EDMONTON - Madeleine Somerville has been de-pooed for about six years.

That is, she hasn’t used poo — shampoo — since she became concerned about chemicals in the products, the overpackaging of the bottles and the high price of hair cleaners we believe hold special ingredients to keep hair soft, healthy and smelling beautiful.

Somerville leans forward and lets me smell her hair. It smells of nothing, of hair, but only slightly. It feels soft to the touch, silky, and has a healthy sheen. Somerville uses no gels or hairsprays, just a brush and a blow-dryer after cleaning it with a baking-soda mixture, then conditioning it with diluted apple cider vinegar. She’s among those adhering to the no-poo movement, although she prefers “shampoo free,” for obvious reasons.

“I’m not a biochemist or a super hard-core environmentalist,” Somerville says. But a few years back, she saw her giant English mastiff, Gus, licking the kitchen floors after she had cleaned them with a fluorescent yellow cleaning product. The bottle had toxic warning labels.

“I don’t know what is in these products I use in my home or on my body,” she thought.

Somerville first turned to products labelled “green” in the grocery store, but didn’t always notice radically different ingredients. She also tried organic and environmentally friendly shampoos and conditioners, but the expense could be prohibitive.

Arm & Hammer baking soda became her $2 solution. A few bucks more for the apple cider vinegar, and Somerville had soft, conditioned locks. The soda is slightly alkaline, the vinegar slightly acidic so the two balance out the hair’s natural pH levels, according to the no-poo philosophy.



Read the reporter's experience: Adventure in no-poo land feels 'yicky' in 10 days



“Careful!!” writes one Interwebber. “Mixing vinegar and baking soda in a closed container can cause an explosion that can send pieces of exploded container into your eyes.”

Closed container, sure. Not in the glass cups Somerville keeps on her bath ledge. She washes with her diluted homemade recipes every other day.

So does Maria Kruszewski, who says her coarse, thick — otherwise greasy — hair has never felt as soft as it does now.

But a video by FutureDerm, a beauty product brand and resource, says any combination of baking soda and apple cider vinegar actually creates carbon dioxide and puts it in the atmosphere. FutureDerm founder said the vinegar is too acidic and eventually makes hair lighter and more brittle. “It’s still better to use premade formulas for your hair,” Nicki Zevola said in the video.

Kruszewski is sticking to her natural approach. “For now, the soda/vinegar thing is my way of managing my hair care while doing the least harm to the web of life that supports us all.”

She became concerned with cleaning ingredients when one daughter got extreme rashes on her hands from a liquid soap product. Then Kruszewski read about David Suzuki’s “Dirty Dozen” cosmetic chemicals to avoid, including parfum (fragrance, sometimes harmful to fish) and sodium laurel sulphate, which helps to make things lather, but can be an irritant and is sometimes contaminated by a cancer-causing agent through the manufacturing process.