Hello dear community! I am very happy to be able to make a contribution to this month's topic on skin care. In this post I want to tell you my experience about what happened to me when I had a manicure using gel nail polish. I hope my experience will serve as a warning!
In the middle of last year, I went on a trip to the beach. Like any flirtatious woman, I wanted to see my fingernails and toenails looking nice, so I decided to go to the beauty salon to get a manicure.
My nails are usually weak and brittle. Although I consider my diet to be balanced, I have always had this condition. Therefore, I do not like to paint my nails with varnish. However, for a special occasion, I resort to getting a manicure at a beauty salon.
When I arrived at the salon the manicurist offered me "semi-permanent nails". This was actually a new procedure for me. She told me that a gel was used on the nails, which hardened when exposed to a drying lamp, this formed a protective layer, and the nail polish would last much longer than a conventional manicure. I thought this was great because usually by the third day the nail polish peels off and the hands lose that nice touch.
Everything was going well until I placed my hand under the drying lamp for 2 minutes. I felt an uncomfortable heat on my nails. I could tell it caused slight pain. However I was surprised with the speed of the procedure.
I went on a trip, and indeed the manicure lasted 3 weeks. this was fabulous! However after that time the nails had grown out, and you could see the nail without polish and another part with polish. It was time to remove that...but I had never been told how the process worked.
When I arrived at the beauty salon, the manicurist proceeded to remove the polymer from my nails. The method of removing it seemed to me to be the most savage. She placed cotton impregnated with acetone on my nails, and covered each one with aluminum foil and then placed my hand for a couple of minutes in the drying lamp. After that she proceeded to scrape the surface of my nails with a metal tool. It is the tool used to "push back the cuticle".
You can imagine that after my nails were sensitive. I left them natural without polish. A few days later, I noticed a difference in color between the nail that was growing and the one that had undergone that atrocious procedure. One part of the nail looked weak, flaky and yellow. It was very ugly! (I didn't take pictures of this because I didn't think it was important). I thought maybe I was allergic to one of the components, but I had already decided that I would never do this type of manicure again. Was the yellowish color of my nails and the skin underneath them a burn? Maybe it was!
A few days ago, while reading a scientific magazine, I came across an article warning about this type of procedure. In this article they explained that the "drying lamps" emit ultraviolet light of the same type as sunbeds. How so? Yes, these lamps emit ultraviolet light radiation classified as type A according to the damage to human skin by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (1). This type of UV radiation is carcinogenic. These lamps have many bulbs that emit UVA. When you get a manicure like this, do you wear protective eyewear???? Omg!
This shocked me a lot, so I dedicated myself to the task of investigating the subject further, and I found that since 2009 there were reports of women who presented carcinogenic cells in their hands. These women frequently performed manicures with this type of polish nails and exposure to the drying lamp(2). Recently, in 2019, actinic keratoses and squamous cell carcinomas were found on the back of the hand in women exposed to UVA radiation from these drying lamps (3)
That is why when I read the study published a couple of weeks ago showing the carcinogenic effect and irreversible mutations in the DNA of the skin due to frequent exposure to Uv radiation from these enamel drying lamps (4), I felt I had to share this information with you. Do you know what the saddest part of all this is? This study was received by the scientific journal in February 2021, that is two years before going public. How many women could have been warned about the damage to their skin?
I hope this publication will serve as an outreach. If you think it is important to alert women about the adverse effects of having a manicure with gel polish and drying with UVA radiation lamps, reblog this post, after all we will be fulfilling the main objective of this community which is to inform, educate, alert and promote prevention.
You can find more information in these links:
1. A review of human carcinogens—Part D: radiation
2. Occurrence of nonmelanoma skin cancers on the hands after UV nail light exposure
4. DNA damage and somatic mutations in mammalian cells after irradiation with a nail polish dryer
Join this prompt of this week, there is still time to share your experience!
Thanks for reading. See you in next post!
