Is phototherapy nail polish harmful to the body?

Nail polish is a common cosmetic. You can do it at home or in a nail salon. There are some chemicals in this nail polish. If used improperly, it will have a certain impact on your health. Especially when you go to a nail salon, if the disinfection is not thorough and it is not one-to-one use, it may even easily cause some infections. The most common ones are paronychia, onychomycosis, etc.

Of course it is harmful. She has to do simulated manicures once a week. Before doing so, the manicurist first uses a file to thin the surface of the nails, and then uses glue to stick false nails with various patterns on the nail caps to make her fingers look longer. But recently she found that her real nails would become thicker shortly after being filed, and the color of the nails began to turn gray. A few days ago, there was swelling around the nails. She went to the hospital for a check-up and found out that she was suffering from onychomycosis and paronychia.

In fact, even if you don't put on false nails during manicure, and only do simple care such as exfoliating and applying nail polish, there is still a risk of infection with paronychia and onychomycosis. All manicure tools should be disinfected after each use. However, even in some beauty salons with larger storefronts, the most common way to disinfect manicure tools is to wipe them with alcohol cotton. Wiping with hot water or alcohol alone will not kill bacteria. Beauty equipment needs to be soaked in high pressure or special disinfectant for a period of time before it can be used again. Because nails have an absorbing function, if someone suffers from onychomycosis, it can be transmitted to subsequent customers through unsterilized or improperly sterilized nail equipment, leading to cross-infection of diseases such as tinea manuum, onychomycosis, and paronychia.

1. Accelerate skin aging

After applying nail polish, you need to expose your hands or feet to the blue light, which is actually ultraviolet light. Put your hands or feet into the body and expose them for 30 to 40 seconds each time. This type of ultraviolet light has strong penetrating power and can directly reach the dermis of the skin, destroying elastic fibers and collagen fibers, and even causing skin aging and wrinkles. Girls who frequently expose themselves to this kind of lamp will have their hands or feet become darker and older.

2. Cause periungual skin disease

During the manicure process, the manicurist will use special fine sandpaper and suede sticks to polish your fingernails for the sake of beauty. After such "processing", you will find that your nails become smoother. However, the nails of girls who do manicures for a long time will become thinner and softer. Damaged nail enamel can easily cause infection by fungi and other bacteria. If the scissors, tweezers and other nail tools used in the nail salon are not thoroughly disinfected, it is easy to transmit diseases such as onychomycosis, tinea manuum, tinea pedis, and sometimes cause cross infection. In addition, the skin around the nail plate can be easily damaged during the nail filing process, especially the cuticle covering the root of the nail. People have to wash their hands frequently, which can easily lead to bacterial infection when exposed to water, causing paronychia and periungual abscess.

Ordinary nail polish contains a large amount of organic solvents, mainly acetone, ethyl acetate, phthalates, etc. Inferior nail polish has a pungent smell and often contains formaldehyde and benzene. If you use low-quality nail polish that contains excessive amounts of heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, and mercury for a long time, the harmful ingredients will be absorbed by the human body through the nails, not only causing symptoms of chronic poisoning, but also seriously affecting women's endocrine system, greatly increasing the chances of women developing diseases such as breast cancer.

4. Pregnant women are prone to miscarriage or fetal malformation

If you continue to do manicures when you are pregnant, long-term ingestion of organic substances such as toluene may cause fetal genital malformations and miscarriage. It is recommended that women stop doing manicures six months before they plan to become pregnant.