Nail Salon Workers Exposed to Fumes

  • A technician at Northbend Nails gives a customer a pedicure. (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)

Anyone who’s been in the same room as an open bottle of nail polish remover
knows how strong it smells. Now imagine working in those fumes all day, every
day. That’s what it’s like to work in a nail salon. There’s growing concern that nail
salon workers are being exposed to such high levels of these fumes that their
health is at risk. Ann Dornfeld reports on a project in Seattle to teach nail
technicians how to keep themselves safe at work:

Transcript

Anyone who’s been in the same room as an open bottle of nail polish remover
knows how strong it smells. Now imagine working in those fumes all day, every
day. That’s what it’s like to work in a nail salon. There’s growing concern that nail
salon workers are being exposed to such high levels of these fumes that their
health is at risk. Ann Dornfeld reports on a project in Seattle to teach nail
technicians how to keep themselves safe at work:


Connie Fields is at Northbend Nails today to get her nails touched up with liquid
acrylic. It’s been her ritual every two or three weeks for the past twenty years.


“Y’know, I work a lot with my hands and when my nails are done it makes
me feel good. It helps complete my dress, so I like nails. (Laughs)”


Still, Fields has her misgivings about the safety of nail products:


“I’ve had concern! Because years ago, whatever the chemical they were
using at the time, some girls had an infection.”


It’s not just the costumers who are at risk. The people who work with these chemicals day in and day out are the most exposed. Often, they’re Vietnamese immigrants. It doesn’t take long to get trained to
do nails, and you don’t need to speak much English. But language barriers can
keep Vietnamese nail salon workers from learning how to protect themselves
from workplace chemicals.


You’ve probably noticed this sounds less like a spa, and more like an auto body
shop. That’s how it smells, too. Salon owner Helen Hoang is combining
chemicals to create liquid acrylic for Connie Fields’ nails:


(Translated from Vietnamese:) “I use two products for this. One product is mixed with powder to make the
powder supple so I can paint it on. And the other one is a polymer to finish
it off.”


The odor is industrial-strength. And Kevin Burrell says that’s no exaggeration:


“The chemistry that’s used in the salon for doing nail finishes are very
similar to the chemicals that are used in auto manufacturing.”


Burrell is the head of the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle. He says most
nail technicians don’t realize that they’re doing a small-scale version of auto
painting, with the same kinds of chemicals and technique: a primer, a base coat
and a top coat.


Common chemicals in nail polish include formaldehyde and toluene. At high
doses, those can cause respiratory problems including asthma, headaches, and
even organ damage. Burrell says acrylic nails might be even more dangerous:


“They’re made of two chemicals, one of which has been banned at full-
strength in our state. You can’t use methyl methacrylate in Washington
State at 100% strength.”


But Burrell says products with 99.9% percent methyl methacrylate are still on the
market. That chemical has been limited or banned by at least 30 states. Studies
on animals suggest inhaling too much of it may cause respiratory and organ
damage. A recent University of Toronto study showed that a group of nail salon
workers’ children had signs of learning disabilities linked to solvent exposure.
And some studies show a chemical in nail polish called dibutylpthalate may stunt
the fetal growth of male testes.


Burrell says to limit exposure, nail salon workers need to use safe chemical
handling practices. So his organization is working on an education
campaign called Toxic Beauty. It’s funded by the Environmental Protection
Agency. The campaign sends a Vietnamese-speaking educator into salons to
show owners and workers how to protect themselves.


At Northbend Nails, owner Helen Hoang welcomed the advice. She already had
a ventilation system and air conditioning:


(Translated from Vietnamese:) “There’s probably just a few places that have ventilation systems because
they’re costly. It takes money to buy them and to run them. I don’t know for
sure, but my customers say the air is much better here than other salons.”


She says the educator showed her some other ways to limit chemical exposure:


(Translated from Vietnamese:) “Before, I threw everything away in just the trash can. They told me to put
everything in trash bags and tie them before I throw them away. Another
thing they recommended was to install vacuums in the manicure tables to
suck up the dust and fumes. I’m planning to do that.”


Ultimately, environmental justice activists want to nail salon
workers and customers to demand safer nail products. Pthalates, formaldehyde
and toluene have all been banned by the European Union in nail products. So far
only one major company, O.P.I., has agreed to change its US formulations, too.


The demand has to come from the ground up. That’s because the US government doesn’t regulate cosmetics for safety.


For the Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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Detecting Lead in Toys

  • Bill Radosevich tests the sword on the lego creature Phyllis Gallzo's son plays with. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

Fisher Price recently recalled 10 million toys containing lead paint and tiny magnets. The news is making health officials and many parents wonder about other
objects children play with. In the past, testing objects for lead has been time consuming,
but new technology could make lead detection in everyday objects easier and faster. Lisa
Ann Pinkerton has more:

Transcript

Fisher Price recently recalled 10 million toys containing lead paint and tiny magnets. The news is making health officials and many parents wonder about other
objects children play with. In the past, testing objects for lead has been time consuming,
but new technology could make lead detection in everyday objects easier and faster. Lisa
Ann Pinkerton has more:


In a canvas shopping bag, Phyllis Gallzo has 3 of her son’s favorite toys. In her hand is
one made of Legos that looks like an alien robot creature. She’s afraid it could contain
lead:


“Listening to the news and concern about toys coming from China, I was very
concerned my son getting exposure to the chemicals he really didn’t need. So I brought in
the toys that he plays with mostly.”


Eighty percent of America’s toys are made in China, so Gallzo’s come to a free lead
screening event held by the Ohio Network for the Chemically Injured to find out about her
son’s toys. The action figure she holds is sporting a long silver sword. It’s pockmarked,
from being chewed on by Gallzo’s 8 year old son. If the sword was manufactured with
lead-based plastic or paint the toy could be giving her son small doses of lead and slowly
poisoning him. Lead is a neuro-toxin and has been linked to learning disabilities and lower
IQ’s.


Usually, Gallzo would have to surrender her son’s toy to be destroyed in a lab to figure
out what its made of, but today a new type of technology is being used. Bill Radosevich,
of the company Thermo Scientific is going to zap the plastic sword with an X-ray gun
his company’s designed. In the first 5 seconds, the toy’s elements pop up on a computer
screen:


“About 6000 parts per million of zinc, we’re seeing a little bit of copper, that’s probably
part of the coloring….I’m definitely not seeing lead.”


Gallzo was lucky, her son’s favorite toy is free of lead. But beside Radosevich, is a
suitcase filled with toys that didn’t pass the test. On display are low brand or no brand
items, like plastic teething rings, a simple black snorkel, children’s jewelry and marti gras
beads. All objects kids have been known to suck and chew on. Radosevich says they all
contain lead in excess of 600 parts per million, the American limit for consumer
products:


“I’m less concerned about a hair piece than I am about something that’s supposed to be put into a
child’s mouth.”


Radosevich’s testing device looks like a Faser gun from an old Star Trek show. It uses x-
ray technology and it’s not cheap, they go for 30,000 dollars a piece. Radosevich
says metal industries and archaeologists already use the device for different purposes, but
he thinks product importers and toy retailers might be interested in them too. Michael
Zigenhagan, owns the toystore Play Matters and he says testing toys for lead is not his
responsibility:


“I don’t think that’s within the scope of a retailer’s capabilities. We wouldn’t be
asking national big box retailers to create their own testing arms for the products they
carry. That’s ultimately the manufacturer’s job to do that.”


But the way toys are manufactured in China is a tangled supply chain, with various
components of a toy coming from different factories. Rachel Weintrub is with the
Consumer Federation of America. She says importers are putting too much trust in the
manufacturers they contract with. Her group is lobbying Congress to require US
companies, such as Mattel, to make sure a toy’s components aren’t contaminated before they’re assembled in China:


“If it were required that paint be tested for safety before the paint were used on the
product, this huge harm would be prevented.”


Weintrub says waiting until a product is in the supply chain and issuing a recall isn’t
completely effective. She says recalls never get all the defective products back, and
ultimately that leaves toys in the marketplace and children in potential harm.


For the Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

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