33. Ancient Women Dyed Their Hair With Lead and Sulfur
Dyeing hair has been popular for thousands of years, but until the arrival of modern science, people often flew blind when it came to selecting and applying hair dye ingredients. As a result, dyeing one’s hair was often a fraught affair, with risks ranging from the cosmetic hair damage or destruction at the low end to catastrophic damage to health at the high end. In ancient Rome, the safer end included temporary dyes such as henna, and odd dyes such as a paste made of pigeon dung and earthworms to lighten the hair, or the ashes of donkey testicles to fight hair loss.
The more dangerous end of the spectrum included substances such as lead and sulfur. Both ancient Greeks and Romans – who probably learned it from the Greeks – used lead and sulfur in their concoctions when they wanted a permanent hair dye. Their hair probably looked great as a result, but the health consequences could be extreme. For example, we now know such exposure to lead could lead to maladies that include headaches, weight loss, miscarriages, birth defects, seizures, and death, among many other bad side effects.