THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 27, 1995 TAG: 9502250029
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 145 lines
THE MORAL OF many a story, according to Bugs Bunny, is ``hare today, gone tomorrow.''
Ah, if the ``Rio Girls'' had only watched Looney Tunes.
Instead, they were up watching late-night infomercials on TV, and ordering Rio Naturalizer to relax their hair. Now they're filing lawsuits, claiming that the Brazilian product made their hair break, fall out or turn green. The Food and Drug Administration has taken up their cause. And the Rio girls are, alternately, angry and depressed.
``I'm shampooing my hair and I said, my gosh, look at my hands. My hands are full of hair. And there's a clump of hair,'' said Patricia Bailey of Chesapeake.
``I got the Rio hair. I got the Rio. Well, the Rio got me.''
Rio evidently got a lot of women, mostly African American. A class-action lawsuit has been filed in Colorado, a Texas woman is seeking to start another one, and local lawyers have received nearly 300 calls after news reports of the first local lawsuit.
``As of last Wednesday I had 211. I have not counted since then. Our phone short-circuited because of it,'' said Besianne T. Shilling, a Norfolk lawyer who represents Bailey and two other women.
``I sent out a claim letter last week (to the distributor) letting them know I had filed three lawsuits and they might want to give me a call before I filed 200 more.''
The Food and Drug Administration warned consumers in December about possible hair loss and color change associated with Rio. In January, it ordered all supplies of Rio Hair Naturalizer System seized from the World Rio Corp. storehouse in California.
The FDA has received around 2,000 complaints about Rio products, the most ever received about a cosmetic.
``As far as we're concerned, until that product is proved safe by the company, it's not going to be released,'' said Brad Stone, FDA spokesman. ``That formulation has been found by us to be injurious to health and it may not be sold. . . .''
FDA scientists have said that the product, although labeled chemical-free, was in fact highly acidic, and contained a copper salt that could cause the color change.
Rio co-counsel Arthur Rieman was quoted in the Denver Post as saying the FDA action was ``overkill.'' The company said it believes many consumers may have misused the product and said it knows of no complaints in Brazil.
World Rio Corp. has put a message on its phone lines saying, ``Due to unusual circumstances, customer service is stretched to its limit. If you are calling about Rio products, please fax your message to 213-655-6382.''
``Every woman cannot be doing the same thing wrong,'' said Dianne James of Chesapeake, who says her hair fell off the sides of her head after one Rio treatment.
``Burned. Burned. First application,'' James said. ``It burns fiercely. Like a three-alarm fire.
``When you're used to having a lot of hair and all of a sudden it's gone, it's very traumatic.''
``She lost her sides right off the bat,'' said Bailey, James' sister. ``I had to trim the rest of her hair to accommodate her sides, to give her a style that didn't have sides.''
Denise Milliner of Norfolk, who says her 20-inch hair broke off until it is now only about an inch long, wishes the FDA had never let Rio on the market. But cosmetics, unlike drugs, do not require FDA approval before they can be sold.
And so Milliner and Bailey and James and Christine Freeman and Andrea Francisco and scores of others say they spent about $35 each for a Rio starter kit, believing the infomercial claims of an all-natural, chemical-free product that would leave their hair silky, shiny and straighter. Nearly all were impressed that the TV salesman ate the product on screen.
Rio smelled wonderful, they said. Fruity. Like vanilla. Sweet.
``When the mailman brought the box, it's just hanging out the box, honey, you know you want some,'' James said.
``It smells delicious,'' Milliner said. ``You think you're gonna look as pretty as you smell. Smell it, you'll just love it. Sure!''
At first, Bailey was pretty pleased with the results. Even though she had to use a blender to mix the Rio with hot water, and even though she said it hardened so fast she could barely get it on her head, the first few applications did leave her hair straighter, with more body.
``It seems like your hair just fluffed right up and I'm like:, `What in the world happened?' ,'' Bailey recalled. But the first application turned her light blondish hair black - greenish black.
``People at work kept saying:, `Is your hair green?' '' Bailey said. ``Oh, yeah, I had blow-in-the-wind hair, but there was a price to pay.''
Christine Freeman of Norfolk tosses onto the table glamour shots of herself with shoulder-length hair. Then she starts unpinning and tossing down the hairpieces she bought to cover the inch-long remnants left, she says, by Rio.
``The first time I used it (Rio), I just stood under the water and let it rinse. When I put my hands up to rinse it, I noticed hair was coming out on my hands. Then I looked down and saw it on the tile. I was hysterical.
``I haven't been to the movies in two months,'' she said. ``I don't want to go out in public. I don't answer the door. I don't go anywhere I don't have to go.
``I've missed a lot of good movies, too.''
When her boyfriend returned from military duty, she wouldn't see him for a week because she was too embarrassed about her hair.
Now she's applying an $85-a-week regimen of steroids and prescription shampoo to her scalp, hoping to make her hair grow back.
Shilling, the lawyer, said many of the Rio girls have talked about problems in their relationships and missing time from work after their hair fell out.
Milliner, the first woman to approach Shilling, whipped her wig off to reveal short tufts of hair sticking out of her scalp.
``I've got a little bald spot right here where I sleep,'' she said, fingering the left side of her head. ``It just makes your hair so hard, it crackles.''
Milliner saw the infomercial late at night after getting off work as a trauma technician at a local hospital.
Her hair hung in ripples down her back that night. She had never worn it short. In the picture she pulled from her wallet, her hair looked good.
So why order Rio?
``I didn't have to use it,'' Milliner said, nodding at Freeman who sat across the table from her. ``We didn't have to use it. We just wanted to enhance ourselves.''
Freeman agreed: ``I thought my hair would be better than it already was.'' And so Milliner wears a wig, and Freeman had her hair cut short - real short - and braided into tiny rows across her scalp. Bailey's hair is barely half an inch long, and James has short, short sides.
They don't like to go out, or answer doorbells. They'd rather stay indoors and watch TV. Or maybe not. ILLUSTRATION: LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff [color photos]
Dianne James, Patricia Bailey and Denise Milliner (wearing a wig at
left, and without it, below.)
From left, Denise Milliner of Norfolk, Patricia Bailey of Chesapeake
and Dianne James of Chesapeake before they used the Rio hair
products.
THE EVIDENCE
Patricia Bailey, left, calims her hair fell out in clumps after
using Rio naturalizer.
Dianne James, below left, claims her hair broke off on the sides of
her head.
Denise Miller, right, claims that her below-shoulder length hair
broke off at varying lengths.
KEYWORDS: RIO HAIR LAWSUIT by CNB