UV Nail lamps under attack again!

Social media are promoting UV Nail Lamp safety articles

A report is doing the rounds that questions the safety of UV lamps!  It suggests some pretty horrific results. Social media and various news websites are picking up on this and creating their own articles for distribution.

Original Article – Nature Communications 
Yahoo Life Article
Dail Mail – Online News Paper Article

NailKnowledge have recieved numerous queries asking for comment. To that end, Doug Schoon has addressed this report and brought all the details into question.

Doug Schoon Reply

Sadly, every few years someone decides to unfairly attack UV nail lamps. This appears to have happened once again. The new study in Nature Communications*, “DNA damage and somatic mutations in mammalian cells after irradiation with a nail polish dryer”, is nothing more than a biased and unfair attack. Why do I say this? This study does not look at the safety of UV nail lamps as used in nail salons… not at all! Rather, this is an unfair attempt to make all UV nail lamps appear to be very dangerous. How so?

The study authors did not choose the most widely used, or even commonly used UV nail lamps. Instead, they tested only ONE lamp- the highest wattage UV nail lamp on the market, a lamp that is rarely used by the nail industry. The seller claims this lamp is 50% faster than traditional
nail lamps. Why did they use just this one lamp? It appears they are trying to get the worst result possible, when the goal should have been to understand the safety of UV nail lamps.

2. Ensuring they get a scary result, they incorrectly used this lamp- exposing their samples to 20 minutes of continuous exposure. That’s right, they used an unrealistic lamp and exposed the tissue for an unrealistic length of time! To make matters worse, they repeated this unrealistic test with two more consecutive 20-minute exposures for a total of 60 minutes over three days. This is an irresponsible way to do scientific experiments. Tricksters often use shoddy scientific experiments to fool the public, so this is not new. They picked conditions that will give them the results they want. That’s silly science. These researchers know that the nail is typically exposed to 1-minute exposures, yet they tested 20 minutes- when no client should ever place their hand in any UV nail lamp for this long.
3. The article claims to have tested exposure levels between 0 and 20 minutes, but the researchers only report the results of 20 minutes. I can guarantee that the results would be MUCH different if they used three 1-minute exposures. Why would they not test realistic exposures? It appears their agenda is to make all UV nail lamps look dangerous. If so, they should be ashamed of the needless fear they’ve created.

For over 20 years, millions of people have regularly use these lamps, so they have a LONG history of safe use. In short, the bulk of the scientific evidence demonstrates that UV nail lamps are safe, when used properly.

Note that the authors state, “this does NOT provide direct evidence for an increased cancer risk in humans,” yet they appear to be promoting an exaggerated cancer risk to the media in their interviews. That raises the question, what is their true intention? All this study really demonstrates is that nail technicians should not use 54-watt UV nail lamps and expose their client’s skin for 20 continuous minutes. No surprise there. What’s really sad is when researchers use scientific studies to deceive the public and dupe the news media, when instead science is supposed to enlighten us with new and useful knowledge.

In short, the bulk of the scientific evidence continues to demonstrate that UV nail lamps are safe when properly used.