A new hair bleach derived from a forest soil fungus could provide a natural alternative to the hydrogen peroxide that's now used to turn anyone into a blonde.
Traditional peroxide does a great job breaking down melanin — the human body's natural pigment — but it's made with an energy-intensive process, and it's easy to overdo it and fry your hair.
The new enzyme, described Tuesday at the American Chemical Society meeting in Salt Lake City by Kenzo Koike of the Kao Corporation's Beauty Research Center in Tokyo, accomplishes the same bleaching task, but it's produced by a forest soil fungus and is gentler on the hair.
It requires a little bit of hydrogen peroxide to make it effective, but the enzyme helps control the free radicals that can damage repetitively dyed hair. That makes it an ideal candidate as an additive to traditional hair bleaches, Koike said in a release.
But Kao Corporation isn't the only Big Beauty corporation trying to make a better hair dye. Back in 2007, Proctor & Gamble touted their own solution — backed up by 18 patents — to the free radical problem.
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Image: Kenzo Koike/Kao Corporation.
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