If anything, I think the whole reason for Rav Ovadia’s psak is that in boiling hot Halab or Cairo or Baghdad, it was impossible to wear a wig and he never saw them in his community until the recent explosion of human hair shaitlach, some of which really are questionable. Maybe that is what Rav Ovadia means by “chased by fire” – your head would feel like it is on fire if you wore the quality of shaitel that must have been available when he was growing up in Baghdad or when he was a rav in Cairo!
In addition, local Muslim women wore scarves over their heads so that Jewish women found them easier to obtain and completely socially acceptable.
I am actually writing a sefer on the halachos of wearing tin foil hats for men and women. There is a problem because they produce solar energy that can set off rather than protect against the chips that the CIA implants in our heads so that they can monitor the activities of the Jewish community in order to prevent another Pollard scandal.
For women there is also the inyan of how much of the face they have to cover with tinfoil to qualify for proper tznius (which of course is a machloikes between burqa and chador levels of coverage).