5.11.2010

Locks of Love? Psssh...

 All I want for Christmas is a fresh wig...oh, and to not have cancer.*



Everyone is familiar with "Locks of Love", the program whereby people take 5 inches or more of their hair and donate it to wig companies so that chemo patients won't get gawked at (having had lymphoma, and undergone chemo myself, this sucks enough without people staring at you)*.

However, this charitable act is not all that hair is good for. Hair is also adsorbent, meaning that -unlike a sponge which sucks up fluids- hair attracts oils to it. This is particularly awesome for things such as picking up scumbags at the bowling alley, preventing flirtatious behavior during finals, and, uh...cleaning up one of the worst environmental calamities of the modern era.
 


 "Business in the front; party in the back...and eco-warrior all over bitches".



According to the BBC, because the hair is molecularly spiky, oils and other materials naturally cling to it. The hair is thrown in mesh bags, and then creates "booms" which attracts oils. This means that theoretically if you dump enough of it into the Louisiana BP spill, the hair should attract most of the oil to it leaving, I guess, the worlds nastiest, heaviest hairball to clean up. Actually, I wish it were that simple, the true answer is a bit more vile...

But what happens to all the oil-soaked hair? Among the options tried by the charity include feeding the whole mess to worms to break down into fertiliser.



We just pooped out your $200 cut-n-dye...



Anyway, help out the fragile Gulf ecosystem and check out the BBC article on how to create, and ship, your boom. Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana will thank you, your kids and grandkids will thank you, and, more importantly, we won't have to sic this guy on you...



Cousin It will totally fuck you up...







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*Before you email me telling me I'm going to hell, you should read the next paragraph...

** Seriously, you should think about donating those ratty split ends, if you're reading this...

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