Hair a booming business for oil spill in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — Volunteers in the Philippines are getting shorn to save the shore.

The cast-off clippings of human hair are going to be used to help mop up oil from a disastrous spill that has fouled beaches, coral reefs and mangrove swamps.

Faced with its worst oil spill and scant funds, the Philippines turned to the low-tech campaign after a tanker sank and began leaking bunker oil three weeks ago off Guimaras Island.

The government plans to put cast-off clippings of hair from salon owners and other volunteers in permeable sacks for use as improvised booms to contain the oil.

Even President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has joined in, ordering a government task force to set up collection centers for hair and chicken feathers, which also are being used, along with straw and other natural materials.

About 500 hair salons in metropolitan Manila have joined the "Stop the Oil Spill" drive by collecting clippings, said Linda Francisco, president of the Salon Owners and Hairdressers Association Inc.

"We target at least 100,000 bags of hair," said Francisco, whose group plans to offer free cuts to students, starting with three public schools next week.

Danilo Dador, an officer at the maximum-security wing of the national penitentiary outside Manila, said Wednesday most of the more than 11,000 inmates there have volunteered to have their hair shaved or trimmed.

The idea cropped up at a news conference when a member of the environmental group Greenpeace pointed to a U.S. experiment that found human hair useful in cleaning up oil.

Alabama hairdresser Phil McCrory reportedly got the idea while watching coverage of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Noticing that an otter's fur was saturated with oil, he wondered if human hair could help clean up oil.

He collected 5 pounds of hair from his shop, stuffed it in a pair of his wife's pantyhose, tied the feet together into a ring and put it in his son's wading pool with some oil.

With some scientists' help, McCrory learned that hair doesn't exactly soak up the oil but that oil clings to thousands of tiny scales on hair shafts. He applied for a patent in 1993, and got it in 1995.

NASA engineers in the United States did some tests in 1998, showing that hair would indeed help clean up oil.

However, marine biologist Rex Sadaba of the University of the Philippines-Visayas isn't sold on using hair or chicken feathers and says abundant materials such as straw may be better.