Early last week, I wrote an informative and scathing piece on carcinogens in dry shampoo. The news on the matter was focused on brands under Unilever’s umbrella, but unfortunately independent analytical lab Valisure found benzene in more dry shampoo.
Not in a few. 70% of the latest round of tests, featuring 150 batches from 30+ brands across multiple parent companies, came back with high levels of exposure. Here are just some of the affected brands:
We had a post go live today, but I sat down this afternoon and wrote a whole entire ‘nother because this is NONSENSE. First, sunscreen. Now, there’s a multi-brand recall due to carcinogens in dry shampoo. It’s the same we’ve been seeing in sunscreen: benzene.
The amount of things being recalled for benzene in the last few years is too damn high. Carcinogens weren’t even really top-of-mind for me when I stopped buying dry shampoo a while back (which I JUST shared before this news hit), but there’s a hell of a good reason!
Per the release, which you can read on FDA.gov, this recall applies to products under Unilever’s sprawling umbrella. If you use any of these,
You need to check the UPC and lot codes, which you can do here, to see if you need to take further action. Please note that just because you bought it recently doesn’t necessarily mean it was manufactured super recently! CHECK.
If it isn’t one of these, you may be in the clear – but I’ll come back to this.
Somehow, I forgot to mention in this post that I quit buying dry shampoo. That doesn’t mean I wash my hair every day – which is both time consuming and often times too much for our hair and scalp.
I’ve used several dry shampoo products in the past that I’ve enjoyed. Unfortunately, my favorites were discontinued or changed to be a totally different product with the same name (such is my shitty superpower).
After trying a couple others that either met my low-or-no fragrance requirement but not my effectiveness requirement, or were effective in absorbing oil but choked me with fragrance (looking at you, special edition Grapefruit Mimosa Drybar Detox!), I was fed up.
Unfortunately, dry shampoo is one of those things that I can’t just push myself to use up if it is overly fragrant; it’ll make me sick smelling it all day.
Several years ago, I switched from Gillette razor products to Billie Razors. But it’s time to revisit!
I do! Now that I’ve concluded my laser treatment, though, I go through blades extremely slowly. When I say extremely slowly, I mean I haven’t had blades shipped to me since April 2021 I was already going through them slowly back then and had several on hand. That April 2021 shipment gave me four more and I’ve just been working off that stockpile.
Busy. Tired of spending money to try to find a good product. Tired in general. Got better things to do than troubleshoot why your hair is acting like an unhinged psychopath? Does this sound like you?
I could pitch you some expensive, fancy, salon or prestige product and you could spend an arm and a leg on it…
…or you could just chill and get Costco’s liter-sized Kirkland Signature Shampoo and Conditioner.
While I’m a content Costco customer, don’t worry – I’m not a sample-rabid zombie. I just appreciate a good value – and Kirkland Signature Shampoo and Conditioner is certainly that.
Since my hair loss disaster (I’m all better!), I switched primarily to the wholesaler’s in house product. I didn’t do extensive product testing or sampling; I just picked it up in my usual groceries because my time is currently at a premium.
The formulas of Kirkland Signature Shampoo and Conditioner are salon-tier, and that is not just marketing hype. We’re talking a sulfate-free conditioner (its main surfactant is used by Ethique bars). It is gentle on my balayage, doesn’t dry my hair out, make it brittle, make it flat, etc.
A pair of influencers on TikTok (which I don’t use) and Instagram gained notoriety last fall for sharing a profound discovery: you can shave both ways! SIGH. No, you cannot.
They explain that the the blades of women’s razors are dual edged and can cut on both an up and a downstroke. So, without changing the orientation of your razor, you can just go in one direction, then reverse. They say you shave faster with this method because you’re covering the area in half the time (or less). You may also think of this as backwards and forwards, or a push motion in addition to a pull when the razor is held in such a way that you do not change its direction.
These ladies are wrong.
The conclusions some people reach astound me. It makes me wonder, “Have you ever looked at your razor?” But of course, if they had, they would not be peddling this nonsense on social media. Or maybe they would. Maybe they realize people are gullible and don’t care if they embarrass themselves for the sake of content.
The construction of a modern consumer non-safety razor won’t let you do this fake life hack. That’s whether it is disposable or the replacement-head variety, (the likes of which are sold by Billie, Gillette, Schick, Flamingo, etc). These razors are built such that the blades are secured in a housing angled so that they can only cut on a downstroke (or, perhaps, sideways if you’re unlucky and slip/slice. Ouch.)
Okay, guilty. But I’m also not wrong. Let’s look at this through a scientific lens. We’ll start by making a hypothesis that supports these ladies’ position. We will keep that hypothesis simple and focused on the part that makes their stance fall apart: that the razor can cut backwards.
If I glide my razor backwards, then it will cut hair.
It won’t, because the angle of the blades cannot possibly shave that way. It would be like writing with the end of your pen instead of the tip. You can’t. More accurately, it would be like trying to cut a steak with the blunt (non-sharpened) side of your steak knife.
Look at this razor head. This is a Gillette Venus head. Each of the three red lines terminates at a blade’s edge. They don’t just flip around, and hairs don’t come into contact with the top of that blade. That would be necessary for this claim to work.
This is a simple case of reaching the wrong conclusion. It isn’t that they aren’t experiencing a speed or efficiency gain necessarily. It’s that how they might be, if they are, is not what they think.
Instead of hair being cut on both a forward and backward pass, it has more to do with momentum and glide. The influencers who demonstrate this are moving very quickly. They don’t realize that they’re applying more of the lubricant bar’s product to their skin as they move, for one. Two, because its a constant up-down-up-down-up-down motion rather than calculated top-to-bottom (or vice-versa), reset, repeat, they are using their momentum to get the job done faster.
Science!
Look, I’m a curmudgeon these days. Okay, I’ll be honest, I was always a curmudgeon. But when I saw this not only making waves on other platforms but also making it onto blogs I otherwise trust, I had to facepalm and point this out, even if it took a while.
Suffice to say, critical thinking isn’t a bad thing. It isn’t to say that TikTok and Instagram never get things or clever little life hacks right, but this isn’t one of them.