Mumbai: 
Next time you get a haircut, you may actually be helping to save the environment.
The state government is considering using the 'hair boom' technique to mop up the oil spill off the Mumbai coast.
The technique of using hair stuffed into nylon stockings to form a hair boom is one of the most efficient ways of clearing up oil spills- something that has been used in the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill and in the 2006 spill in the Philippines.
Human hair is porous, and oil seeps into its outer layer. It is also biodegradable; therefore, it is one of the safest cleaning solutions to an oil spill.
The state government had a meeting on Wednesday to discuss ways to soak up the gallons of oil floating in the sea and the 'hair remedy' was discussed there.
Environment department secretary Varsha Nair Singh said, "This is the best remedy to soak up the oil and is feasible too. This was discussed at the meeting as one of the ways to bring the situation under control."
Environmental group Matter of Trust, a San Francisco-based nonprofit environmental organisation had collected hair from 30 countries as part of an effort to clean up the massive oil spill triggered by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
"We have provided the details of the organisation to the ministry, so that they can get in touch with them for the hair nylon stocking. It can even be done here, as it is feasible," Singh added.
A D Saraf, water pollution abetment engineer and regional coordination officer of Maharashtra Pollution Control Board said, "We know about the hair mats used in the Mexico oil spill. It is very feasible here too and also not costly."
The San Francisco organisation had called for hair donations to stuff hair booms, which were sent to the Gulf to help clean up beaches and wetlands affected by the massive oil spill. Booms consisting of nylons filled with hair and feathers have been shown to safely and effectively soak up oil in past ocean spills and could be of a great help to Mumbai, if the government acted upon it.
The hair as an oil absorbent concept was first popularised in 1989 when Phillip McCrory, a Madison, Alabama hairdresser, experimented with human hair as an oil sponge after watching volunteers on TV attempt to clean oil from the fur of sea otters following the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He filled an old pair of nylon stockings with five pounds of hair and used them to soak up a mock oil spill he created in his son's plastic pool.
This idea was later expanded on by NASA and has been acknowledged as a means of cleanup technology by the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.