Are nail salon chemicals bad for health?

Fragrances are added to nail salon products to create a desired smell—lotion that you want to smell like lavender, for example—but many fragrances are used to mask undesired smells. A lot of nail products have very strong, not-so-good smells, so companies add fragrances to mask those smells. But then you have even more scented chemicals in the air!

A good number of fragrances are known sensitizers. That doesn’t only cause irritation on the skin, but, for example, some fragrances could trigger an asthma attack if inhaled. Or, if they’re a sensitizer, they could even help cause asthma and other respiratory complications. It’s not just the skin, it’s the entire immune system. And that’s just the effects that we know of.

There are also some positive effects from fragrances. It’s well-known that some fragrances can be relaxing or affect the ambiance of an environment. But that hasn’t been well-studied. Some of these chemicals are very little-known. They could be toxic, but we don’t know. They’re just used in small amounts to produce fragrance, and for the most part, chemical regulations have been focused on bigger culprits. It’s just in the last decade or so that officials have paid attention to chemicals that show up in smaller quantities, like fragrances.

For a very long time, fragrances were trade secrets, and specific chemicals weren’t listed as ingredients. Labels just says “fragrance.” In the last 10 years, chemical regulations in Europe and in some states have introduced more discrimination of toxic chemicals that could include fragrances, but there’s a lot of work still to disclose the ingredients.

For example, in the new cosmetics bill in Washington, there’s more information required on ingredients lists. That was already the case in California, for example, but it’s just starting. We aren’t the first ones to ever measure them, but to our knowledge we’ve measured the biggest number of fragrances.

Also, our analysis suggests that not only nail products are contributing to fragrances, but also other products in the salons such as personal care products and cleaning agents are potential emission sources.