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Good New/Bad News

You put a lot of stuff in your hair—shampoo, conditioner, gel, and maybe some added color. The good news is that hair care products are made mostly of water, about which we have nothing bad to say.

Unfortunately, the chemical ingredients that actually do the work—chemical detergents, dyes, fragrances, and conditioners—aren’t always safe for you or good for the environment.

Toxic Dyes

Dyes and colors often come with ingredient lists that are 60 or 70 chemicals long and can include toxics like P-Phenylenediamine, resorcinol, eugenol, and ethanolamine. You can also find DMDM hydantoin, a preservative that releases small amounts of formaldehyde and is a potential skin irritant.

Click here for the top-rated hair dyes.

Carcinogenic Chemicals

Some shampoos use cleaners such as sodium laureth sulfate or octoxynol-40 that, depending on the way they are made, can introduce contamination into the product, including carcinogenic chemicals like 1,4-dioxane.

Sodium lauryl sulfate, a close relative of sodium laureth sulfate, is a potential skin irritant, and there is considerable controversy over its potential environmental effects.

Click here for the top-rated shampoos for color-treated hair.

Secret Blends

Most shampoos and conditioners incorporate a combination of chemicals labeled only as the ingredient fragrance.

The exact mixture is considered a trade secret, so companies don’t have to say what’s in their fragrances. But, fragrances can often be allergy concerns or contain toxic chemicals like phthalates.

Click here for fragrance free hair dyes and colors.

Eco Toxic

Common foaming agents in shampoos are ammonium lauryl sulfate and ammonium laureth sulfate, which are eco-toxic ingredients. These ammonium derivatives are also energy-intensive ingredients to make.

The manufacturing of ingredients has the greatest environmental impact (about 60 percent of the overall impact), so it’s more environmentally friendly to look for shampoos without ammonium ingredients.

See environmentally friendly hair dyes and colors.

Search Here

You can use GoodGuide hair dye ratings to find safe, healthy products without toxic ingredients, or browse our reviews for products with high health and environmental ratings.

You can also look through our social data for no-animal-testing seals of approval from PETA and Leaping Bunny.

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