Are nail salon chemicals bad for health?

New research digs into the fragrance chemicals that fill the air in nail salons.

You know that nail salon smell? That sharp hit of chemicals, the strangely sweet scent of polish, the faint tingle in your nose? That’s air pollution, and it’s been linked to a variety of health effects experienced by the workers who breathe it.

Nail salon workers commonly experience irritated skin and eyes, headaches, loss of smell, and respiratory problems.

Officials in some cities and states, including Washington, have introduced new regulations designed to better protect nail salon workers—a population that is 81% women, 79% foreign-born, and typically earns low wages.

But the mysteries around what, exactly, causes those potent smells make protecting these workers more difficult. Cosmetics manufacturers are rarely required to disclose what specific chemicals they use to scent their products, which has hindered efforts to better understand the air that salon workers breathe.

Diana Ceballos, a University of Washington assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, set out to solve the mystery.

In a new study in Atmospheric Pollution Research, Ceballos and her coauthors analyzed the air in a group of nail salons around Boston—where Ceballos previously worked at Harvard University—and identified 18 distinct fragrance chemicals. It’s the most comprehensive study to date of the specific fragrance chemical mixtures found in nail salon air, and will allow researchers to further study the potential health risks.

Here, Ceballos explains the findings of the study, the mysteries around fragrance chemicals, and how to better protect nail salon workers’ health:

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