Originally published at: Gel manicures lead to "cell death and cancer-causing mutations," says new study | Boing Boing
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The editors of the Daily Heil in the UK must be very excited today.
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Well, that sucks. I’m not a nail person, but I’m sure this news will be used to victim blame people who decide to get their nails done…
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I used to get my nails done on the regular. I had acrylics for a long time but, after years, my cuticles got inflamed! I went back to regular polish after that.
Tried gel a few times after it came out, but my cuticles got the same vibe from gel as from acrylics.
Still, I thought regardless of the manicure type, the dryers all used UV light - I didn’t think the gel dryer would be any different than a regular one! 
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You know, I don’t know. If it’s the lights that cause the problem, then there needs to be a new solution for that.
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A few years ago I read a very thorough article about how the chemicals in use in nail salons were harmful to the workers there. No surprise at all that they are also harmful to the customers.
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The one that looks for cancer?
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Would not be surprised if it was similar. However the exposure over time would likely be much less. Unless one has issues that require a massive amount of dental work over time. In which case I would think the trade off between dental work needed and exposure to uv is not out of balance.
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I assume that curing systems are significantly more intense; but it’s not desperately good news to hear about that sort of cell damage from an emitter that would be classified as over in the comparatively good-natured UV-A area.
I admit that I went into this suspecting it would be a regulatory horror story involving someone using UV-B or C sources because they are cheap and punchy and regulation of cosmetics seems pretty tepid(if the fact that you can smell your liver dying from 30 yards when a nail salon door opens is anything to go by).
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Both links look dead:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-35876-8
Also, in the phys.org article the PI is quoted saying that the original idea to study this came from reading an article about a beauty pageant contestent who had a rare form of finger cancer. They then found additional medical cases of people likely to get gel manicures having similar cancer. That’s different than an actual epidemiological study, and probably not enough to make a credible estimate of the relative risk, but is certainly enough to worry that there might be a real world effect, not just in the lab environment.
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This really shouldn’t be a surprise, should it? We knew what wavelengths of UV were most likely to cause cancer, and that one should generally avoid artificial UV light. It’s all about managed risk. The only question is how much worse this is than, say, direct sun exposure.
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bad link to phys.org in the opening paragraph.
I tried the gel nails once. Didn’t care for them. And they’re ridiculous to remove.
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I’d assume the dose makes the poison. I wouldn’t be going to the dentist anywhere near as often as people get their nails done or go to tanning salons
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Ok so I have only been to a nail salon twice in my life, but I have an at-home one of these UV lights for setting gel nail strips and you only need to use it for 1-2 minutes, not 20 minutes. But the strips are semi-cured so maybe that’s why.
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For a long time, UV-A band light was thought to be relatively harmless. More recent science shows it’s just as harmful as UV-B but through a different mechanism. UV-B (and rarer UV-C) affect DNA directly, causing inappropriate cross-linking between base pairs (like jamming a zipper). UV-A requires a middle step, the generation of ROSs (reactive oxygen species). The elevated ROS levels in a cell cause lipid peroxidation and DNA fragmentation.
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Always wear protective gear in a bacta tank.
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I get them just because my work messes up everything else. Gel will last a month while regular polish is like maybe a week. Maybe. I guess I will have to look at the risks and decide if it is worth it. My first thought was something about taking my nails from my cold dead hands
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This thread might as well be The Princess Bride bingo game. We’ve got ROSs, poison, and six-fingered men. If someone mentions a giant or a Holocaust Cloak, please yell bingo!
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