Hairdressing is not an obviously dangerous occupation. Yet working in a hair salon or a barber’s shop can provoke skin conditions, musculoskeletal diseases such as arthritis and tendonitis and work-related asthma.

Now Usdaw, the shopworkers’ union which represents many of Britain’s estimated 140,000 hairdressers, is calling for a “new deal” to protect them. Paddy Lillis, the union’s deputy general secretary, said the government needed to give “proper protection” to barbers and hairdressers, the majority of whom are female and younger than 40.

A Europe-wide agreement on health and safety standards for the industry has been blocked by the European commission, under pressure from successive British governments. “It’s time we had a new deal for hairdressers,” Lillis said. “All too often the safety of shopworkers is overlooked in the mistaken belief they work in low-risk environments.

“This is a mistake the UK government made when they scaled back Health and Safety Executive inspections and slashed inspections by local authorities who enforce safety in shops, warehouses and offices. It is time that the government and the European commission took these risks to the health and safety of hairdressers seriously and gave them proper protection.”

Research indicates that hairdressers are at risk from seemingly innocuous activities such as washing hair, cutting hair and using hairspray. Repeatedly washing hands can lead to dermatitis, a non-contagious sensitivity to chemicals that causes painful cracked skin and bleeding, and research has shown that 70% of hairdressers have suffered from skin conditions.

Breathing in hairspray and other chemicals may be linked to asthma, according to some studies. Using scissors day in, day out can provoke arthritis and tendonitis in the hands and thumb, through loss of cartilage.

And hair dye has been blamed for a link between hairdressing and bladder cancer, although Cancer Research UK believes this is more likely to be the result of older hair dye ingredients which have been discontinued. Most of these issues could be solved by wearing appropriate gloves and taking regular breaks.

Rebecca Walker had been a hairdresser for nearly 10 years when she developed arthritis. The first signs were a “really stiff shoulder”. “I thought that maybe I’d been overworking it, but it didn’t go away and the pain moved to my elbow,” she said.

Within two months she had resigned because she was taking too much time off because of the pain in her wrists and hands. “I suppose I’m quite a determined person so I didn’t want to give up,” she said. So in 2011 Walker opened her own salon, quirkydo in Macclesfield, and now employs several other people.

“There have been times I’m not sure how I’m going to get through the day, but if I give myself a break for half an hour between clients, it’s OK,” she said.

The picture is different on the continent where hairdressers are more likely to be employees. Regina Richter has been a hairdresser in Leipzig for 51 years, but for the last 30 years she has suffered major back problems due to standing up for eight hours a day. “It seems to be affecting my younger colleagues more now,” she said. “After four or five years they are starting to experience pain. I think it is because the pressure has increased – now everyone has to cut hair as quickly as possible to get as many clients as possible.”

She believes that sometimes being able to sit down while cutting hair, and using ergonomic scissors and lighter hair dryers, would have prevented or delayed her condition.

In 2012, the union that represents about one million hairdressers across the EU, Uni Europa, was involved in drawing up an agreement for EU member states to sign up to shared health and safety standards for hairdressers. But since Jean-Claude Juncker became president of the European commission, the agreement has been blocked, under pressure led by Britain and some other parts of the EU, according to Oliver Roethig, regional secretary of Uni Europa.

“When we look at hairdressing, it’s the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “Social legislation by the EU has been completely taken off the agenda by the Juncker commission. He said the EU must not be big on the smaller things. But we don’t think that hairdressers having to give up work is a small thing.”

In the UK, where nearly half of all hairdressers are self-employed, it can be difficult for individual stylists to raise health and safety issues in their salon, and given the role of Britain in obstructing progress at a European level, life after Brexit is unlikely to get any easier.

In 2009, the Health and Safety Executive handed over responsibility for its campaign on dermatitis to the Hairdressing and Beauty Industry Authority (Habia) and the National Hairdressers’ Federation.

However, Habia’s website refers to health and safety only from an employers’ perspective and does not offer guidance to hairdressers.

Hilary Hall, chief executive of the National Hairdressers’ Federation, said it did offer guidance to employers on contracting dermatitis and advised staff to wear vinyl gloves when washing hair.

“The directive pretty well captures what is available in the UK,” she said. “The difference is enforcement. The individual is responsible and they could be subject to inspections. We feel it is better to let people choose.”

THE DANGERS

Dermatitis

A study in 2004 revealed that 70% of hairdressers in Britain had suffered from work-related dermatitis, in the form of red, sore and sometimes itchy skin, mainly to the hands and fingers but also to the arms, face and neck.

Asthma

In France, a paper published in 2003 showed that 20% of women affected by work-related asthma were hairdressers, compared with 1% for the general population.

Arthritis

According to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, musculoskeletal disorders are five times more prevalent among hairdressers than in the general population. Research published in the journal Work in 2009 showed that in a study of 145 hairdressers, 41% experienced ‘work-related upper limb disorders’.

Cancer

An analysis of 42 bladder cancer studies in 2010 showed that hairdressers faced a risk 30 to 35% higher than the general public. However, Cancer Research UK says that because cancer can take many years to develop, this may be due to exposure to older chemicals that are no longer used.