Article: Calif. smog law propels hair spray competition

LOS ANGELES Cindy Scheerschmidt is engaged in a top-secret effort to preserve the coiffure as we know it.

In a squat industrial building this month, she conducted Test No. 5811 on a human volunteer. Scheerschmidt parted her subject's curly red tresses down the middle. From two coded black containers, she applied a different coating to each side.

Then she ran her fingers expertly through the hair.

"It's tacky," she said of the portion on the left. She pushed her nose close to the scalp. "Let me smell it."

Here in the "evaluation center," a 15-chair beauty salon at Redken Laboratories Inc., hair spray is getting a makeover - after a hard shove from state regulators fighting to ...

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