The desire and trend for beautiful nails has attacked women worldwide. The nails saloon industry is growing so rapidly in the world of glamour and capitalism.
It has become a shameful fact to show in public or at work without your nails done. I’m not saying that a woman shouldn’t take care of her appearance, hygiene and the way she looks like, but blindly following every trend and applying too much chemicals onto your body can make serious damage to the health.
So, what I’m asking is simple – would you choose your looks over your health?
Most nail care products contain, in varying amounts, many toxic and potentially hazardous ingredients, such as formaldehyde, toluene and and dibutyl phthalate.
These three are commonly known in the medical world as “the toxic trio” because of the impact on health they can have.
A scientific study that was recently conducted with a group of 24 women showed the following results :
After 6 hours of applying nail polish and doing tests, their body showed an increased value of diphenyl phosphate. It’s a derivate of triphenyl phosphate, which the body makes in metabolitical process.
And 10 hours after, this level increased to 7 times more than the body normally produces. That is truly alarming.
Furthermore in this article, I will explain exactly what each toxic ingredient found in nail polish could do to your body:
- dibutyl phthalate is the ingredient put inside nail polish for aroma. It can cause respiratory and gynecological diseases and also, endocrine disorders.
- Toluene is the ingredient that keeps the color in the polish. It can seriously cause the central nervous system and bring infertility or some other reproduction problems. That’s why pregnant women are advised by their gynecologist to stop the visits of the nail saloon, especially in the last months of pregnancy and while breastfeeding.
- Formaldehyde is a gas that helps the nail polish to increase the longevity and preservation. It is scientifically proven that this ingredient in touch with your skin and respiratory system can cause development of cancerogenic cells.
With all this being said and proven, we are not saying to completely give up nail polishing – we are simply advising you to not overdo it. And here’s my final advice to you – choose wisely what you use for body, hair, skin and nails.
For your nails you could choose polishes that say “5-free” or “3-free”. If you read these words on the back of the nails polish, it means it doesn’t contain some of the mentioned toxic ingredients.
