UN nail polish drying equipment is across the world
There may be greater public health risks associated with the UV nail polish drying equipment used to cure gel manicures than previously realised. These ultraviolet(UV) light generating devices have been researched by researchers at the University of California.
They discovered that utilising them causes cancer-causing mutations and cell death in human cells. It’s understandable why gel manicures have become a mainstay in nail salons all across the US and many other countries since entering the market around 2010.
Gel nail lacquer is more resistant to breakage and smearing than regular nail polish, and it keeps its lustre until you remove it off your fingernails. The best part, if you’re the impatient kind, is that a gel manicure doesn’t require you to wait for it to dry for an hour or more.
All of those advantages result from the way the polish dries. You may use a UV lamp to harden gel polish on your fingers instead of waiting for it to dry naturally by holding your hands.
A beauty pageant winner was diagnosed with skin cancer
Although the risks associated with UV radiation, particularly in tanning beds, are widely recognised, before recently experts had not looked into the potential effects that UV light used to cure gel polishes could have on human skin.
You may assume that everything we know about tanning beds applies here, however the apparatuses used in nail salons emit UV light from a different spectrum.
After reading a story about a beauty pageant winner who was diagnosed with a rare type of skin cancer, a team of researchers from the University of California made the decision to investigate the device.
The researchers discovered that a single 20 minute exposure to a UV nail polish dryer caused as many as 30% of the cells in a petri dish to perish using various combinations of human and mouse cells.
The exposed cells died off in 65% to 70% of cases after three consecutive 20 minutes sessions. The remaining cells showed mutations that have been observed in skin cancer patients along with signs of mitochondrial and DNA damage.
In a study that was published on January 17, 2023 in the journal of Nature Communications, the researchers state that the experimental results and the prior evidence strongly suggest that radiation emitted UV nail polish dryers may cause cancers of the hand.
Longer epidemiological study is required
And that UV nail polish dryers, similar to tanning beds, may increase the risk of early onset skin cancer. Before they can definitely state that using UV drying devices increases the risk of developing skin cancer, they caution that a longer epidemiological study is required.
They add that it is likely that such studies will take at least a decade to complete and to subsequently inform the general public.
Although it may seem like the suggestion is to stay away form UV dryers, that isn’t the case. For a good reason, gel manicures have become the norm in the business.
Traditional manicure are frequently not worth the time, money, or effort for many individuals since normal nail paint tends to flake off after a day or so.
Source: university of California
