JOHN THE OBSCURE ™

By John Ruch

© 2008

A Bunch of Hot Air: Tourmaline Hair Dryers, Silver Brushes and Other Dubious Hair-Care Treasures

I was just trying to buy soap.

But my eye strayed to the next shelf over and fell, as it inevitably does in CVS, on quackery.

What I saw was a bright red hair brush branded “Tourmaline Ceramic.”

“100% crushed gemstones with ions for intense shine,” the label on this Conair product elaborated. “Reduces static electricity.”

I grew up as a rockhound and had several nice samples of the lovely, varied semi-precious gem tourmaline. The idea of a gemstone brush appealed to the kid in me, as it’s probably intended to do.

I was later to learn that the brush is an offshoot of a burgeoning array of tourmaline hair dryers that work the magic of crystal gems on your hair. I was also to learn from lab testing that one Conair “tourmaline” dryer model contains no tourmaline—at least, not where Conair apparently says it does.

Meanwhile, hanging next to the gem brush was Revlon’s Silver Technology brush.

“This brush is manufactured with natural silver to help stop dirt, oil, and residue buildup that cause hair to become dry, brittle, frizzy, and eventually break. Silver Technology helps hair stay clean and frizz-free, so it can grow longer and stronger,” reads a product description that experts tell me has no basis in reality, and which appears to skirt federal labeling laws intended to prevent such quackery. Conair is getting in on this as well with its Nano Silver line of dryers.

Gems and precious metals, the stuff of pirate treasure chests, now stud entire hair-care product lines, as the industry has learned that New Age goofiness + (supposedly present) valuable ingredients = higher profits. Tourmaline dryers typically cost at least twice as much as normal models. If all you want to do is take care of your hair, these days it pays—literally—to use your head.

A 2006 Conair press release explained the inspiration of its brand line Infiniti—which includes the tourmaline dryer in which I could not find tourmaline: “Infiniti^TM emerged when beauty industry marketing experts at Conair Corporation found through research that consumers are willing to spend more money on higher quality hair care products.”

The industry is not inventing the idea of magic gemstones and metals. Fairy tales did it first, of course. But more recently, there is a backdrop of ridiculous tourmaline claims and products. It is not clear that manufacturers always realize how ludicrous tourmaline claims are when they dump some into their own product. The antibacterial property of silver is currently the focus of extensive federal regulations and double-talking marketing claims designed to end-run them, as I previously discussed when I got Paper Mate to change the improper labeling on its “antibacterial” pens (also discovered at CVS).

Here’s my own fine print: Conair spokesperson Stacey DeFelice did not respond to my questions about mineralogists’ skepticism of tourmaline products and the tests that found no tourmaline in the Infiniti dryer, though she provided other information about Conair products.¹ Not responding to any questions at all were: Revlon; T3 Micro, a major tourmaline dryer company that may have kicked off the fad; Farouk Systems, a Texas company that is marketing a variety of “ionic” and “nano silver” beauty products; and Helen of Troy, a licensee company that makes various tourmaline and silver products under various brand names, including Revlon and its Silver Technology brush.

“Where Is the Tourmaline?”

Before we crack open the pirate chest of tourmaline dryers, brushes and curling irons, we must learn the Big Three terms of modern hair-care devices: ceramic, ionic and tourmaline. As all three features are present (or advertised as present) in many devices, it’s important to realize they are distinct.

“Ceramic” means that there is some kind of ceramic tablet in or coating on the device. The presumably true idea is that ceramics, which are great insulators, retain heat from a hair dryer or curling iron, providing more heat in an even fashion. Marketing often gets overheated itself, describing the magic production of “far-infrared heat”—without explaining that far-infrared energy is heat. Such silliness aside, ceramics are an uncontroversial ingredient—though such silliness is not aside, but omnipresent in the more pseudoscientific product claims.

“Ionic” means that the product somehow ionizes air molecules—that is, gives them an electrical charge. While there is a bewildering, ludicrous and sometimes contradictory array of marketing claims made about the function of these ions, the basic real-life purpose is to eliminate static electricity in the hair. Industrial ionizers do this all the time in such fields as computer chip manufacturing. That does not, however, mean that ionic dryers actually do much to de-static hair, as we’ll see later—and an ionic brush is quackery in principle, let alone practice. In any case, ionizing hair dryers have been around for many years and are fairly simple to create, though the main version requires a high-voltage electronic ionizer built in.

“Tourmaline” means that the product contains said gemstone, the idea being that it does the ionizing instead of an electronic ionizer. In theory, this is possible, as tourmaline is pyroelectric: it produces an electric charge when it expands under heat. (Learning the cool word “pyroelectric” alone made researching this column worth the expense of three brushes and a hair dryer I’ve torn apart.) It is similar and related to the more familiar property of piezoelectricity—the production of a charge under physical pressure. The idea is that the dryer’s hot air triggers a charge on tourmaline within the device, which would then ionize air.

Pyroelectric crystals are certainly well-known and well-established, I was told by Prof. George Rossman, a mineralogist at the California Institute of Technology’s Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. Some X-ray machines, for example, are powered by pyroelectric crystals.

“If you heat or cool tourmaline, you get expansion and contraction that will develop a charge on the surface,” Rossman said, moving to our specific mineral in question. Tourmaline is particularly known for its rapid piezoelectric response; one use is in high-impact military sensors.

“But other stuff does it better,” he added about pyroelectricity. Tourmaline is also expensive and hard to synthesize. Its main commercial use is simply as a gemstone.

Tourmaline has another attribute as well—a cultural background of quackery, scams and frauds. As so often happens in pseudoscience, an actual impressive property—pyroelectricity—has been regularly misconstrued, misrepresented and/or misunderstood by a long line of crystal-worshipping cranks. Tourmaline hair dryers are the latest stage of this mush-headed evolution, as evidenced by the fact that there is absolutely no reason for tourmaline in particular to be used as an ionizer in dryers except for tourmaline’s reputation among New Age fools. An ion is an ion is an ion. Tourmaline is not special—presuming it works at all, or exists in the product in any fashion besides being a word painted on the side of the dryer.

The pseudoscience of tourmaline is one of Rossman’s pet peeves. When I e-mailed him about tourmaline dryers, he later told me, “It struck an instant chord with me. We had a discussion in the lab last week about it.” That’s because he had spotted a tourmaline dryer in a Sharper Image catalogue—incidentally, a notorious habitat of quack devices.²

Rossman had previously taken it upon himself to dismantle a quack tourmaline device that supposedly sucked up supposedly harmful ions depicted as spewing forth from TVs and computer monitors. He sliced up the “little plastic football-shaped object” and looked at it under a microscope. There he found its substance included about 1 to 2 percent (by volume) black tourmaline in powdered form, “randomly inserted.” Even if tourmaline would suck up evil ions, he noted, a randomly strewn powder wouldn’t create any kind of pyroelectric charge. It would exist solely as a sympathetic-magical ingredient, not a technological component.

“You have use oriented [at the atomic level] crystals to get a charge,” he said.

And how does tourmaline supposedly appear in Conair products? “It is in powder form and is added to high temperature paint for application purposes,” said DeFelice in an e-mail. (No doubt a disappointment to anyone imagining big, shiny gems inside their dryers.)

That being the case, “I don’t see how in the world it’s going to ionize the air around it,” Rossman said. “For the life of me, I don’t understand how these claims would manifest as actual behavior.”

Of course, the Conair version, at least, appears to not contain any tourmaline in its paint anyway. But first, let’s explore another surprise: Conair’s dryer indeed produces a bunch of ions, apparently without an electronic ionizer and possibly with a different sort of pyroelectric material.

Arnold Steinman, the chief applied technologist at California’s MKS, Ion Systems, graciously agreed to test the ion production of a Conair Infiniti hair dryer (the Professional Tourmaline Ionic Styler, Model 217) I also acquired at my CVS. MKS, Ion Systems is a company that manufactures industrial ionic static control devices.

Steinman tested the dryer on a charged plate monitor—a standard industry testing device. It provides a surface charged to 1,000 volts of either polarity, then measures the decrease in charge (i.e., the performance) of an ionizer directed at it as its charge is dissipated.

When the Conair dryer was blown onto the plate from about 18 inches away, it discharged a positive charge in about three seconds, but actually added to a negative charge. That means the dryer produces a large amount of negative ions (anions), but few or no positive ions.

At least on the anion end, “That is comparable to the performance of our ionizing blowers [for industrial use],” Steinman told me.

But, he noted, that might not be useful for hair, which can be staticked with electricity of either polarity.

“Unfortunately, the charge on the hair will depend on the material that is combed through it (plastic, nylon, wood, etc.) and hair may not always charge positively. Thus, negative ions from a hair dryer may not always reduce static electricity in the hair,” Steinman said. (Many ionic hair dryer patents admit this as well—including those that are the basis of modern tourmaline dryers.)

That was the result of my own experiment. At home, I washed my hair and let it air-dry. Then I staticked up my hair by brushing it with Revlon’s Silver Technology brush, putting the magic metal to good use. I waited about 10 to 15 seconds, then used the Conair dryer on the low setting on my hair for about the same time period. I repeated this process several times. For comparison, I did a series of similar trials without the dryer, instead touching a metal object to ground myself out.

Either way, the static in my hair dissipated quickly. I could detect no significant difference when using the dryer.

One tiny difference was that if I did not use the dryer, a few individual hairs would remain charged, standing upright, and would still be highly attracted to the hair brush. When I used the dryer on these stray hairs, they remained standing upright, though they showed little attraction to the brush anymore. This was a negligible and ambiguous result that obviously would not affect overall hair-styling.

In short, the Conair tourmaline dryer did not reduce static in my hair any more than the normal environment did—at least, at the noticeable cosmetic level, which is the only level that matters. Obviously, this was just a test on myself and my circumstances, not a scientifically significant sampling or method. But there is nothing in the dryer packaging to suggest it won’t work for everyone, everywhere, every time.

Whether the anions are useful or useless, the Conair dryer certainly produced a bunch of them. But how, exactly?

Steinman did not totally dismantle the dryer, but is of the opinion that it is not cheating by using an electronic ionizer, which would require a high-voltage power source that does not appear present in the design. (With typical lack of clarity, one page of Conair’s Infiniti Web site actually says the product uses an “electronic ionizer,” but it is impossible to tell if this serious technical info, marketing blither or sheer misunderstanding. Revlon’s tourmaline line references a patent for an electronic ionizer dryer.)

Presuming, then, that the dryer truly creates ions through pyroelectricity, that still leaves several questions. As Steinman noted, just getting a crystal to charge up is not enough.

“The presence of a voltage does not in itself create air ions. It is a very high electrostatic field that creates the ions. To create a high enough field, you use a sharp point.” This usually means a metal needle near the pyroelectric crystal (or in an electronic ionizer, just wired up to a high-voltage source). A point source concentrates a charge enough to excite air molecules into ionizing. If voltage is applied to the point, it will create ions of the same polarity as the voltage. If the point is grounded, it will produce ions of the opposite polarity.

Conair (like most tourmaline hair-care product manufacturers) is vague about where tourmaline supposedly exists in the product. Despite my repeated requests for clarification, DeFelice was not more specific than saying it is in paint. From that comment and a fairly crude label on the dryer packaging, it appears this means a reddish-orange paint on the grill in the dryer’s mouth. (The only other significant paint I can find on the dryer is a bluish coating on its exterior, which would not appear to have even a theoretical connection to the airstream.)

I tore the dryer apart to see how it is constructed. Within the dryer barrel, the heating coils are wrapped around an X-shaped arrangement of fins of a paper-like material. Mounted near the front of the dryer on one of these fins is a metal needle pointing forward—clearly, the point source where ions are created. I am not expert enough to tell whether it is grounded or wired for voltage, though Steinman’s educated guess is that it is grounded. (This is based on the fact that virtually all substances generate a positive charge, and the apparent lack of a high-voltage generator, he noted.)

The needle is close to the painted grill. However, it is even closer to another device: the ceramic disk that must be the “ceramic” part of the show. This little white disk looks like a breath mint with a hole in the center. About a half-inch in diameter, it was mounted (before I dismantled it) vertically in the dead center of the X-shaped fins, like the nexus of crosshairs. It was just inside the dryer mouth.

From this arrangement, Steinman’s educated guess is that the disk is not merely ceramic heat storage/transmission, but also the pyroelectric crystal device. Several Conair product descriptions and press releases also seem to suggest this in their conflation of the abilities of the tourmaline and ceramic components (as well as a prior Conair patent citing a piezoelectric ceramic); T3 Micro, which claims to have pioneered the tourmaline dryer, clearly claims to embed the gems in ceramic.³

The next round of gracious free experiments came courtesy of Rossman, who examined the ceramic disk and the grill in his Caltech lab.

The grill itself does not contain tourmaline, Rossman found. As for the paint on its surface, he placed a chip of it in warm nitric acid, which will dissolve paint, but in which tourmaline would survive.

“There is no evidence of tourmaline,” Rossman reported. The only detectable mineral residue was of titanium dioxide, a common ingredient of paint.

What a coincidence—the ceramic disk is also titanium dioxide (also known as rutile), mixed with an “unidentified organic binder.”

“There is no evidence for any tourmaline,” Rossman said. However, he added, he did only a superficial test on the disk and did not cut it open, so it possible tourmaline is embedded deep inside it.

Some titanates are excellent pyroelectric materials—far better than tourmaline, in fact. For example, Rossman noted, titanium trioxide has a pyroelectric performance about 67 times that of tourmaline. It is interesting to note that in 1994, Conair secured a patent for an ionic dryer using piezoelectric minerals, with its choice being “zirconate titanate.”⁴ For that matter, the tourmaline of choice in these ionic products appears to be low-grade black tourmaline—the pyroelectric runt of the tourmaline litter.⁵

All that being said, titanium dioxide—the main mineral showing up in the grill paint and the surface of the ceramic disk—does not appear to be a good pyroelectric material. It remains unclear what substance and/or method actually operates in the Conair dryer.

You’re still getting your ions, for whatever difference that might make (to me, none at all). But Rossman’s question still nags:

“Where is the tourmaline?”

It is not in the direction Conair pointed me, and is not immediately obvious on the ceramic disk. Conair’s Model 217 may still be a Tourmaline Ionic Styler, but it is curious that its active ingredient is not easy to trace.

At least the dryer does something that approximates its marketing. The same cannot be said for the Conair Tourmaline Ceramic brush that originally caught my eye. Useless in both theory and practice, it is nothing but a sympathetic-magic totem. (It does, of course, brush hair, at least.)

Leaving aside the fact that it is obviously not made of “100% crushed gemstones,” there is no evidence that it is “with ions.”

As usual with pseudoscience and/or marketing, it is hard to find any coherent claim for how the brush is supposed to work. Conair told me the locus of action is essentially the same as with its hair dryers, meaning tourmaline is (supposedly) in paint. Most of the thing is painted, including the tips of the bristles.

The description on the brush claims that the tourmaline is “crushed into a fine powder and infused into the nylon bristles and ceramic barrels [sic—it is unclear what these are] of Conair Tourmaline Ceramic brushes.” Tourmaline, it says, “naturally releases negative ions…Using a blow-dryer increases the natural benefits of TOURMALINE ionic and ceramic [sic—there is no subject for these adjectives].”

The claim that tourmaline “releases negative ions” is false. Any ionization would be that of air, not of tourmaline.⁶ And despite the claim that a dryer “increases the natural benefits” of the brush, Conair clarified to me that the brush only produces ions in the presence of a heat source like a dryer.

I later discovered a patent that suggested a similar tourmaline ionic brush, basing the concept on a piezoelectric effect when the bristles bend. As usual, the idea appeared to be just an idea with no experimental or factual basis. In any case, it is not Conair’s claim. And the mechanism doesn’t matter anyway.

Even if tourmaline is present and somehow activated on this product, it wouldn’t do anything—see the previous description of the needle as a point source to create ions. (Steinman allowed that the tips of a user’s hair might serve as point sources, but called that “quite a stretch in belief.”)

And, stuck between the charged plate monitor and a normal hair dryer’s airstream, “the hairbrush seemed to produce NO IONS of either polarity,” Steinman reported. Manipulating the brush into different orientations didn’t make a difference.

I did not have the brush tested to see if it actually contains tourmaline, but clearly it doesn’t matter what it contains. It doesn’t produce ions.

In my own test, it also certainly did nothing that “reduces static electricity.” Indeed, it vastly increased it.

I took a shower and let my hair air-dry. After about three strokes, the Tourmaline Ceramic brush created a massive static charge in my hair. The results were exactly the same as brushing with Revlon’s Silver Technology brush, which makes no ionic claims. A shocking finding, indeed.

The Science of Fabulous

That’s the technical report on a couple of particular tourmaline products. But any one product is dwarfed by the cultural tourmaline tsunami sweeping them all forward.

Ionic hair dryers are certainly nothing new. Neither are ionic dryers employing, or attempting to employ, piezoelectric crystals. The only thing new is the introduction of tourmaline and its pyroelectric aspect.

Ionic quackery is also not new and continues to be a major fraud problem. A recent significant case was the Federal Trade Commission’s successful multi-million-dollar lawsuit in 2006 against Q-Ray, makers of the infamous scam “ionic” bracelets that supposedly restored fictional ionic imbalances in the human body. During the trial, a company principal testified he did not know the definition of “ionization,” but used it because it sounded catchy.⁷

Much ionic quackery is fed by delusions or misunderstandings of real science, like debatable studies that found ionized air to be a mood-improver, an incredible oversimplification of human psychology that appears to delight the public. (Studies that found no effect or otherwise contradicted such results, of course, get no public play; nor did the fact that the key studies were focused specifically on people suffering clinical depression.)⁸

It is unclear how and where tourmaline entered this picture, though it seems the great crank crucible of Asian industry is likely. The earliest tourmaline bizarro devices I could find came from China, Japan and Korea.⁹

It is interesting, however, that in early hair-care product patents referring to tourmaline, ionic output is not mentioned. Instead, heat production is, usually with the implication the tourmaline would be in a ceramic-type matrix. For example, 1999 and 2001 Japanese patents do not mention tourmaline as an ionizer, but only as a generator of “far-infrared heat” and weak “electromagnetic energy.”

This is itself nonsense, but not ionic nonsense. Tourmaline emits no electromagnetic energy except in the sense that every solid object does. “Far-infrared” just means the longest wavelength of heat energy; it is no special boast to say you can heat up a mineral. (Exactly which wavelengths are considered “far” can be relative to the technical purpose behind measuring them.) But this term, too, has been seized by New Age crackpots for a variety of ludicrous claims in such products as far-infrared toothpaste.¹⁰

Claims of some kind of special heat production are often still made by tourmaline hair products, though the distinction between the tourmaline and the ceramic is always unclear. Helen of Troy recently secured a patent for a tourmaline model that made no ionic claim at all, just a heat claim. In any case, tourmaline as a heat conductor is “not much different than most ceramics would be,” Rossman said.

Wherever awareness of the pyroelectric and possible ionization factor came from, it took off like wildfire in the past seven years or so. There is a wealth of patents for fraudulent, nonsensical tourmaline items galore, many based on the supposed cleansing properties of tourmaline-produced ions. Claims include a tourmaline pen; detergents; a Q-Ray-type bracelet; a supposedly health-improving fiber for use in making bedding; a car A/C unit that spews ions so the driver supposedly won’t get tired; a “skin-care pouch.” One patent claims a tourmaline-based purifier could result in antibiotic-free animal feed. Another proposes a “mite attractor” on the theory that the microscopic arachnids would like the ions. (My favorite was a Korean patent that said tourmaline in a dryer could create “far-infrared rays or anions”—your choice, apparently! It also suggested using it in microwaves and toasters.)

Tourmaline hair dryer makers are clearly influenced by this loony trend. Perhaps marketing is always the equivalent of magical thinking, but T3 Micro’s description of tourmaline ionic spew as “polishing” your hairstyle to a “jewel-like shine” is pretty egregious. The company’s oh-so appropriate motto is “The Science of Fabulous.”

The wonders of tourmaline dryers were written up in predictably gullible fashion on AlternativeMedicine.com (the Web site of the drivel- and quackery-laden “Alternative Medicine” magazine), with Conair providing happy quotes.¹¹

Aside from hair-care products, Conair’s Web site also sells the NoQweez Motion Discomfort Wrist Bands, “a natural alternative for the unpleasant effects of travel as well as the discomfort associated with early pregnancy.” The bands—elastic strips with a white button meant to poke the wearer’s wrist—offer all of this with “no drugs or side effects.” This product appears to have no scientific basis, instead relying on the discredited magical realm behind acupressure, like the more popular Sea-Band version.

“I’m not sure quite how that works, I believe something to do with pressure on the wrist. But again not positive,” said a response provided by DeFelice when I asked about NoQweez.

“Natural,” that dangerous New Age weasel word, shows up a lot in tourmaline dryer marketing. Conair promises tourmaline delivers “natural ions,” which leads one to wonder what other kinds there are. Sometimes this quack-talk leads to apparent misunderstandings that tourmaline just gives off ions like smoke from incense.

Across the tourmaline dryer industry, claims about what the tourmaline does vary widely and include much outright hogwash.

A commercial on Conair’s Web site states the basic case very simply: “ceramic dries fast and tourmaline smoothes out frizz.” That’s pretty much the case. (Um, forgetting that it’s not clear whether at least one Conair dryer actually contains tourmaline.) Still, another of their commercials depicts ions as leaving blue sparkles in somebody’s hair.

Elsewhere, Conair claims of tourmaline: “The ion output helps smooth the cuticle layer creating silky, shiny hair.” The cuticle layer is the exterior of individual hairs. There does not appear to be any mechanism by which ions smooth the exterior of hairs.

The Tourmaline Ceramic hair brush package claims, “The ions tighten the cuticle layer and seal in natural oils, reducing static electricity, leaving hair shiny and silky….” Not even counting the fact the brush does not produce ions, most of this claim appears to be nonsense.

In several materials, Conair says tourmaline “generates the highest concentration of ions.” Compared to what?! It’s never revealed. Tourmaline certainly isn’t as productive as some other pyroelectric materials.

When I asked Conair to clarify exactly what the benefits of ions are, it essentially mentioned only the reduction of static electricity, though emphasizing that improves “shine.”

When I repeatedly asked Conair for scientific studies, or at least patent filings, explaining its tourmaline product claims, I got no response.

The ULTA Beauty store Web site has different claims for Revlon’s ionic dryers.¹² “Negative ions…allow water droplets to be better absorbed into your hair. The result is hair that is smoother, softer, and shinier,” it claims, elaborating that this feat is accomplished by “reduc[ing] the size of water droplets.” This goes for any ionic dryer, apparently, but tourmaline dryers are included by implication in a production description that claims “tourmaline-ionic technology…helps to smooth, shine and moisturize hair.”

A hair dryer certainly does shrink water droplets—with heat. Otherwise, this claim appears to be nonsense. Interestingly, the shrinking of water molecules is a frequent (and erroneous) quack claim for supposed “far-infrared” products.¹³ That is to say, it is a heat claim—more evidence that tourmaline and ceramic (and weirdo claims about them) are inseparable in these products.

As one example, the far-infrared claims—and others still more ridiculous and untrue—are made by the water purification company IonLife on its Web site.¹⁴ There you can learn that “Tourmaline is the only one mineral to show permanent electricity on the earth”; that it “naturally emits” far-infrared energy; that it will “activate animal & plant metabolism”; that it “Reduces [water molecule] cluster size”; and that it “causes a resonance in the [human] body at the same frequency as water.” This is lunatic-fringe quack-speak, but clearly some of its terminology has entered the professional hair-care industry as well.

For example, compare with Haircutterstore.com’s product description of the CHI Pink Ceramic Hair Dryer (which does not claim to have tourmaline but does claim to have an ionizing ceramic): “Ionic Technology produces positive energy and infuses moisture into the hair shaft….Projects millions of negative ions to break the water molecules rather than ‘boiling’ the hair….Far Infrared Heat maintains safety of the environment and our health.”

CHI stands for “Cationic Hydration Interlink,” a line of dryers, hair lotions and similar items made by a Texas company called Farouk Systems. Yes, that’s “cationic,” as in positive ions. CHI products are a welter of quack-speak, such as the “Ionic Color Protector System.” The CHI motto is “Ceramic Ionic Far Infrared,” a grab-bag that somehow applies even to CHI shampoo. There is no clear explanation as to what any of these terms mean or how exactly the products are supposed to work. Farouk did not respond to any of my questions about them.

Tourmaline aside, the whole “ionic” bit often has obvious ties to other, specific forms of the aforementioned ionic quackery or claims, such as the popular “ionized water” scam or ionic air purifiers.¹⁵ For example, the Web site of the Ball Beauty Supply Company claims of tourmaline, “It attracts impurities to itself like a magnet and destroys odors like smoke, pollutants and perfume.”¹⁶ That is completely untrue; it appears to be a misunderstood reference to ionized air tourmaline might generate, and which is the active ingredient in ionic air purifiers. Those air purifiers are a whole other ball of wax, in some cases found to not work beyond producing their own pollutant—ozone.¹⁷

Helen of Troy UK’s Web site gets truly wacky with a model the company makes under a Toni & Guy license: “Tourmaline helps prevent colour loss and maintain core colour intensity, also nourishes and conditions hair.” This appears to be utter nonsense.

T3 Micro’s Web site claims it started the tourmaline dryer fad in 2004 with its “Flawless” product line. It hits most of the bases in its claim: “Only 100% high-grade Tourmaline [sic], a semi-precious gemstone, is crushed and infused deep into the tool’s components producing the maximum ionic energy and far infrared heat. The result—far superior to the mere use of ceramic in styling tools—is one that eliminates static, seals damaged hair cuticles, locks in hair’s own moisture and polishes any style to a silky, smooth, jewel-like shine.”

T3 clearly mixes the tourmaline into ceramic, so these claims conflate the abilities of both.

Better still, T3 claims that “tourmaline permanently generates unlimited amounts of frizz-fighting negative ions,” which is pretty cool, what with the violation of the law of conservation of energy and all.

It’s all an awful lot of talk considering the truth: Ions may eliminate static. That is all ions are going to do.

The trend may now be toward products that make the sympathetic-magic association without bothering with any technical claims at all. Revlon now has an “Elegant Amethyst” dryer model. The name apparently refers solely to the paint color on the exterior; there is no claim it actually contains that gemstone.¹⁸

“It’s False”: Silver Tongues

Silver-tongued marketing staffs are selling silver in a wide variety of household products these days. As I’ve previously reported, it all centers on silver’s ability to kill certain microbes.¹⁹ But because there is no evidence whatsoever that silver-coated household products control human diseases—a much more complex attribute that is exactly what these products want to claim—all sorts of round-about terminology has sprung up.

Under Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations, products that kill bacteria, viruses and the like must be registered as pesticides. Products that treat or prevent human disease must be registered as medical devices.

But there is a large gray area involved. The pesticide regulations have a “treated surfaces” exemption under which companies can sell bacteria-killing products as long as the pesticide element is intended to protect the product itself, not human health. Anti-mildew shower curtains are one valid example. The treated surfaces exemption comes with strict labeling guidelines; a biggie is that the product can be marketed as “antimicrobial” but not “antibacterial” (hairsplitting that accomplishes little for the consumer) and must clearly state that the treatment protects the product, not the consumer.

Since I last reported on the regulations, the EPA got a new spokesperson who did not seem to understand them very well and who did not respond to my questions for clarification on silver-containing hair-care products. Nonetheless, the regulations remain the same and are abundantly clear.

Meanwhile, the federal government has also established new regulations on the marketing of nano-silver coatings.²⁰ Some products with nano-scale silver have made similar antibacterial claims, but under fewer regulations—despite a vast lack of knowledge about what highly reactive, unpredictable nanoparticles may to do the environment or to us. Now manufacturers must prove there is no damage to the environment from their products—or just market more cleverly.

Let’s presume the Revlon Silver Technology brush actually contains silver. It doesn’t say where, but probably in the grayish-white tips of its bristles. What the package does claim is that the brush “Helps Maintain Clean Hair So That It Stays Healthy & Grows Longer & Stronger.”

Ignoring the fact that this makes questionable sense, it sure sounds like a human health claim. There is nothing on the package that says the silver is to protect the product, not the consumer. And it has certainly turned up in the context of human health devices.

“I’ve actually seen that brush,” said a silver industry expert who wished to remain anonymous in this column. “One of our technical consultants was at a meeting a couple months ago, a conference of infection control professionals, and this was one of the giveaways.”

The conference was that of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology—a human health organization.

As with tourmaline’s pyroelectricity, silver’s antibacterial properties have been burglarized by pseudoscience and fraudulent marketing in literally hundreds of products. The silver industry expert’s job is to sell silver, but he clearly thinks it’s a cool enough substance to do that without making stuff up.

When I read the Revlon brush’s dirt-fighting, hair-helping packaging description to him, he said, “If they’re advertising it as such…if those are in fact the claims, it’s false.”

“Silver simply does not repel dirt, and, as far as [an in-house chemist he consulted] knows, won’t prevent oil from the scalp” or other hair-dirt like dandruff, the silver industry expert said.

CHI, not surprisingly, is enamored of nano-silver. Nano curling irons aren’t enough; they will sell you nano-silver nail polish (with ceramics, to boot!). Nothing in the product descriptions at Farouk.com explains that a silver coating does not protect humans. Indeed, it claims the nano-silver polish will “keep nails healthy.”

Conair is all over the silver and antimicrobial market as well. For example, it owns the brand name scünci (and its trademarked motto, “Dream Imagine Create”), which makes a FastDry ceramic brush “protected” by a substance called Microban. It is unclear what Microban is, but apparently it does not contain silver. (Microban is made by another company.)

“This product protected by Microban antimicrobial product protection. Cleaner. Fresher. All the Time,” reads a special part of the label. Within, it says, “Microban antimicrobial product protection inhibits the growth of bacteria that can cause product deterioration and odors.”

In content, this generally meets federal labeling regulations as the EPA previously explained them to me, including a suggestion that the label also recommend regularly washing the product. However, it never states clearly that the product does not protect human beings. Does anyone really worry that their brush will “deteriorate” from bacteria? The packaging also appears to violate a lesser rule that the antimicrobial claim be no more prominent than any other marketing claim on the package; the Microban info is in a bright orange hemisphere hanging from the bottom of the normal packaging and is in larger and different fonts.

To date, I have closely examined about four antimicrobial products, including silver-containing ones. None of them completely met the regulations.

Every wiggy trend in this column comes together in Conair’s new Nano Silver Tourmaline Ceramic products. As usual, exactly where the silver is and what it does are unclear. Some of the products include a “straightening pic” [sic] supposedly coated with the whole Nano Silver Tourmaline Ceramic kit and caboodle.

“Nano silver is known to have antibacterial properties but in the case of hair and the new FDA [federal Food and Drug Administration] requirements on how one must substantiate claims we stay with a general claim of clean, healthy hair,” said a response provided to me by Conair’s DeFelice, apparently referring to FDA regulation of medical devices. When I asked if there is any reason for nano-silver to be in the product besides as an antimicrobial, the answer was, simply, “No.”

¹ All responses from DeFelice cited in this column appeared to be written by someone else and forwarded by her, though that was not clear.

² In 2004, a court shot down a Sharper Image lawsuit against Consumers Union for its “Consumer Reports” finding that an “ionic” air cleaner sold by Sharper Image was “ineffective” to the point of doing virtually nothing. (“Court Dismisses Sharper Image Lawsuit Against Consumers Union” by Stephen Barrett at www.quackwatch.org/14Legal/ionicbreeze.html.)

³ It is possible that this still technically involves “paint.” One side of the ceramic disk was more glossy, as if very thinly painted, and had a few aberrations or bumps. Nonetheless, Rossman did not find tourmaline on the disk.

⁴ Presumably, this means lead zirconate titanate, a common ceramic.

⁵ “Influence of Chemistry on the Pyroelectric Effect in Tourmaline” by Kate D. Hawkins, Ian D.R. MacKinnon and Helmut Schneeberger, “American Mineralogist,” Vol. 80, pp. 491-501, 1995, via www.minsocam.org/msa/ammin/TOC/Articles_Free/1995/Hawkins_p491-501_95.pdf.

⁶ As I was told by Michael Hochella Jr., a professor of mineralogy and geochemistry at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, “The terms ‘tourmaline’ and ‘anions’ are well-defined scientific terms, but ‘tourmaline anions’ is not a scientific phrase, and makes no sense scientifically.” The literal phrase does not appear in any marketing materials in question, but the concept does.

⁷ www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/09/qray.shtm and “Q-Ray Bracelet Marketed with Preposterous Claims” by Stephen Barrett at www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/PhonyAds/qray.html.

⁸ For a brief overview, see “Promising new treatments for SAD” by Tori DeAngelis, “Monitor on Psychology,” Vol. 37, No. 2, Feb. 2006, via www.apa.org/monitor/feb06/sad.html.

A couple of weeks after this column was published, a chance encounter on the street informed me of the existence of the Saturn car company’s ION model. A short-lived product of the current decade, the ION car appears to be another manifestation of the pop fad for all things ionic. At the time of its release, “Car and Driver” reviewer Tony Swan noted that Saturn was apparently disenchanted with its previous car-naming system: “So they discarded some of them and substituted a name—Ion—which, as we all know, has something to do with electricity and is therefore very mysterious. (The name has, predictably, inspired Saturn publicists to all sorts of electrically charged flights of fancy, such as this headline: ‘All-New Saturn Ion Sedan and Quad Coupe Designed to Reenergize Small-Car Segment.’)” (“Saturn Ion—Previews: Cool? Yes. Electrifying? We’ll See.” by Tony Swan, “Car and Driver,” October 2002, via www.caranddriver.com/previews/2470/saturn-ion.html.) Whatever ties its obnoxiously capitalized name has to the Q-Ray era, the ION apparently made no pretensions to do anything except haul your lazy butt around town.

⁹ Ionic quackery in general is profuse there as well. A pedestrian example: the recent “Taiwan” episode of the Travel Channel show “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern” had the host on the island visiting a waterfall that is, as he put it, “said to release ions into the atmosphere that cleanse the air.” He was obviously quoting local lore and cushioning it with the semi-skeptical “said.”

¹⁰ See the AquaScams site at www.chem1.com/CQ/aquacrack.html.

¹¹ “Web Exclusive—A New Kind of Dry” by Anna Soref (undated) at www.alternativemedicine.com.

¹² www.ulta.com.

¹³ AquaScams, op. cit.

¹⁴ www.ionizers.org/tourmaline.html.

¹⁵ AquaScams, op. cit.

¹⁶ In reference to a Tourmaline Tools product line, at www.ballbeauty.com/hot_tools_tourmaline_tools.htm.

¹⁷ As was the issue in the Sharper Image case; see footnote 2 citation above and “Consumer Reports calls air purifier ‘unhealthy’” by Associated Press, April 5, 2005, via MSNBC at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7391185.

¹⁸ “Good Housekeeping,” the prestigious homemaker magazine that bestows its “Seal of Approval” on various products if they hold up under testing by its private Good Housekeeping Research Institute, has issued a dubious endorsement of tourmaline dryers, I discovered after publication of this column. In an undated article on the magazine’s Web site (www.goodhousekeeping.com/beauty/hair/tourmaline-hair-dryers-0606), the Research Institute endorsed a Revlon tourmaline ceramic dryer over two much more expensive T3 Micro models and a non-tourmaline (but still ionic) dryer. Its report claimed to be based both on quantitative tests (such as drying times) and subjective perceptions of Research Institute testers and a group of five unidentified women.

There are a couple of curious things about the report. It makes no mention whatsoever of the major claim about tourmaline: that it produces more/superior ions. It mentions only heat production. This is particularly strange because T3’s marketing materials make explicit and profuse claims about tourmaline’s supposed ion production. (Revlon’s dryers are made by outside companies and their marketing claims are not as consistent.) Of course, these are also ceramic dryers, and ceramics (probably validly) are marketed with claims of superior heating. As I have just explained, the tourmaline and ceramic claims are easily and often conflated in marketing.

The Research Institute report, however, is so obsessed with heat that it made this remarkable claim: “Tourmaline is a type of stone; it helps dry the hair faster and adds shine.” This is not cited as a quote from marketing materials, but as a fact of nature.

While endorsing the cheaper Revlon model, the report claims that all three tourmaline models dried hair “40 percent faster” than a “standard ionic dryer” used as a “control.” Presuming that is true, it still had nothing to do with tourmaline.

I asked “Good Housekeeping” several questions about the Research Institute report:

1) Under what principle of physics or mineralogy does “Good Housekeeping” believe tourmaline makes something dry faster or “adds shine” to a substance from a distance? Did “Good Housekeeping” determine these abilities on its own, or did it accept them as givens from company marketing claims?

2) Did “Good Housekeeping” conduct any testing to determine whether tourmaline actually exists in any of the tested products?

3) Did “Good Housekeeping’s” testing method include any design or control to isolate the supposed drying effects of tourmaline from other drying elements, such as greater fan power, better heating coils, some other conductive substance, etc.?

4) Is a full report available describing the experimental design, process and results, including actual drying times? If so, where can the public access it?

5) Was “Good Housekeeping” aware that the main function of ionic dryers, including tourmaline models, is to produce ions that can neutralize some static charges? If so, why was that not addressed in the tourmaline dryer report? (The report did address “frizz measurement,” which seems to imply static control measurements.)

I received a response from Research Institute Technical Director Stacy Genovese. She began by informing me that “all [Research Institute] testing procedures and results are confidential and not accessible to the public.” Testing that does not reveal its methodology and full results is not scientific and should not be trusted regarding quantifiable claims.

As there is no way to independently evaluate the Research Institute’s findings, Genovese said we should simply trust the claim that tourmaline dryers worked faster. It appears the Research Institute made no effort to determine whether tourmaline exists in the products; Genovese claimed that it doesn’t matter because faster drying time “is what consumers care about. They’re not as concerned if the drying time was improved because of a larger fan, or some other design feature, but solely that the drying time was improved.” Aside from being incredibly presumptuous about what interests consumers, this underscores the fact that the Research Institute still does not understand the difference between the (anti-static) tourmaline and (heat-conducting) ceramic components in these dryers. If consumers are interested in faster drying times, it very much matters to them and their wallets how the heat is produced—especially because Good Housekeeping is directing them to expensive tourmaline models when tourmaline has nothing to do with heat production. Consumers likely should be looking at any type of ceramic model; non-tourmaline models are significantly cheaper. That is, presuming the Research Institute’s testing has any validity at all, which none of us can ever know thanks to its secrecy.

As to the Research Institute’s claims about the powers of tourmaline, Genovese acknowledged that that statement should be attributed to manufacturers’ claims. However, I am not sure that most manufacturers do make the heat-production part of that claim. And in any case, there is no evidence that the heat part of that claim is true, so why would the Research Institute want to repeat it at all? Because it doesn’t even understand the products it was testing, that’s why.

To sum up, the Research Institute: looked at a claim about a particular product ingredient; misunderstood it; conducted various tests based on a false premise; promoted the various product lines and the magic ingredient; claims it does not matter whether the ingredient actually exists in the product or is the source of the supposed results even as it promotes the specific ingredient; and refuses to release methodology and results. That is a pseudoscientific method that enables pseudoscientific fraud. “Good Housekeeping” sounds more like “Bad Researching” to me and is far from getting my seal of approval.

Meanwhile, I took a peek at the Revlon model the Research Institute endorsed on Amazon.com; while the dryer is widely praised, not everyone was so impressed on either the heat or the anti-static counts. One comment: “Very disappointing-did not do any better than my plain-vanilla Conair dryer at minimizing frizzies or adding body to my hair.” Another compared it unfavorably to T3 dryers: “It does not dry the hair as well, causes a lot more friziness [sic], takes a very long time to dry hair…and just does not leave the hair looking as shiny.”

¹⁹ See “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Bacteria, And Other Ways to Write Dubious Ads” elsewhere on this site.

²⁰ For basic information, see “Products laced with anti-germ silver face EPA rules” by Rick Weiss, Washington Post, Nov. 23, 2006 (viewed via www.seattletimes.com).

Significant sources not cited in the text or footnotes include: Conair Web site at www.conair.com; Helen of Troy UK Web site at www.hot-uk.co.uk; Farouk System’s CHI Web site at www.chiretail.com; and T3 Micro Web site at www.t3tourmaline.com. Scores of US patents I examined were lost when my computer died a blue-screen death during research for this column; all were acquired via Google’s patents search. Key patents examined included Nos. 6,191,930; 6,393,718; and 6,763,606. My personal hair tests were conducted Aug. 27 and 29, 2007. Many thanks to Prof. Rossman and Mr. Steinman for truly extraordinary assistance on this five-month research project. Posted Jan. 8, 2008. Updated Jan. 23 and March 6, 15 and 27, 2008.

JOHN THE OBSCURE HOME