Contrary to recent media reports, the Brazilian Blowout hair treatment is safe for use.
You’d never know it, though, because the mainstream media has been perpetuating one myth after another about Brazilian Blowout while ignoring the facts. Last time, I wrote about a hatchet job made to appear as a legitimate study by Oregon OSHA [Note to Editor: Please link to Part 1] that was covered ad-nauseum by the media.
Yet, when a respected scientific association issued a balanced statement regarding Brazilian Blowout, the media spun it to make it appear that the company was fighting regulatory sampling of the product. To wit: The American Chemistry Council, which actually manufactures formaldehyde, released a statement ten days before Oregon OSHA unveiled its biased “report”.
“We encourage the company that makes the Brazilian Blowout to cooperate fully with government officials to ensure that the product meets federal and state standards for formaldehyde use”.
Brazilian Blowout fully cooperated and, as thanks, was subjected to a biased and editorialized government report from Liberal environmentalists at Oregon OSHA. Yet Time Magazine would have you believe that “The chemical industry is actually sort of coming down on the side of regulators and activist groups on the issue”, while quoting hack anti-capitalist enviro-wackos like Siobhan O’Connor. The company’s side of the story, however, was omitted.
So, with the house already stacking the odds against Brazilian Blowout, Federal OSHA entered the fray.
OSHA’s Big Boo-Boo
In air sampling data reports obtained exclusively by this reporter, I can confirm that OSHA did indeed conduct 24 air sample tests in several salons. Brazilian Blowout passed every single test in OSHA’s exposure limits, known as the Action Limit (AL – the level where OSHA regulations take effect) Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL – an 8-hour time-weighted average) and Short-Term Exposure Limit (STEL – a 15 minute exposure measurement).
But a funny thing happened during one of these short-term exposure tests. As the report below details, one sample was taken for 35 minutes instead of the 15 minutes required under OSHA regulations. One would expect that if you sample the air for more than twice the period you are supposed to, anything you find in that sample is going to be more than twice as concentrated as it otherwise would.
Sure enough, that sample yielded 2.5 parts per million (ppm) of formaldehyde, above OSHA’s limit of 2.0 ppm. Rather than discard this sample as protocol dictates, OSHA retained it. In fact, as the report indicates, the sample was received in OSHA’s laboratory by a functionary, who passed it on to an analyst, who analyzed the sample, who had another employee check his calculations, before the entire report was approved by a supervisor.
And none of them noticed the improper 35 minute sample, or if they did, they did nothing about it. How is it that a mistake that a high-school student would commit somehow made it all the way through OSHA’s internal controls? Are there any such controls? Why was it missed? What the heck is going on inside OSHA that this critical error wasn’t caught? And why is it that OSHA didn’t tell the public the truth — that all 24 samples passed the test, but that one faulty sample did not — and instead caused a firestorm by holding up that faulty sample as “proof” of Brazilian Blowout’s “danger”?
More Media Brilliance
On April 11, 2011, OSHA leapt into the media cistern with a press release. It’s a Hazard Alert! Included in this gaseous emission is the phrase, “During Federal OSHA investigations, air tests showed formaldehyde at levels above OSHA’s limits in salons using Brazilian Blowout Acai Professional Smoothing Solution…” in big bold letters.
I asked an OSHA spokesman via Email about this blatantly false statement. To date, they have not replied.
But never mind me. Did the media investigate OSHA’s results? Did anyone from the media ask to see the reports? If they did, would they even be able to interpret them? Did the media ask the company what their reaction was to the results?
Why didn’t anyone from the media discover OSHA’s enormous blunder that I found?
Because they were too busy “reporting”. Here’s a partial List of Shame — I want to nail some of the small-time folk, too, because they could’ve had a real story and really broken big time if they’d actually done the research:
Kathy Muldoon at The Oregonian
Amity Addrishi Bakersfield Eyewitness News
Independent Lab Confirms Safety of Brazilian Blowout
The other big story that the media ignored is that a company that routinely performs indoor air quality tests (Health Science Associates) tested Brazilian Blowout’s product. The results showed — again — that the product’s formaldehyde release came in far below all of OSHA’s limits. But you wouldn’t know it unless you knew A Mom In Red High Heels, who reported it in her blog. That’s it.
So at this point in the story, Brazilian Blowout is being attacked from all sides, thanks to a witch hunt solely the result of incompetent and/or biased government agencies. With OSHA now throwing pies, it was only a matter of time before a grandstanding Liberal politician entered the fray — and along with him, the FDA.
All for a product repeatedly proven to be safe, when used as directed.
Next time: Hardcore Liberal politican + FDA = business as usual.
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