"Lucille Ball and other Hollywood beauties dyed their hair with pure henna when they could get it. Henna was exported from Egypt to the US, and not grown in the western hemisphere (except for a few places in the Caribbean, where it was cultivated by immigrant labor from India.) The henna supply in the USA was scarce and unreliable, and gradually fell into disuse." —Excerpted from "Henna for Hair," a most interesting (free) e-book that separates henna myths from facts. (Like, it IS safe to color chemically over pure henna!)
Ingredients you'll find in your drugstore hair color: sulfates, parabens, pthalates, petrochemical solvents... these chemicals pollute where they are made, are tested on animals, irritate our eyes, skin, and lungs, and wash down the drains. And the plastic bottles aren't usually recyclable.
Henna's messy; it smells and feels like mud (but you can mix it with cloves or coffee or other fragrant things). But it's actually GOOD for your hair!
