Dr. Alicia Franklin

So you're exposed to it 24 hours a day, seven days a week for however many weeks you decide to wear it.

We know that our exposures are cumulative, and so they add up.

And so it's not just the braids that we should be concerned with.

It's the overall exposures to all of the products that we're using every day.

And then people who get braids, that's some folks' primary hairstyle.

And so we're talking about a product that, you know, just can be used so often and especially among a population of folks who are already overburdened by some of these exposures.

What I always suggest is that you don't just consider, oh, I need to take my braids out.

But if braids are a potential source of exposure, are there other ways of mitigating your exposure, which could be okay.

Maybe instead of wearing the braids and then the edge control and the gel and the jam and the

you know, the loosest.

I'm going to try to minimize the use of all of those products and maybe reduce it to one or two.

Thinking about our makeup routines, is it necessary to beat your face every day?

Or can I do, when I know I got my braids in, something more, you know, lighter and less product buildup?

So it's not necessarily about one product, one exposure, because we aren't just exposed to one chemical and one product in a day.

It's like we use multiple products with multiple chemicals in them, and all of that kind of stacks on top of each other.