Article date: 20/10/2010
Teenager left scarred by hair dye allergy
When most people dye their hair, they expect to look better – not as though they’d been beaten up and burned.
Now Rachel Dowley, who suffered such a violent reaction to a £5.49 home dye kit that her mother didn’t recognise her in hospital, wants the chemical responsible banned.
The 19-year-old ended up on hospital drips after she was permanently scarred – and was told she could die in anaphylactic shock from just one more treatment.
‘After 46 hours, the patch test for Garnier Herbashine showed no reaction and I put the rest of the bottle in my hair,’ she said.
But she was left unrecognisable the next day as her immune system kicked into gear.
‘My head looked like a watermelon. People were moving away from me like I had a contagious disease.’ The dye included paraphenylenediamine, also known as PPD, common in dark hair dyes.
Miss Dowley, from Southend, Essex, has set up a Facebook campaign to have the chemical, linked to certain cancers by European researchers, banned from dyes.
.‘I just want everyone to do patch tests and make sure they keep them on for the whole 48 hours before application, because no one I know did them until it happened to me.’
A Garnier spokesman said it was committed to ensuring its products are safe. ‘We were very sorry to hear of Miss Dowley’s experience. Allergies to hair colourants are extremely rare but can occur.’