Your Health in the Beauty Industry. Part 1

COPD and the BEAUTY INDUSTRY .  Part 1   

A friend of mine now has COPD and it got me thinking how this industry has handled the health of stylists. I have always said WE must look after ourselves as no one else will. 

This is an observation I have witnessed over the last 6 decades; I will try to do this in 3 segments so it doesn’t end up a book. It will be my story and observations.

Back in the mid to late 60’s when I started dressing hair there was an Asian women 30’ish and she was not that healthy looking when we worked together always coughing but still worked like a dog. Well one day after a short break she walked in looking and acting like she was 16. Here is what happened, She went to a Chinese herbalist and tried a potion which after a period allowed her to cough up a large sized hairball!   I realized then that hair lacquer sprays were used with every client and lots of it, plus fine particulate fibers.  we also did a lot of dry razor cutting and shears were used just to clean up any odd ends.  I never forgot the situation. Today hairsprays are less toxic but still present issues.   To finish this part, I will mention one more thing as I said it was the another lesson, I learned about taking care of one’s health in the beauty industry;  back in the day stylists’ health issues were rounded shoulders, back issues and more, we will talk about that later. The guy I worked for at the time had them all and had trained me to work smarter as in proper body positions with body balance and posture as well as how to correctly hold shears, dryers and other tools which I have not only practice but taught in my many years of platform work as well as training many stylists that work with me at HAIRACY in Toronto, Canada.  

Next we’ll look at my observations of our health in industry circa the 70’s.