Resin And Human Hair Cube (buffed)

Throughout our lives we groom, shed and cut our hair, turning it from an intimate body part to a body product. Once cut from our heads this hair either becomes waste - UK hairdressers produce around 6,700 tonnes of human hair each year, most of which goes to landfill - or it is collected and commercialised as part of a massive global trade in human hair.

Because of its flexibility, light weight, tensile strength, porosity and oil absorbency, hair has a number of unexpected uses, beyond its use in wigs, including as an industrial oil filter, a medical suture, an embroidery material, toy stuffing and a fertiliser. It is even used to create a food additive (L-Cysteine) that helps break down the gluten in bread dough, making our loaves softer, fluffier and more digestible.

Human hair has been used as a filler in this (probably polyester) resin to make it stronger, resulting in this amusingly stubbly, translucent brown cube. Polyester resins have been around in one form or another since the 1840s, but on their own they tend to be quite brittle, with poor tensile strength. These polymers grew in importance during World War Two when they were used in combination with glass, cellulosic and other fibres as constituents of lightweight, shaped composite structures. 

Human hair does not seem to have been commonly used in early fibre reinforced composites, possibly because of the ‘ick factor’. In the face of concerns about the sustainability of non-renewable filler materials, however, human hair seems more appealing. Researchers have recently explored hair’s ability to improve the sound and thermal insulation of resins, as well as their tensile and flexural strength-to-weight ratio, exploring these human-polymer composites for use in the built environment, automotive applications and even as a 3D print filament. 

Designers, scientists and engineers all over the world continue to experiment with hair, exploring how this renewable material can be turned from waste into a useful resource. However, unlike some other sources of keratin, this most intimate of fibres can inspire disgust once cut from the body. As we explore in the human hair brush profile, it has emotional, social, cultural and political significance and often retains its relationship with the person from whom it came.