Hairdressers give birth to smaller babies

The long hours and the chemicals used in perms and hairsprays may be putting hairdressers at risk of producing small babies.

When Swedish researchers compared more than 3000 hairdressers with a similar number of women from the general population, they found that hairdressers gave birth more often to infants that were small for dates.

Moreover, a higher percentage of the children born to hairdressers had a major malformation – 2.8 vs 2.1 per cent (Occup Environ Med, 2002; 59: 517-22).