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Hairprint
I have been trying to figure out how the Hair Print ‘natural and non-toxic’ hair color works. It claims to restore grey and white hair to its natural color. Here are the ingredients listed from its website:
INGREDIENTS
Here is the list of Hairprint’s food-grade ingredients:
1. Aqua (purified and deionized water).
2. Bicarbonate of soda is what we use at home for baking and cleaning.
3. Mucuna pruriens extract is made from velvet beans.
4. Sodium carbonate is made from salt and limestone.
5. Ferrous and manganese gluconate are both food supplements used in multi-vitamins.
6. Hydrogen peroxide is made of oxygen and water and naturally occurs in the hair follicle.*
7. Diatomaceous earth is a naturally occurring sedimentary rock made from ancient deposits of hard-shelled algae.
8. Carbomer is an inert thickener used in shampoos and pharmaceutical products.Pretreatment Ingredients: Aqua, lauryl glucosides, sodium cocoamphoacetate, sodium carbonate, sodium citrate, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, phenethyl alcohol.
I don’t think this is the entire list as there is a powder you mix with a liquid and then a ‘sealant’ step that is a second powder mixed with a second liquid.
I am a hair stylist trying to learn everything I can about all the options out there. Plus, I like to be able to answer intelligently when clients ask about different ‘chemical-free’ options. I get the henna question a ton and I know about that. I usually explain that if a hair color covers grey it has to have certain ingredients (i.e. the ones everyone thinks are bad) or be a stain of some sort.
A client asked me about this product and now I have been down the rabbit hole trying to figure it out!! Any help would be appreciated!
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14 Replies
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OK I am a long way from being able to explain this to you fully but from your comments about powders and liquids, I suggest that:
- The colouring mechanism is related first to THIS and I am surprised you didn’t find that with Google, it took me about half a minute.
By the look of the colour of the other ingredients mixed with their respective solvents, they act as temporary colour dyes of some kind while the extract does its job.
Has this been tested for safety? Painting your head with L-Dopa, which is readily absorbed by the skin, well, you take that risk if you want to. -
https://www.google.com/patents/US20100313362
It’s this patent. I’m sure of it. -
further to @Belassi‘s comments I found this patent, filed by the company who owns the brand (Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry), which goes into detail
the long and short of it is that it uses the iron and manganese salts, and peroxide, to accelerate the process
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“I like to be able to answer intelligently when clients ask about different ‘chemical-free’ options”
Please don’t come on to a chemist’s website and say anything about “chemical-free options”. There is no such thing. Everything is made of chemicals, without exception.
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Hey Bobzchemist - I think you misunderstood me!! I completely understand what you are saying. I was talking about what clients say to me!! They will bring up different things they have heard about or would want to try and I like to know how all the different color options out there work so I can explain to them fully. Sometimes saying that everything is chemicals isn’t enough of an answer for why one color technology may not be the best option. Sorry if I offended you in any way.
I am new to trying to understand how the products I use everyday work and have gotten such helpful information from reading the posts on this forum I thought I would reach out about this specific color to see if anyone out there knew how it actually colors the hair. I appreciate any insight you have to offer. -
Hi Belassi and Bill_Toge!
Thanks for linking the patent. I am new to understanding how the products I use everyday work and I really appreciate your help!
The patent mentions that it is a henna based product. From my experience with henna it is a stain and not an oxidative color. Which for a colorist is a nightmare! Removing henna while maintaining the health of the hair is a long and difficult process with varying levels of success.
Because I am new to understanding how all of this works, could you offer insights to how close this product is to henna?
Thank you! -
It is all in the patent, you have to read it and understand the chemistry.
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Here’s another opinion from a chemists’ view of (permanent) hair dyes:
My advice to a hair stylist is unless your customer is sensitized to PPD or its derivatives there is no reason at all to look for natural alternatives for hair dye.
1. They don’t work as well.
2. They can be even more sensitizing than synthetic dyes. -
@kinome the product described in the patent I linked, which sounds a lot like Hairprint, is an oxidative colour based on L-DOPA and iron/manganese salts rather than traditional bases and couplers (PPD etc.) - so not very similar to henna at all
I’ve also realised it’d be a complete nightmare as far as safety assessment is concerned - the oxidative nature of this product means its exact composition at the point of use (hence, its toxicity) is completely unknown, unless there’s a very rigorous and foolproof study out there somewhere
(apropos of nothing, the patent reads like it was written by an academic research group rather than by cosmetic chemists; the way they’ve written the formulas and methods is a dead giveaway)
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David- the client who asked about it has a suspected PPD allergy. We are waiting on the final analysis from her allergist to make sure. She hasn’t colored her grey hair in several months and is going crazy looking for another alternative. I do know many PPD free colors use another pigment that can develop into an allergy over time as well.
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Bill_Toge - Thank you!! I will keep looking into it. I do have to admit that my understanding of chemistry is limited and that reading the patent made my brain spin!
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@kinome - in the case of PPD allergy I would recommend using direct dyes (temporary) instead. You can reach better results if bleach the hair first.
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Regarding the L-DOPA here is another patent from 1990, which mentions an even older patent describing hair coloring with DOPA ( European Pat. No. 161073A of 1984) , didn’t find it though. Finding a PPD alternative is a difficult task and nobody has really succeded yet. In my opinion the chance of finding an alternative is also limited due to the fact that the alternative molecule has to be small enough to penetrate the hair cuticle. Although the number of compounds a chemist (or nature) can synthesize are infinite, the number of molecules with a MW <200 are not so many in comparison.
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Thank you David! The idea of bleaching the hair before direct dye is a great one I hadn’t thought of for natural colors - only vivids!
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