By Vicky Uhland

You eat natural foods, wear natural fibers and even bathe your dog in natural shampoo. You celebrate everything organic, nontoxic, sustainable, and seasonal—except when it comes to your hair. No matter how much you want to love your blah brown locks or venerate those stray gray hairs, you just can’t get your head around the slow descent into middle or old age.

So you color your hair, cringing every time you read the chemical concoctions in the ingredient list on the hair dye box. You worry that your artificially enhanced coif may literally be the death of you, causing serious allergies or, at the worst, cancer. You scan the studies for information about whether coloring your hair during pregnancy may harm your baby. You stress so much over your tresses, you create even more gray hairs to be cosmetically covered.

But many medical professionals believe that in the long list of substances that can kill you, hair dye falls near the bottom. “It’s certainly not as dangerous as smoking,” says Vincent DeLeo, MD, chairman of dermatology at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and Beth Israel Medical Centers in New York. It also seems that for every study that links hair dye with cancer, another says the opposite. A 2004 study published in The American Journal of Epidemiology found that women who began coloring their hair before 1980 had an increased risk of lymphoma. But a 2005 Spanish evaluation of 39 years worth of hair dye studies found no strong evidence that coloring your hair makes you more susceptible to cancer.

A study published in 2001 in the International Journal of Cancer found that women who used permanent hair dyes at least once a month had twice the risk of bladder cancer as nonusers, and yet, a 2006 study conducted by the University of Texas’ Department of Epidemiology discovered no link between hair dye use and bladder cancer.

So what’s a dull-tressed, health-conscious lass—or lad—to do? The ideal solution would be using an all-natural hair dye. But the only commercial colorant completely free of chemicals is henna, and that won’t lighten dark hair or give you many color choices. Other plant-based dyes include chamomile, lemon juice, indigo leaves, walnut, and black tea, but they can’t transform your tresses from Janis Joplin brown to Gwen Stefani platinum. “These ingredients are stains at best and only last at most a day or two, and even then usually take unevenly. They work like food coloring would on your skin,” says Robert Craig, a Manhattan hairstylist who developed the natural hair dye line Color by Robert Craig.

That doesn’t mean your only other option is a dye made entirely from unpronounceable synthetic ingredients. A growing number of companies produce natural hair dyes with fewer harmful additives and minimal health risks.

Hair color 101

Most people think hair dyes work like a paint that covers each strand of hair, but that’s only half the story. Whether or not that paint permeates the hair determines the type of dye. Semi-permanent dyes coat your hair with color, while permanent dyes use ammonia or hydrogen peroxide to open the hair cuticle, allowing the dye to penetrate each individual hair and actually change the color from the inside out. Permanent dyes remain in your hair until it grows out, while semi-permanent dyes fade with each shampoo.

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