— NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women who work as hairdressers may have a slightly increased risk for having an underweight baby or an infant with a birth defect, according to a study conducted by Swedish researchers.
The findings are published in the August issue of the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
In the study, Lars Rylander of University Hospital in Lund, Sweden, and colleagues compared 2,410 women who worked as hairdressers and had given birth to 3,462 women from the general population.
The hairdressers "more often gave birth to infants that were small" for their gestational age (4.5% vs. 4.1%) compared with non-hairdressers, the authors report. In addition, they found that 2.8% of the hairdressers gave birth to a baby with a "major malformation" compared with 2.1% of non-hairdressers.
While frequent hair spraying and permanent waving tended to be associated with small infants, no such link between exposure to common hair-care chemicals was seen for birth defects, the study indicates.
Rylander and colleagues recommend that hairdressers regularly wear protective gloves, especially during pregnancy, and that hair salons do all they can to increase ventilation of chemical fumes.
Commenting on the study, Dr. Gerald McEwen of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association in Washington, DC noted that the study did not take into account other factors that can affect pregnancy, including alcohol consumption or physical strain and/or work-related stress.
Each of these factors can affect birth outcomes like the ones noted in the paper, he explained, and since they were not properly controlled for it is not possible to rule these factors out as a possible cause for the birth outcomes reported.
"Overall, there is no link between the products used in the salon and the effects that were reported, he said.
SOURCE: Occupation and Environmental Medicine 2002;59:517-522.
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