If you have platinum blonde, blonde or even lighter shades of brown hair, a common malady of swimming in public pools is the occurrence of your hair turning green. Help! What to do?
Iron, Manganese, Nickel and Copper are Also in the Chlorinated Pool Water
Pools with improper pH and the use of copper-based algaecides will be the most likely source of most of the color-causing culprits. The chlorine in public swimming pool is usually the first entity that gets the blame. But it’s not the chlorine exactly; it’s the dissolved metals in the water that cause this. Dissolved metallic elements such as iron, manganese, nickel and of course, copper from the copper pipes that supply the water and the reason for the green hair. Chlorine is merely the oxidizing catalyst for these elements. Oxidation is the same process that puts patina on copper pennies and copper-bottom cookware.
White and grey hair is also susceptible to this insidious color change, but darker hair can show green as well under the right light. It just usually goes unnoticed as the green does not show through as easily. If you wash your hair thoroughly, yet your hair feels dry and stiff, you probably have hard-water and your hair needs help. Conditioners and chelation may be in order.
Wearing a swimming cap may be part of an answer for women when using a public pool or showering at home, but for men there is practically nowhere outside of an Olympic swim competition that he would ever be caught wearing one of these!
Use of hair conditioner after shampooing will keep the hair healthy and help to prevent the cuticle damage that chlorinated water causes. Chlorine also damages hair outright causing dry hair, split ends and frizzies, which in a public pool, allow chemicals into your hair and oxidation to occur. Yet another deleterious side-effect of chlorinated public swimming pools.
Getting the green color out, if you are already afflicted, requires some special clarifying shampoos formulated for swimmers. It contains a chelating agent called “EDTA” (ethylenediamene tetracetic acid) that may help. It provides a mechanism for bonding with and removing any metallic elements from your hair, allowing the hair to be rinsed cleanly. Regular use can help keep you from getting that patina green color with public pool use.
Commercial hair care products containing EDTA such as “Ultra Swim Shampoo Replenishing Moisturizer” will most certainly allow your hair to make a rapid recovery from the shamrock shades of summer swimming that you fair-haired types abhor.
Other ways to prevent your fair or light-colored hair from becoming green in public pools is if practical, to wet the hair with non-chlorinated water several minutes in advance of swimming. This allows the dry and often porous hair to absorb some neutral water before the onslaught of chemical-laden pool water. The more difficult it is for the chlorinated water to get in, the better for you. The theory is that if wet hair is already laden with pure non-chlorinated water, less of the pool water will soak in. Even the shower at the public pool, although chlorinated as with all municipal water, contains far less chlorine than the pool itself and is better than just entering the pool with your dry, damaged, and thirsty hair.
Rinsing the hair in the shower immediately after swimming is also the best thing to do. You are removing the heavily-chlorinated pool water and the algaecide-laden elements from your hair before they dry in place.
If your hair is already green you probably want to try a home remedy to remove this unwanted color. Rinsing with the juice of a lemon may help to remove the green color. Mixtures of baking soda dissolved by adding to your regular shampoo regimine may also help too. This mixture will also remove any built-up hairspray, mousse, gels and other styling products that have partially soaked into your porous hair cuticle. Use this mixture once or twice a week and you may notice that your hair is as far as the green goes, becoming lighter in color in no time.
