A mother was left behind hospitalized after she had a severe reaction to hair dye that blistered her scalp and swollen and closed her eyes.
Leonie Dee, 27, wanted to dye her hair with two different shades, with Schwarzkopf Live in ‘Cosmic Blue’ and ‘Ultra Violet’ costing her £ 4.79 each.
The mother of four says she did a patch test on both products as instructed to make sure she wouldn’t experience any side effects.
However, whand Leonie came to dye the top half of her hair with the dark blue color she was shocked to find her skin blistered and swollen.
After to be hospitalized For 36 hours she vowed never to paint her hair again.
Leonie, who works as a cleaner for her local GP practice in Aberaeron, Wales, said “It was really scary – at one point they were concerned that the swelling would go to the front of my throat.
“I even asked them at the hospital if shaving all my hair would help. I was ready if it had made a difference.”
“But the dye was already absorbed into my scalp, so I just had to wait for the swelling and blisters to subside.
“I absolutely never dye my hair again – I let it grow out and then just leave it.”
Leonie said she regularly dyed her hair as a teenager, but after having children – now 11, 10, three, and six months old – she found that she “ couldn’t be bothered ” and that she hadn’t painted it for seven years.
Because she “wished for a change” this time, she said she was “really religious” about reading the pamphlet in the box and running the patch test.
No issues came up with the patch test, so she went ahead and painted the bottom half of it her- Purple.
“That went fine,” she said.
“Then I gave it a few days before applying the blue hair dye on the top half of my head around 5:30 PM on Thursday.
“When I woke up the next morning, my ears and the side of my neck started to swell a bit – but I managed just fine just taking some anti-allergy tablets I had at home.”
When Leonie woke up Saturday morning, she noticed her hairline was ‘covered in this big one’ blisters ‘ and her eyes were so swollen she couldn’t see.
They waRushed to Aberystwyth hospital on Saturday evening at 6pm, 36 hours there to be treated with steroids, anti-allergy tablets and creams, and was also put on a liquid drop.
Leonie said: The blisters kept popping and kept leaking blue dye.
“They had to keep the lights off over my hospital bed because the light was irritating my eyes. I could only sit and wait for it to get better.”
She returned home at 10:30 am Monday morning, but the swelling hasn’t gone all the way down.
“I just have to keep taking the medication – and wait for my hair to grow out and get back to normal,” she said.
Leonie said she has since done more research on the Schwarzkopf hair dye, and found that the darker colors like Cosmic blue have a higher concentration of the active ingredients she thinks she has reacted to.
She is too submitted an online questionnaire to Schwarzkopf as a first step towards filing a complaint.
LADbible has contacted Schwarzkopf for comment.