ALERT! Here’s what happened.
Recently I was dozing on a cross-country flight from Philadelphia to Portland when a strong odor woke me up and made me gag. Passengers throughout the plane were coughing and looking around. A woman across the aisle from me was freshening her nail polish. The flight attendant was there in an instant and demanded that she stop. Within seconds, the nail polish smell had circulated throughout the entire plane.
Things to consider.
You can’t just go to the shelf and pick out a pretty color. You have to read the label and know what chemicals you are being exposed to and how use of the product might affect your health. The intensity of a nail product’s odor and the speed that it spreads is an indication that it is a volatile organic compound, and not healthy to be breathing.
A California EPA study of nail products used in salons released in April 2012, revealed that many of them still include some or all of this toxic trio of chemicals, even when the label claimed to be free of them. Exposure to these three is not healthy:
- Formaldehyde – is a known carcinogen, can cause wheezing, coughing and irritation to the throat and skin irritation and rashes.
- DBP (dibutyl phthalate) – is a reproductive toxin which has been linked to early puberty in girls and uterine problems in women. Extended exposure can cause immediate effects like nausea, vomiting, headaches and dizziness, with long -term consequences being kidney and liver damage. Pregnant women are warned about possible birth defects due to exposure.
- Toluene – is a reproductive toxin and has been known to affect functioning of the central nervous system and can cause headaches, fatigue and dizziness. It has also been linked to kidney and liver failure.
The Good Housekeeping Institute discovered that when a manufacturer replaced the acetone with methanol in a nail polish remover, they had made the product more hazardous, and not safer. Methanol is toxic at lower doses than acetone. Here are the potential health effects of each:
- Acetone exposure by inhaling or swallowing can lead to skin, eye, and respiratory-tract irritation, coughing, dizziness, headache, depression, narcosis (chemically induced stupor), and unconsciousness.
- Methanol exposure by inhaling, swallowing, or absorbing it through your skin can lead to all those conditions as well as nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, blindness, coma, and even death.
TAKE ACTION! Here’s the good news about what you can do.
Don’t use nail products when you’re in an enclosed space. Even at home, only use where you can open windows to dilute the odor which is a VOC. Make sure that children are not around, because they are especially sensitive to the health effects of these products.
If you are in a public place don’t even think of using them; you’ll be protecting everyone’s health, especially people who are allergic to chemicals.
Just because a product is promoted as ‘natural’ does not mean it is hazard free. Check the label to confirm that acetone-free nail products are water-based and do not contain methanol.
