Human Hair Color

Human Hair Color

Hair color is the pigmentation of hair follicles due to two types of melanin: eumelanin and pheomelanin. Generally, if more eumelanin is present, the color of the hair is darker; if less eumelanin is present, the hair is lighter. Levels of melanin can vary over time causing a person's hair color to change, and it is possible to have hair follicles of more than one color.

Particular hair colors are associated with ethnic groups. The shades of human hair color are assessed using the Fischer–Saller scale. The Fischer–Saller scale, named after Eugen Fischer and Karl Saller, is used in physical anthropology and medicine to determine the shades of hair color. The scale uses the following designations: A (light blond), B to E (blond), F to L (blond), M to O (dark blond), P to T (brown), U to Y (dark brown/black) and Roman numerals I to IV (red) and V to VI (red blond). See also the Martin–Schultz scale for eye color.

Read more about Human Hair Color:  Genetics and Biochemistry of Hair Color, Natural Hair Colors, Hair Coloring

Famous quotes containing the words human, hair and/or color:

    Everyone wants to be innocent at all costs, even if that means accusing the human race and the heavens.
    Albert Camus (1913–1960)

    The dead fed you
    Amid the slant stones of graveyards.
    Pale ghosts who planted you
    Came in the night-time
    And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems.
    Amy Lowell (1874–1925)

    When a bachelor of philosophy from the Antilles refuses to apply for certification as a teacher on the grounds of his color I say that philosophy has never saved anyone. When someone else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men I say that intelligence has never saved anyone: and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.
    Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)