A man has issued an urgent warning after a hair dye patch test left his arms red and blistered in an extreme reaction. Student Jack Valentine claimed doctors in A&E told him he 'could've ended up in a coma' if he had ended up using the dye on his head.
Jack's body had been left in agonising blisters after visiting his local supermarket last month to purchase a box of formula that is available in numerous high street shops across the country.
Knowing the importance of carrying out a patch test and having previously suffered adverse reactions to other hair dyes and a tattoo, Jack placed a '10p sized' amount of the activated dye on his inner arm. But hours later, the initial itch turned into painful red sores and blisters, prompting an urgent trip to A&E.
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LancsLive reports that Jack, 27, had also been on holiday to Corfu when he was younger with his family, who are from Salford, and got a black henna tattoo. However, on the last day of the trip, he suffered a huge reaction.
Through a process of trial and error over the years, Jack said he's been able to figure out that certain ingredients such as paraphenylenediamine and ammonia, found in most dyes, can spark off a reaction. Due to his unpredictable allergy to certain products, Jack said he makes sure to carry out patch tests for new products.
"I just put a little bit on my arm, left it there for five minutes, wiped it off, everything was fine and I thought brilliant, don't think I'm allergic to it," Jack said.
"Then I woke up, went for a morning bath and looked at my arm, it was just ever so slightly red. Throughout the day it just got progressively worse and worse and spreading across my entire forearm and now it's shockingly blistered."
The law student said he'd thought by doing a small patch test on his arm he would be able to mitigate a large reaction, instead he was forced to go to A&E and left in tears on Monday, February 27.
"I did the patch test on Saturday night and then rushed to get it checked out in the early hours of Monday morning, it was that bad, I couldn't sleep. I was in tears, it was that shocking" he added. "I got it checked out it and they told me it's a third degree chemical burn and there's even a risk of scarring now.
"The doctors told me, if I'd have put that on my head I would've likely been put into an induced coma because of the pain, I wouldn't have been able to cope with it."
Now Jack is warning others to carry out patch tests even if they have never had a reaction in their life, adding: "It can just take that one time for you to be allergic and it will set you off- since that henna tattoo something happened and then ever since I've been horrifically allergic so everyone needs to be patch tested.
"If you get a new hair dye or even sprays or cover up sprays, you have to do a patch test. This is so important because you could literally be put in a coma or you could go into anaphylactic shock.
"I know you would have to get like two boxes, one to test and then one for your hair because you have to mix them up so it would cost you double the price to do a patch test. But the extra £6, £7, is it really worth spending time in hospital, being put in a coma or even worse?"
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