Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which sets workplace safety standards, cites a laundry list of chemicals that nail salon workers encounter daily. Moreover, these substances could be swallowed while eating, drinking or puffing on a cigarette during a break. The compounds could also settle into workers’ eyes. Technicians could also inhale harmful vapors or mists from the chemicals in the shop. The risks are many: Dust shavings from filed nails can settle on the skin like pollen and cause irritation or can be inhaled (and those small particles could contain chemicals from the polishes or acrylics). There are also few reports looking at how each compound individually affects nail workers. Yet it is difficult to know how these chemicals affect the body because current evaluations do not look at these substances comprehensively. When combined, however, they could potentially cause even greater harm. Chemicals inside of the glues, removers, polishes and salon products-which technicians are often exposed to at close proximity and in poorly ventilated spaces-can be hazardous individually. Workplace conditions in certain nail salons, expertly laid out last week in an investigation by The New York Times’s Sarah Maslin Nir, can alleviate or exacerbate these issues. But it’s not just the amount of those substance that can turn them toxic, it is also the way they get into workers’ bodies. As the nation’s 375,000 nail technicians buff, polish and file our fingers and toes, that workplace exposure to chemicals in the polish and glue can pose a real threat.
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