What products are really necessary for hair and other beauty questions - episode 296

Valerie George (0:00)

Hi, I'm Valerie and you're listening to The Beauty Brains.

Welcome to The Beauty Brains, a show where real cosmetic chemists answer your beauty product questions and give you an insider's look at the cosmetic industry. This is episode 296 I'm your host, Valerie George, and with me today is Perry Romanowski. Hi Perry.

Perry Romanowski (0:28)

Hello Valerie, so good to see you, glad to be back.

Valerie George (0:31)

Great to see you in my flyover of Chicago and here today. On today's show, we're gonna answer questions about can home bleaching your hair affect the follicles and hair production long-term? Why is BHT in cosmetics and is it safe? What is the difference between a fragrance and a perfuming ingredient?

What products are really necessary for hair?

Can the dye in purple shampoo work for your teeth? And what should the next, I know I had to laugh. What should the next generation of estheticians and hairdressers know or understand? But first, that inane chit chat, how's the kitty stuff going?

Perry Romanowski (1:08)

Well, I've got a visiting kitty this for the next couple of weeks. Yeah, my sister-in-law, they did their spring break, and so we get to take care of their cat.

Valerie George (1:19)

Oh, very cool. I thought you were saying it was like a new porch kitty in residence or something.

Perry Romanowski (1:24)

Yeah, well, I don't know. It's like, is this thing about cats where like boy cats like women and girl cats like men? Because this is a boy cat and he doesn't seem to like me that much.

Valerie George (1:37)

Oh, but he likes Shannon.

Perry Romanowski (1:39)

He loves my wife, so here you go.

Valerie George (1:42)

And of course, she's allergic to cats.

Perry Romanowski (1:45)

Oh, yeah, she's allergic, of course. But of course, I'm the one who feeds him and cleans up his litter box and stuff. But that's what I do.

Valerie George (1:54)

You're going to have to work for his affection.

Perry Romanowski (1:55)

I will.

I did see that the porch kitty crew, I think they got booted out of their house. There's a new crew that came in.

Valerie George (2:06)

Really?

Perry Romanowski (2:07)

There's a new gray kitty and there's this menacing big black kitty. I don't know.

Valerie George (2:13)

And Tuxedo is gone?

Perry Romanowski (2:15)

I haven't seen Tuxedo or Lou. The whole clan is gone.

It feels like an episode of The Walking Dead, quite frankly.

Valerie George (2:23)

It's cat wars. That's what it is.

Perry Romanowski (2:26)

Well, they're all still eating my food, so it's all good.

Valerie George (2:30)

Yeah. Well, I missed seeing you yesterday. I was traveling home from Ohio. I had a board meeting at Kent State University, and I had a layover in Chicago, but due to mechanical problems, the plane was late, and then the plane couldn't take off because of more mechanical problems, and then I was stuck in Chicago for the night. And I thought, you know what? I had to call Perry and have him help me out, but my flight was early in the morning and was a big disaster, so I got home late, but missed opportunity to see you.

Well, let's head over to some beauty science news.

I don't think we actually have any news today, but we have a couple alerts.

Perry Romanowski (3:13)

That's right. Well, I mean, these are kind of news, right? But yeah, you know how we have kind of tracked the, I don't know, this would be the new way to make money in the beauty industry is to sue people.

Valerie George (3:27)

Yeah, lawsuits, baby.

Perry Romanowski (3:28)

There have been all these kind of weak lawsuits. We've talked about them before, but this latest one is a lawsuit against Clorox. They're facing a class action lawsuit against their Burts Bees brands for using the Forever chemicals in their products. Basically, what's happening here is Burts Bees, they've been advertising their products as natural, but they haven't been disclosing that these things contain PFASs, or what was in the news a few weeks ago, the Forever chemicals.

And so we've got a group of consumers suing them because the Burts Bees, all of Flutter Mascara theoretically contain some of these PFASs.

Valerie George (4:17)

So frivolous, so frivolous.

Perry Romanowski (4:21)

So the complaint claims that they had independent testing done and they found PFASs, the polyfluoroalkyl substances in Burts Bees and they said, well, you're saying you're formulated without chemicals of concern that's in your advertising and so now we're going to sue you because we're concerned about these things.

It's a pretty amazing new lawsuit. I don't think it's going to go anywhere, but then again, this is the problem with the marketing of natural brands, certainly a brand like Burts Bees. They imply that their product is completely from nature and yet they're using a lot of standard chemicals that aren't really found in nature. There may be their nature derived, but they're not actually in nature.