“Get your nails done, get a pedicure, get your hair did”: At least one of these beauty procedures might be more harmful to your patients’ health than expected. Read here which one it is and what light has to do with it.
For many women, having their nails done is either part of everyday life or a welcome luxury, similar to going to the hairdresser. Gel nail polishes are used frequently and often last longer than conventional nail polishes. But they also have a disadvantage: they must be cured with UV lamps so that the gel can harden. However, these lamps seem to pose health concerns, as a recent study suggests.
The lamps used in conventional nail salons utilize UV light in the spectrum of 340–395 nm and are accepted as being perfectly harmless. The short time and small surface area of skin that comes in contact with the light gives a false sense of security. “If you look at the way these devices are presented, they are marketed as safe, with nothing to be concerned about,” says study author Ludmil Alexandrov, professor of bioengineering and cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego. However, the effects of the nail lamps are yet to be sufficiently researched.
That is why scientists studied the effects of UV lamps on health and came to worrying results. Usually, each layer of gel nail polish is cured between 1–5 minutes, depending on the thickness of the gel. At least three coats – a base coat, a color and a top coat – are used in a professional manicure, even more when it comes to more elaborate designs.
The shocking results: after only a 20-minute UV-light-session, the researchers were able to detect cell death of 20–30 % in in vitro cell line models. In addition to cell death, DNA damage was also detected in the remaining cells. „Lastly, we saw that exposure may cause mitochondrial dysfunction, which may also result in additional mutations. We looked at patients with skin cancers, and we see the exact same patterns of mutations in these patients that were seen in the irradiated cells”, Alexandrov adds. However, there is a lack of long-term studies to determine the cancer risk of these UV lamps.
Of course, it's like many other things: the more often you expose yourself to UV light, the greater the risk. One example that has been known for a long time is tanning beds. Those who use them regularly significantly increase their risk of skin diseases. It is probably the same with UV lamps for nails. „A number of reports in medical journals were saying that people who get gel manicures very frequently – like pageant contestants and estheticians – are reporting cases of very rare cancers in the fingers, suggesting that this may be something that causes this type of cancer,” said Alexandrov.
The results of the study thus indicate that a seemingly harmless manicure is probably not as innocent as previously thought. However, since the results are based only on cell models, further epidemiological studies are needed to properly investigate the negative effects of gel nail polish manicures.
Image source: Dan Cristian Pădureț, unsplash
