for DuPont-Fluorochemicals. Also, U.S. production capacity is limited, he said.

And mixed with alcohol, it will not meet the 55% limit set for 1998.

Eventually, most manufacturers agree, they will have to replace the alcohol with water in both aerosol products and pumps. But 152a does not blend with water. “We don’t have that licked yet,” Flaherty said.

At least two companies, Cosmosol and Jheri Redding, are selling water-based aerosol products that meet the 1998 standard. Both use another new propellant, dimethyl ether.

Reviews are mixed. A colleague of Gibbs, the environmental consultant, liked Cosmosol’s “New Idea” so much she made it her regular brand. But a hair spray industry consultant, who spoke on condition of anonymity, predicted: “They’re going to sell at least one can to a lot of people. But those people won’t be coming back for more.”

Stylist Tom Fried, of Amato Hair Salon, is not willing to switch to low-emission sprays until he has to. He has cut hair in Beverly Hills for 20 years and the water-based pump that Amato recently started to stock does not meet his standards.

“It’s too wet,” he said. “I have to blow-dry the hair all over again.”

But he is sanguine about the future. “They’ll improve,” he said. “There will be another generation of sprays.”

Josie Contreras, owner of Josie’s Hair Salon, agreed. “We’ll find a way,” she said. “If the Americans don’t do it, the Europeans or the Koreans or the Japanese will.”

Hair Spray Makeover

State air-quality regulators have targeted hair spray as one of a number of consumer products that must be reformulated to help fight smog. The dispensers: There are two basic types of hair spray dispensers. Pump spray: Market in California: 5 million units per year. Aerosol spray: Market in California: 53.7 million units per year. What’s inside the dispensers: Hydrocarbon propellants (aerosols only) Alcohol Glue New state requirements: In January, 1993, hair spray formulas contain 80% or less smog-forming compounds. In the San Francisco Bay area, no non-complying products will be on salon or market shelves after that date, because of a federal court order. Elsewhere, merchants will have one year to sell stock they ordered before the compliance date, but low-emission products must be brought in to replace such merchandise. In January, 1998, hair spray formulas must contain 55% or less smog-forming compounds. How hair spray works: A) Alcohol, roughly two-thirds of traditional hair sprays, is blended in to keep the glue dissolved in the can until time for use. B) The propellants, roughly one-third of the product, hurl the mixture from the can to the hair. C) Only a tiny portion, as low as 1.8%, of a hair spray is glue or resin--the component that stays on the strands to hold a coiffure in place. D) Propellants and alcohol evaporate into the air, mixing with a myriad of other substances that bake in sunshine and form smog.