Articles
Ten articles. Each one headlines a belief and answers it in the first forty words, against a document you can open. Five are about hair colour and hair treatment, because that is what this address has always been about.
Hair and hair colour
Five articles, also collected with their claims and answers at Hair colour and hair treatment.
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There Is No Standard Behind the Hair-Colour Number Chart
If 7.4 means copper, why is 7.4 a different colour in two different brands?
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Purple Shampoo Does Not Remove Brass. It Covers It.
Why does bleached blonde keep going yellow, and what actually changes it?
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“PPD-Free” Is Not the Same as Hypoallergenic
If a hair dye brings a person out in a rash, is a “PPD-free” box the safe one?
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Hair Dye and Cancer: Four Findings Usually Quoted as One
Does using hair dye cause cancer?
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Argan Oil Does Not Repair Hair — and “Repair” Is Not a Regulated Word
Can an oil, a mask or a “reconstruction” treatment repair damaged hair?
Reading a label
What an ingredient list can tell you, what it cannot, and what the words printed around it are worth.
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You Cannot Work Out Percentages From an Ingredient List
How much of the active ingredient is actually in this product?
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Hazard Is Not Risk: How to Read Any Ingredient Score
What does a 1–10 ingredient safety score actually measure?
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“Clean” Is a Retail Category, Not a Safety Standard
Do “clean”, “natural”, “non-toxic” and “free from” mean anything in law?
How the regimes work
Two explainers on who decides what a cosmetic is, and what a regulator does — and does not do — before one reaches a shelf.
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In Brazil, “Grau 2” Does Not Mean “Registered”
How does Brazil actually regulate a cosmetic, and what does Grau 2 mean if it does not mean “registered”?
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Where a Cosmetic Stops and a Drug Begins
Why can a cream not say it does what a clinic's treatment does?
How to read these pages
Every article opens with a claim panel: the belief in a reader's own words, the short answer in under forty words, and an evidence status — Settled, Contested or Insufficient — which links to the rubric that defines it. Anything set in monospace came out of a document: an annex entry, a section number, a concentration limit, a date. Every article ends with a numbered Sources list, a standing section on what we could not verify, and a note of any corrections made to it. See How we source.