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Teen's scalp burned in bleach horror
A Wigan teenager lost large clumps of hair and suffered agonising burns from a botched bleach treatment at a local salon.
She says three lots of a potent chemical were put her hair for a total of three hours, when the recommended amount is one 30-minute dose.
Lorraine – not the 19-year-old's real name – said she faced weeks of pain and embarrassment with several people mistaking her for a cancer victim and she was also forced to cancel a holiday.
She has been told it will take THREE YEARS before her tresses completely return to normal and she is now making a personal injury claim against the unnamed hairdressers.
While the member of staff who bleached her tresses apologised when she saw what had happened, days later she also allegedly blamed the customer for telling her to use excessive amounts of the chemical.
But Lorraine's legal representatives say that the responsibility for proper treatment lies in the hands of the practitioner.
This, and a growing list of other similar cases, has prompted local law firm Stephensons to back calls for regulation of salons.
It was in the summer that the nursery nurse, who at the time had a ginger tint in her hair, went to the salon to make an appointment to have blonde streaks put in.
She says she was given a colour test on that day but at no time before the day of the appointment was she given a strand test to see how she coped with the bleach.
Lorraine said: "I turned up for the appointment and she put the bleach on certain strands at the back and a lot at the front. You are only meant to have it on for 30 minutes, but she left it on for a lot longer than that.
"She said the ginger wasn't lifting, so she washed the bleach off and put some more on.
"She did this a third time and also put me under a heater, which you aren't meant to do either, apparently. By the end of the afternoon my head was beginning to tingle, but I had to leave then because I was going out.
"During the night my head really started burning and itching: it was all red and sore. Then when I was at work the next day it began blistering.
"I went to hospital and my hair started falling out in great clumps. I lost about a quarter of it, mainly at the front where my fringe fell out.
"It was quite sore for months and months and it was very difficult to wash my hair. I was meant to be going to Tenerife for a holiday but the doctors told me not to go because the heat would make things worse.
"I wore a hat at first, I was embarrassed to go out and there were quite a few people who thought that I must be having cancer treatment.
"The hair has started to grow back now, but the specialist says that it could be three years before things are back to normal."
Lorraine says that a few days after the bleach was put on she received a phone call from the salon inviting her to come in to have more bleach put on her hair.
She went along with a friend to see what the staff reaction was.
Lorraine said: "The woman who had done my hair saw the state I was in and kept saying 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry' but then suggested that it was my fault because I had told her to put more bleach on.
"But she's the expert and she should have known what and what not to do."
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Weather for Wigan
Saturday 26 May 2012
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Temperature: 10 C to 23 C
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