Allergies from At-Home Gel and Acrylic Manicures Are On the Rise

Hardly anyone uses normal nail polish anymore, it seems. Now, gel and acrylic manicures are the thing—and you don’t even have to go to a salon to get them. Gel and acrylic manis appeal to many because they can last for three weeks (or even longer) without chipping. In the last few years, the UV lamps required to harden or “cure” more chip-proof polishes have gone from specialty salon tools to household appliances, spurred initially by women seeking salon-style nails during lockdown. There’s a booming market for chemically-hardening products like powders, gels, and putties, often promoted by how-to social-media videos. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] It’s also given rise to an expanding patient population: people who find out they’re allergic to an ingredient found in many of these manicure products. The more the DIY nail community grows, the more patients Dr. JiaDe (Jeff) Yu sees with the same irritated skin. “A lot of people come in with rashes at a distant site,” says Yu, a dermatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and president-elect of the American Contact Dermatitis Society. “So we’re talking neck, we’re talking eyelids, we’re talking somewhere in a remote location that’s not directly connected to their nail.” Through skin patch testing, Yu and other doctors have tracked many of these mystery cases back to a family of chemicals called acrylates, which are found...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Public Health Source Type: news