Feature
The NITS Come With It
N
Direct mail hair extensions threaten
public safety cause calls for regulations
its and head lice eggs are found in large
numbers on hair extensions. In the U.S.
Instances of lice have decreased in recent
years, but now they’re making a comeback.
In the hair industry, it’s suspected that they come from
nits on the hair that you can easily find on hair exten-
sions. You may wonder, “We have the FDA, CDC, US
Customs Office, how could they not know about it?” Un-
fortunately, none of these government agencies inspect,
monitor, or regulate what is coming via express mail,
namely DHL.
Packs of hair
from a Chinese
merchant
in
Guangzhou, Chi-
na is packaged
and sent to U.S.
consumers daily, a
plane full of them
arrives
every-
day. It just goes
through
simple
paperwork
that
is cleared by the
U.S. Customs of-
fice and delivered to the consumer in about three days.
They call it, “bundle hair” or “Aliexpress hair.”
There is no means to verify the treatment process of
these human hair extensions on either side. The sellers
in China are mostly likely not even the factory employ-
ees. They are one-man operated, or a group of a few
English speaking people with computers that connect to
U.S. consumers. When a customer orders the product,
they then head to the hair market where large numbers
of small-to-large factories operate their distribution
and pick up the hair the customer ordered. Near the en-
trance of the the market, there are shipping processors.
These young Chinese merchants take all the hair they
purchase and send it from there. In a few days, the cus-
tomer receives it and wears it right away.
The scene of these hair markets is enough to make
you cringe, the sorters sit on the floor, sorting out the
hair, packaging it, and putting it on the wall or in large
plastic trays. Sadly, it is a substandard processing facil-
ity. No regulation, no inspectors, nobody there to hold
any responsibility for the unsanitary condition of the
hair they sell.
On the other side of the globe, the consumers in the
U.S. are trained to trust any product they buy. They tend
to trust government agencies and the harsh consequenc-
40
C O S M O B I Z M A G A Z I N E
es of the companies who violate public safety. Unfor-
tunately, all that has changed since e-commerce tore
down the borders and express mail could freely enter
U.S. households from unknown sources.
We need a new set of regulations.
China’s economy has grown fast and it is modern-
izing rapidly. Tall buildings are built, and luxurious
cars are filling up the highways, but their notoriously
infamous sanitary habits still remain in most parts of
production. A Chinese court recently sentenced a man
who collected sewage and turned it into a cooking oil
that was widely used in restaurants. Although China is
making significant progress, it still is a country where
sanitation is often overlooked in favor of foreigner’s
desire for cheap products at any cost.
Our government should not leave public safety in the
hands of the public. If lack of manpower is an issue for
the government to regulate small matters such as hair
extensions and wigs, it must initiate a study on the po-
tential threat and set the standard for Chinese factories
and traders to follow.
If hair in express mail
has sanitary problems,
you may wonder about
the hair sold at the beau-
ty stores. Thankfully,
retail store hair is made
by companies in U.S..
They are familiar with
the consequences of dis-
tributing irresponsible
hair products, here even
the big corporations
could be closed down if
any microorganisms were to be found on the hair. Not
only for the benefit of the public, but to protect their
own companies, retail hair goes through a strict set of
sanitation procedures. These include acidic treatments
to remove the outer-most layers of hair cuticles which
removes any micro organism and even removes the
traces of its donner. In addition, some companies invest
heavily on developing solutions to treat the surface of
hair both for sanitary purposes as well as the function
of the hair.
Even if retail brand-name hair is safer, it is almost
impossible to stop consumers from ordering hair from
irresponsible sources in China or India. The only way
to protect the consumer is to set strict guidelines and
standards on how the hair products are processed from
their source.