Nail Care and Cancer - See the Connection?

It is the routine every summer - people feeling really caged after seven months indoors can't wait to rip their clothes off, and dive into a sun soaked beach to soak up the rays. And right away, health warnings, articles and public service advertisements appear all over the place - please be careful about that sun, they warn. And they are right of course - you need to slap heavy coats of that UVA-specific sunblock on to protect yourself from possible skin cancer one day. And if you have not been paying much attention to all that commotion about staying away from tanning beds for the same reason, it's time you did. I'm sure you're wondering what all this has to do with nail care.

It's kind of the way people with peanut allergies have to fearfully look for dangers lurking in the shadows in the unlikeliest places. Modern life is filled with industrial products that use materials it would never occur to you to suspect. Something sourced from a peanut product could easily turn up in a pair of leather shoes or toothpaste. You never know; and you never know where that harmful UVA could turn up - at a nail care session at the salon for instance.

You know what we're talking about, don't you - it is all in the nail lamps they use to dry your nail gloss quickly for a hard clean finish. They all use a very unsafe kind of UVA radiation, the kind that goes more deeply into your skin and your flesh than any other kind. They have been reporting cancers of this kind recently in the medical literature. Women who have no history of any kind of cancer but do have a regular nail care habit at the salon are turning up at the hospital with skin cancers on their hands. And the source of the cancer has been traced to nail lamps above all - the kind women regularly use to dry their nail polish. Women who use these lamps no more than 15 times a year for a number of years can fall victim to its effects.

It does seem quite unfair - the light only ever plays on your fingertips a few minutes each month. Could this really be doing this much damage? The thing is, the UV used to dry your nails goes straight through into your flesh - the flesh there doesn't even have the layer of epidermis you have over the rest of your body to protect it. These lamps cost no more than $50 or so, and most women have a couple right at home. The lesson is clear - stay away from nail lamps. Go to a nail care center that uses warm air of something to dry gloss out. You may read that researchers aren't completely positive yet that this nail care habit is what is responsible for the cancers; but it is your skin, and you wouldn't want to take that risk, now would you?