Durango salon owner Barbara Acosta has a burning desire to help clean up the gulf oil spill. To that end, she has collected a 30-pound wad of hair.
Like other hairstylists and pet groomers across Colorado, the country and, most lately, the world, Acosta is shipping the hair to the Gulf of Mexico.
There it will be stored with 400,000 pounds of already-collected locks in donated warehouses stretching from Louisiana to Florida. Next it will be stuffed by volunteers into nylon hosiery-encased “booms” that resemble leg-sized hair sausages. At some point, donors hope those hair tubes will be tossed in the gulf to sop up spilled oil.
About 100 hair salons and pet-grooming parlors across Colorado have jumped on the hair cleanup bandwagon and are shipping clippings south. The clean-up-the-gulf-with-hair movement is gaining swift momentum from those watching a growing environmental disaster. Do-gooders are gathering locks — even though the science behind this potential method may be a little fuzzy and the chances of the hair ever hitting the water of the gulf is as iffy as a natural-looking toupee.
“This is really an incredible thing going on,” said Acosta, who believes in the process and has set up a sort of hair clearinghouse and shipping center for shorn locks and fluff at her 6th St. Hair Salon & Day Spa. “I think this is an example of America doing its best.”
The hair cleanup idea actually originated well before a deep-sea rig blew up and spilled oil into the gulf. More than a decade ago, a small-town Alabama barber was looking at photos of animals covered in oil after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. He had an aha moment.
The oil had clung to the fur because hair has oil-absorbing properties, as anyone with a limp hairdo can attest. Phillip McCrory surmised that hair could be used to clean up oil spills.
McCrory teamed up with a San Francisco-based nonprofit called Matter of Trust, and through that group’s Excess Access, which links donations of all sorts of salvageable castoffs to needy projects, he began collecting hair.
Some salons had been contributing to his cause for years before the recent spill turned the effort into a wildfire social movement. Large chains such as Fantastic Sam’s and Petco are now sending clippings. Smaller operations from Absolute Miracles in Gunnison to A Little Off the Top in Aurora are pitching in with what they snip.
“I think it’s a great idea. This is hair that would normally get thrown into a trash can and get thrown away,” said Mark Akins, regional director of Fantastic Sam’s salons.
Potentially hairy problems
Terry Hazen, senior scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is one of those who don’t think a hair cleanup is a good idea at all. He noted that hair could pose a hazard of its own.
“It has bacteria and pathogens,” Hazen said. “It has the potential for nits and parasites.”
Hazen believes the best thing to do for the spill is — nothing. Tramping around the wetlands to place hair tubes on oil slicks could do more harm than good, he said.
And while more than 400 government and oil-industry scientists work feverishly in a command center on the gulf to come up with other solutions for the slick (while so far bypassing the hair option), Hazen said areas fouled by past spills that were left alone recovered much faster — in about five years — than areas where aggressive cleanup measures were tried. He said that’s because petroleum-degrading bacteria in ocean water increases dramatically after spills.
On the other hand, Matter of Trust cites a successful hair cleanup in San Francisco Bay when a fuel tanker crashed into a bridge in 2007 and dreadlocky mats of hair were used to sop up spilled fuel.
Matter of Trust could not be reached to comment on the debate because its voice mailbox is full.
So while volunteers stuff hair tubes at “Boom-B-Qs” along the gulf and the growing warehouses of hair start to ring alarm bells for some, hairstylists and pooch trimmers are continuing to sweep up clippings, happy to feel that they are helping with a massive environmental disaster.
“Any little thing we can do,” Acosta said. “I mean, gosh, it’s a drop in the bucket, but it’s what we can do.”
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com
