Background: Working as a hairdresser involves exposure to a variety of chemical agents.

Aims: To estimate the risk of such exposure in relation to reproductive outcome.

Methods: A cohort of hairdressers, certified in Sweden from 1970 onwards, and a referent cohort of women from the general population were established and linked to the Swedish Medical Birth Register for the period 1973 to 1994. In the cohort of hairdressers 3706 women gave birth to 6960 infants. The corresponding numbers among the referents were 3462 and 6629. Questionnaires were sent to all hairdressers to obtain individual exposure data. The response rate was 65%.

Results: Compared with the referents, the hairdressers more often gave birth to infants that were small for gestational age (SGA). In addition, a higher fraction of the infants born to a hairdresser had a major malformation (2.8% v 2.1%). Frequent permanent waving and spraying tended to be associated with increased risk of having an SGA infant, whereas no clear association could be seen between the individual exposure assessments and malformation risk.

Conclusions: Results indicated that hairdressers have a slight increased risk of having intrauterine growth retarded infants and infants with major malformation compared with women from the general population. However, no clear associations were seen between individual exposure assessments and these outcomes.