Whether you've been playing with your hair color all your life or are just now considering taking care of those grays, you may have asked yourself how safe coloring products really are. The answer is not as cut and dry as you would think.
Whole Living, a Martha Stewart Living site, claims approximately seven out of 10 women use coloring products. While many studies have been conducted on the safety of their use, not all studies have come to the same conclusions. Some studies claim using hair dye is linked to an increased risk of some cancers, while other studies have found no correlation.
While we cannot be certain about its connection with some cancers, hair dye is often the cause of skin irritation. P-Phenylenediamine, or PPD, is a common ingredient in darker hair dyes, and is known to cause swelling in the eyelids or rashes around the area of application. On the other end of the color spectrum, bleaching products can cause burning and blisters on the scalp, while the fumes can leave you lightheaded and dizzy. All of these irritations are temporary and usually clear up on their own.
Taking a look at the ingredients on your next box of hair dye may give you a shock, but experts say it's nothing compared to what was in hair dye decades ago. New York City colorist Eva Scrivo told Whole Living that today's bleaches contain very little ammonia compared with what they contained in the 1980s. In fact, Scrivo claimed we are down to 1.5% from the 20% ammonia that was in bleaching products in the 1960s.
Accroding to WomensHealth.gov, there are some simple things you can do to avoid irritation and other risks while you dye your hair. These include: not leaving the dye in your hair for more than the recommended length of time, wearing gloves during application, not mixing different products at one time, "patch testing" your skin before dyeing, and avoiding dyeing your 
