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As with many conventional personal care products, you probably need to have an advanced qualification in chemistry to figure out exactly what is in most hair conditioners and there is far much variations amongst ingredients for us to list all those you may come across. Most conventional hair conditioners consist of emulsions of water and cationic surfactants, such as stearalkonium chloride and benzalkonium chloride. They coat the surface of the hair so that it feels softer and static cling is reduced – much in the same way that fabric softeners work (fabric softeners also consist of emulsions of cationic surfactants and water).
It is very difficult to find relevant safety or environmental information about individual cationic surfactants since claims that they are dangerous to aquatic life for example, tend to refer to all of them, making researching product ingredients difficult. We have researched a few cationic surfactants that seem to crop up in hair conditioners time and again – although some seem to be worse culprits than others, it would appear that most are believed to be potential skin/eye irritants. 'Natural' hair conditioners tend to use either cetyl alcohol or cetearyl alcohol rather than surfactants. These are fatty alcohols usually derived from coconut and tend to be less irritating than surfactants so if you suffer from a dry, flaky or itchy scalp condition, then it might be worthwhile switching to a conditioner containing these milder coconut derived alternatives to to see if this alleviates the problem. If you would like to avoid petroleum derived ingredients in your personal care products you would also do well to avoid hair conditioners containing cationic surfactants, since although they can be derived from just about anything, they are usually derived from petroleum.
As with all commercially available personal care products, we would advise that it's probably best to avoid those containing 'fragrance' since you can never be sure exactly what this is.
And of course, other ingredients which crop up time and again are parabens. British researchers have found traces of parabens in tissue taken from women with breast cancer, and although there is no evidence that parabens cause cancer, researchers have asked for the use of parabens in personal care products to be reveiwed, as these studies suggest that these chemicals may accumulate within the body after having been applied on the skin. We have discussed parabens elsewhere on Scene Green and would advise people to avoid using any product containing them.
Scene Green recommended products
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Aloe Vera Conditioner - Green People |
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Intensive Repair Conditioner – Natural, Mostly Organic - Green People |