Ladies( and possibly some men ;))! How many of you love to get a fresh mani/pedi at the nail salon? How many of you love that feeling of having pretty nails? Majority of us absolutely LOVE it! But are we causing harm to our health? To many, nail polish is simply, well, nail polish. The typical person doesn’t associate anything bad to go with this stylish liquid. To my surprise ,these polishes that I use almost twice a week contain very harmful chemicals.
While doing a bit of reading I learned that there are three compounds (the toxic three) that are found in popular nail polishes that can do serious damage to your health. After reading a blog from the New York Times I was appalled from what I read. According to the New York Times, “The trio consisted of a known carcinogen, formaldehyde, used as a hardening agent, and two materials linked to developmental defects: toluene, to evenly suspend color, and the plasticizer dibutyl phthalate, or DBP, to add flexibility and sheen.” Inhaling the carcinogen formaldehyde can be detrimental to a persons long term health. The issue seemed to cause a bit of a stir where companies claimed to have removed the toxic three from their products; a later investigation determined they simply changed the label and not their actual ingredients. After all, what “Everyday Joe” would know the difference between the compositions of their nail polish and what it contains.
Where does the actual harm come into play? Great question! We all aren’t skilled nail painters. Therefore what if the polish gets into a cut? What if the polish is absorbed by the nail or your skin? What if you inhale to much of the nail polish? Then,BAM! Just like that you have carcinogens, DBP, and toluene all in your system.
While studies have shown everyday people at home (the average teenage girl who paints her nails on occasions) aren’t very much at risk and shouldn’t be drawn back from painting their nails; those in nail salons should be cautious to the everyday exposure.
According to NYT blogger, Deborah Blum, doctors are now warning young girls to avoid using polish and not bite on their fingers for DBP can lead to many developmental disorders in young children.
citations :
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/ask-well-is-nail-polish-harmful/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/health/blog/2013/02/12/nail-polish-health-risk/
http://www.bellasugar.com/How-Get-Nail-Polish-Off-Clothes-22006354
I absolutely hate going into a nail salon sometimes. The smell is too much for me! I don’t know how the ladies who do the nails breathe that in everyday. I think those ladies will get the harmful effects quicker than a normal person who paints their nails at home. You want to make sure that you close your nail polish bottle securely and tightly when you are done with it. The smell lasts for a while, is bad for you, and smells terrible!
I found this post to be very interesting because I paint my nails at least once a week. I always knew that breathing in the chemicals in the polish and the polish remover was bad for me but I never really considered why. I never thought of nail polish as a carcinogen. After reading this, I looked into alternatives to these potentially toxic products. I found this blog, and it talks about alternatives to lower the risk of harming your body with regular polish and remover: http://organiworks.blogspot.com/2012/05/top-alternatives-to-toxic-products-nail.html
After reading your blog post, I realized that I probably have all three toxic compounds in my system. In your blog you said if too much nail polish are inhaled, then all three toxic compounds are in our system. If people in nail salons inhale nail polish everyday for a large amount of hours per day, then what kind of long-term health issues would they have? Also besides nail polishes, nail polish removers have many dangerous ingredients in them too. The most common ingredient is Acetone. If repeatedly exposed to acetone, chronic bronchitis can occur. If you want to see the other ingredients in nail polish removers, here a website.
http://www.carefair.com/beauty/nails/nail_polish_removers_1484.html
Maybe this is one of those things that Andrew was asking about in class today. Just like is took 100 years for us to figure out smoking was bad for us, maybe this is the same situation with nail polish. Although, everything seems to be harmful to us in one way or another now days, so I guess its up to us to decide if we really want to pay attention to the health hazards or pay for the manicure. Like smoking, there seems to be a delay in the effects nail polish has on the body. Therefore, people still probably don’t consider that the cause of any issues if they ever have any.
Check out my post. I posted about how gel manicures are dangerous. Not only is the paint composition bad but the lights used to dry the polish is dangerous and also the process they use to take the polish off!
This study most likely is correct but nowadays it seems like everything is harmful to the body. Doctors and scientists are coming up with new warning and dangers everyday. Girls will continue to paint their nails just like they will continue putting chemicals into their hair to get a hot new color.