City of St. George, Utah :: Why does my hair turn green?

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175 East 200 North

St. George, UT 84770

(435) 627-4000

February 07, 2012

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Why does my hair turn green?

BLOND HAIR + POOL WATER = GREEN HAIR

Recently Rya Webb competed in the 3rd grade science fair. She won 2nd place at regions with this experiment. She has given us permission to display her information on our web page. Congratulations Rya, were proud of you.

Rya took a survey one day. She wanted to find out what made your hair green after swimming in the pool. This is what people told her.
Science Fair Poll
Why does blond hair turn green in the swimming pool?
Grandma	Chlorine +Sun
Grandpa	Sunlight
Bonnie	Chlorine
Wade	Chlorine
Jill	Chlorine
Carol	Chlorine
Terri	Copper
Julia	Blue+Yellow=green
Laura	Chlorine
Brenda	Chlorine
Sue	Irish
Lita	Chlorine
Machelle	Chemicals
Bonne	Chemicals+sun
Pool store	Copper
Julia	Algae

Hypothesis
In some pools blond hair can turn green after swimming a long time but my poll showed that most adults didn't really know why. After interviewing the hair academy, pool managers, pool stores and the St. George Water Purification plant, I decided that the most likely reason was algae, chlorine or copper.

I polled over 25 people asking them what they thought makes hair turn green in the pool water. Some people said it was algae growing in the hair. They think that algae grows in all colors of hair but it can only be seen in blonde hair because it is so light.
So I got some algae water from a pond at Quail Lake and put hair in it but nothing happened.

I added hypochlorite to regular water to make a strong solution of chlorine. Using a test kit I checked the level of chlorine and found out that it had over .7 milligrams per liter.
I put the water in the sun like the pool would be. Then I put blonde hair in the chlorine and nothing ever happened.

How does copper get into the swimming pool?
1st - People don't want algae to grow in their swimming pool so they put chemicals in the pool to kill the slimy algae. Algicide is one of the products that they can add. It has 7.1% copper as the active ingredient.
2nd - Another way that copper gets in the pool water is from the pool heater. Chlorine is very corrosive on metals. The heater has copper coils and the when the chlorine works on the coils, copper is released into the water.

I took some copper algaecide from the pool store and put it into some water. It only took a few seconds for the copper water to change a cotton ball and the dogs blonde hair to green.


It took only a few seconds for the copper water to turn the hair green. Even after several days in the algae and chlorine the hair did not turn green. Most people don't really know why light colored hair turns green in the pool water but my results show that it is because of the copper
Get ideas for your science projects at All Science Fair Projects web site.

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