www.axios.com/us-china-forced-labor-products-human-hair-69da26c5-2d01-4bad-a2b2-8c944f6d0a70.html
Some very worrying stuff here.
Hair extensions made from human hair have bothered me for some time. I know many women and girls (and men too, for that matter) cut off long lengths of hair willingly because they want a change of style. But most people who know who did this, donate the hair. My daughter donated her hip length hair to a charity that makes wigs for children who lose their hair due to cancer or alopecia. I have often wondered where all that hair in extensions and commercial wigs/hairpieces comes from. Not all of it is human hair, of course, but the best ones are.
There are now concerns that a lot of this hair may be coming from Chinese labor camps for its ethnic minorities, where forced labor is going on. Some of the hair itself may be coming from the female prison workers. This is obviously part of a much wider pattern where many women who are ethnic minorities in China are being systematically deprived of human rights on a mass scale, including rape, forced marriage, forced abortion and forced pregnancy.
I think this needs investigating, and that some sort of accountability system for the buying and selling of human hair is worthy of consideration. In the mean time, is there any way for salons to find out where the hair used in extensions is coming from and confirm that it was willingly sold and not taken by force, or processed using slave labor? (I do not use extensions myself but I know some women do).