{"id":91037,"date":"2016-09-29T14:35:01","date_gmt":"2016-09-29T18:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/?p=91037"},"modified":"2020-09-17T10:33:35","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T14:33:35","slug":"detangling-the-roots-of-black-hair-and-health","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/news\/articles\/2016\/detangling-the-roots-of-black-hair-and-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Detangling the Roots of Black Hair and Health"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"banner-container banner-has-html\">\n<div class=\"videoWrapper\" style=\"position: relative;padding-bottom: 56.25%; \/* 16:9 *\/height: 0;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"855\" height=\"481\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/buniverse\/interface\/embed\/embed.html?v=14CU0K0\" style=\"position: absolute;top: 0;left: 0;width: 100%;height: 100%;frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<p>\n<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar sphnews-prepress-layout-metabar\">\n\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-wrapper\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-date\">September 29, 2016<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-credits\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-prepress-component-metabar-share js-bu-prepress-share-tools\">\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-twitter\"><span>Twitter<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-facebook\"><span>Facebook<\/span><\/span>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"icon-action\"><\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s always been the church and the hair salon,\u201d says student Kirsten Minor. Both, she says, have long been central safe\u00a0spaces for black communities in America.<\/p>\n<p>But even the hair salon can be a site of health disparity, Minor says, with chemical exposure related to hair dye, perms, texturizers, and relaxers contributing to higher rates of a range of health issues among black women.<\/p>\n<p>To address the issue, Minor completed a practicum project, &#8220;Detangling the Roots of Black Hair and Health,&#8221; with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bphc.org\/%20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Boston Public Health Commission<\/a>\u2019s Safe Shops Project. The initiative seeks to develop relationships with small businesses in occupations where employees and clients are exposed to toxic chemicals, assessing health burdens and offering education to decrease exposure.<\/p>\n<p>After working successfully with nail salons and auto body shops, the Safe Shops Project is taking its first steps into hair salons, particularly those predominantly serving women of color.<\/p>\n<p>To provide a foundation for that work, Minor conducted a literature review of risk factors and adverse health outcomes among hairdressers and clients. Then she went out into the field with questionnaires and surveys to gather primary source data from salons throughout Greater Boston.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe wanted to get an understanding of what knowledge hairdressers in Boston have about chemical exposure,\u201d Minor says, along with which services they provide most, and whether they would be interested in educational resources and safer products. This will in turn inform the interventions the Safe Shop Project will develop for hair salons.<\/p>\n<p>Minor says the literature\u2014much of it from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/bwhs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Boston University Black Women\u2019s Health Study<\/a>\u2014shows the risk is greatest for hairdressers. \u201cHairdressers disproportionately are at increased risk of having adverse sexual reproductive outcomes,\u201d she says. \u201cMiscarriage and uterine fibroids are <a href=\"http:\/\/aje.oxfordjournals.org\/content\/early\/2012\/01\/10\/aje.kwr351.abstract\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">positively correlated<\/a> with the use of perms.\u00a0 Uterine fibroids can impact whether you&#8217;re able to conceive, as well as having spontaneous abortion, miscarriage, and low birth weight\u2014and black women unfortunately are already at an increased risk of low birth weight and infant mortality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As for clients, Minor says, the Black Women\u2019s Health Study <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/17507635\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">concluded<\/a> perms are not directly correlated with breast cancer. However, she says there may be <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/cam4.613\/full\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a more complex connection<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPerms and a lot of hair products that black women use in general across the board have elevated levels of hormones,&#8221; she says. &#8220;So young girls who are getting perms as early as the age are two and three, when they receive that perm, that texturizing, it actually raises their estrogen levels and it can trigger early onset of puberty as well as period. Young girls are developing and are having their period <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S1047279711000603\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">at nine or ten years old.<\/a>&#8220;<\/p>\n<p>That, she says, is where cancer risk comes in: a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/2015\/07\/15\/early-menarche-linked-to-aggressive-breast-cancer-in-african-american-women\/%20\">study<\/a> co-authored by an SPH researcher linked menstruating at an earlier age to higher rates of an aggressive form of breast cancer in black women.<\/p>\n<p>At the hair salons she visited, Minor says, both hairdressers and clients showed plenty of interest in learning more about how to protect themselves and each other.<\/p>\n<p>But Minor says tackling black women\u2019s chemical exposure also needs to include more discussion around black hair, and the pressure to change its texture in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<span>Historically<\/span>,<span> society has always <\/span><span>had negative <\/span><span>associat<\/span><span>ions with<\/span><span> natural black hair<\/span>,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s internalized. We make comments of what&#8217;s &#8216;good hair&#8217; and what&#8217;s &#8216;bad hair<span>,\u2019 <\/span>and young girls are listening<span>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>She points to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/codeswitch\/2014\/08\/13\/340155211\/pentagon-does-about-face-on-hair-regulations-black-women-approve\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">military\u2019s grooming regulations as recently as 2014<\/a>, a friend with natural hair struggling to be recognized as professional in broadcast journalism, this September\u2019s federal appeals court <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/appeals-court-rules-dreadlocks-work_us_57e0252ae4b0071a6e08a7c3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ruling against a woman fired for her locs<\/a>, and myriad other examples of bias against black women wearing \u201ctheir hair in its natural state.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Minor says we as a society have to both address these pressures and bring more safety and transparency to hair products.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor the record I&#8217;m not anti-perm,\u201d says Minor, who went natural in college. \u201cDo what makes you happy, but be educated. The information should be available so you can make the most informed choice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2014<a href=\"mailto:msamu@bu.edu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Michelle Samuels<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[VIDEO] Student Kirsten Minor illuminates chemical exposure risk for hairdressers and their clients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10989,"featured_media":91138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[2004,1085,504,1899],"bu-publication":[3516],"sphnews-article-category":[3519,3525,3531],"sphnews-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"profile_tax":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/91037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10989"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91037"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/91037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175330,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/91037\/revisions\/175330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91037"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=91037"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-article-category?post=91037"},{"taxonomy":"sphnews-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sphnews-topic?post=91037"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=91037"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=91037"},{"taxonomy":"profile_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_tax?post=91037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}