Am I being scammed by the Big Pharma-style juggernaut behind nits?

Whenever I drop into a local pharmacy in Notting Hill, the staff look at me with huge sympathy. “Not again?”

Yes, nits are doing the rounds again at my children’s primary school. I’m spending around £60 every other month on de-nit treatments – sometimes more – because we can’t shake them off.

I find myself staring at a whole world of head lice shampoos, lotions, gels, sprays, and mousse and I’m wondering which one to pick next.

When will this end? I’m being sucked dry not only by the nits but the corporate bloodsuckers at the Big Pharma who get me to buy more than a £5 nit comb.

There are head lice shampoos that are 15 minutes, eight hours, or five minutes – and it just doesn’t make any sense. Why the time lag?

When you read on some bottles “treats up to 10 heads”, do they mean if your children have small tufts of hair or short bob style?

I need a whole bottle costing around £18 to cover each of my children’s thick or long hair – then I have to do my own hair as a precaution.

The treatments sell out so fast that I end up going to about three different chemists to try and get enough of the same brand for one de-nit session so we all follow the plan.

Most of them come included with a nit comb but they are pathetic and rip all the hair out – so you end up buying the Mumsnet-rated Nitty Gritty NitFree & Lice Comb, £13.65, designed famously by a group of mums who no longer wanted to use chemicals to remove head lice from their kids’ hair.

Good for them. But I don’t have time to spend hours combing through my two children’s hair with a Nitty Gritty. That’s why we spent New Year’s Eve at home with the eight-hour shampoo dripping off our heads all over the open-plan living room floor and sofa.

I thought it sounded totally amazing. It kills lice and eggs without the need for combing hair, and I really wanted to start 2026 nit-free.

Then I spotted Lola, nine, itching her head yesterday. “Oh my God, I just can’t stand it. You’ve only been back at school a week!”

I stormed back into the chemist and was told the reason for it not working (if I’d read the small print on the box) is that with the overnight eight-hour shampoo, it must be repeated in seven days. Wait for it… in case some random eggs hatch after the last lot is exterminated.

Bear in mind I’d also washed all the bedding, coats, hats, and towels on a hot wash, and bought a preventative lice spray for the car seats and the kids’ hair.

But still I was expected to shell out around £120 for six bottles for the three of us over two weeks – with no guarantee of it working.

That’s when the pharmacist pulled out a secret weapon – a hi-tech nit-busting kit costing £49.99 as an alternative.

The rechargeable chemical-free “V-comb” apparently eliminates the nit problem by hoovering the hair with gentle suction to physically remove head lice and their eggs, trapping them in disposable, self-sealing filters for hygienic disposal.

“All you’d need to buy is the new capture filters,” the pharmacist said eagerly, as if that would make me feel better. Each filter is only £12, compared to my usual £60 bill, and it stores the lice and uses a bright LED so you can see what is removed from hair.

I turned it down. I couldn’t do the eight-hour shampoo again as there wasn’t enough time to wash it out before school the next morning. So I opted for a brand of shampoo I’d never tried before, one that only needed to be on for 15 minutes, followed by a meticulous comb-through.

I’d tried all the non-toxic nit treatments with oils like tea tree and lavender and moved onto the hard stuff pretty fast. Now I’m sick of it all.

The head lice treatment market is a robust and growing industry. According to SNS Insider, the global nits market was worth $1.08bn in 2024 and is estimated to reach $1.75bn by 2032.

It’s a clever business module because there is a persistent prevalence of head lice at schools and lots of reinfestation potential, so you can’t blame the shampoo for being ineffective if it doesn’t do the trick.

The Big Pharma juggernaut behind nits can rely on repeat demand for over-the-counter treatments. Not all parents are as honest as the former UK prime minister David Cameron, who in 2011, warned Downing Street visitors and staff about nits after two of his children brought them home from school – so they could check their own hair for nits.

They are passed on through head-to-head contact at school and at sleepovers, and are so common in young children and families that unless the whole school follows the protocol (which never happens), it continues on a repeat loop, as portrayed on BBC’s Motherland in the 2021 episode “Nit Blitz”, when a nit pandemic sweeps the school.

Even if there were a simple cure for nits, the pharmaceutical companies would be foolish to market it.

Back to school should be renamed back to head lice – or back to the chemist. I tie my children’s hair back, and I spend all my hard-earned cash on Hedrin. I’ve been had – and some Big Nit is rolling in cash.